Slashdot Mirror
Mario AI Competition
togelius writes "We're running a competition to see who can program the best AI for a version of Super Mario Bros. It's about deciding what to do at each time step — run, jump, shoot etc. — based on a description of the platforms, items and enemies around Mario. This is hard. It's so hard we believe that some sort of machine learning algorithm will be necessary to reach good playing performance. But really, any approach is fair game. We welcome hard-coded submissions, commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike. Whoever wins, it will be really interesting. The competition is associated with two IEEE conferences, and there are cash prizes available for the best submissions."
If you had read TFA you'd know that they are using the game Infinite Mario Bros, which has randomly generated levels.
http://tasvideos.org/
TAS = Tool Assisted Speed Runs. Basically you program controller inputs (at very slow speeds) and then play them back at 1:1 speeds and you watch a pre-programmed controller run through an entire game as quickly as possible. There are runs for basically most of the more popular NES and SNES games as well as other games. Pretty interesting stuff and usually a daunting task is creating a TAS of a game.
500 dollars for the winner, but you are expecting evolutionary neural nets, genetic programming, fuzzy logic, and temporal difference learning.
The temporal difference between the effort to build such an AI and 500 bucks seems a little too great.
We welcome hard-coded submissions, commercial AI programmers, academics and amateurs alike.
Yet you only post this on slashdot with 13 days before the deadline. You couldn't have posted it here back in May? (the earliest date a post seems to have in your google group).
This is hard. I think if I were going to do it, I would break it up into steps.
First, I would teach the AI to move around on flat surfaces. Then I would teach it how to navigate over holes. Then I would add pipes and things it would need to jump over. Finally I would add random bricks. These are hard because if you jump underneath them, you might bump your head and change your trajectory.
Secondly I would start adding bad guys. Start with goombas, then add green turtles, then red turtles, then piranha plants, then bullets.
This is hard, the AI will need to learn to recognize certain features of the landscape, which is something humans are really good at doing. It will have to learn things like, "if I stand next to a tube, the piranha plant will not come out." It will have to learn that sometimes a short hop is appropriate, and sometimes a long jump is better. It will have to recognize that if a red turtle is on a ledge, it doesn't need to worry about it falling, and it can run underneath at full speed.
Heh, maybe I'll enter. How hard can it be?
Qxe4
I highly like this competitions idea, but I won't participate, because the deadline is far, far too soon.
I mean, I am supposed to understand their framework and implement, test and tweak an artificial intelligence for a pretty complicated task like this in a month (let alone, 2 weeks), with my rusty java, rusty AI-knowledge (I'd try emergent behaviour, probably)? Sorry, but this is just plain impossible, since there is enough work to do from the university and other hobby projects. Give me until, like. Christmas and I'd try.
Plus, the time shortens even further, as it appears that there are documentation issues, so one would probably have to work out how the game state is given to the AI.
So overall: very interesting, but too short for someone who actually has other work to do