From: park@netcom.com (Bill Park)
Subject: Re: Computer Controlled Players & GAs
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 07:11:23 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)
Summary: Read Levy's Artificial Life.  Get with the PDA program.
Followup-To: rec.games.programmer
Keywords: ALife, genetic algorithms, neural nets, learning, PDA, Newton, Galatea, Casper, Cyclone, Apple, games

I'm delighted to see that the idea of using real AI in games is
beginning to take off in rec.games.programmer.  About six or nine
months ago I tried to get a discussion of this topic started on
comp.ai, but it fizzled out.  Wrong group, I guess.

The following book discusses in fine detail how to implement many of
the clever suggestions that have recently been raised in this thread
regarding the use of genetic algorithms and neural networks to make
computer games more interesting --e.g., by providing "smart" opponents
(how about partners, too?).  This book will give you game developers
lots of ideas about how to write your "Fifth Generation Computer
Games," and also allow you to save time by avoiding reinvention of a
lot of wheels.

        author = "Steven Levy"
        title = "Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Creation"
        address = "New York, N.Y."
        publisher = "Pantheon Books, Random House, Inc."
	isbn = "0-679-40774-X"
	price = "US$25.00"
        year = "1992"

Another rich source of ideas is the long-running --and free!-- Genetic
Algorithms Digest published by John Grefenstette through the Internet
(I think I heard that someone else took over from him recently).  Here
are some pointers, current as of July 7, 1992:

 - Send submissions to GA-List@AIC.NRL.NAVY.MIL

 - Send administrative requests to GA-List-Request@AIC.NRL.NAVY.MIL
   (this is the one for subscription requests)

 - anonymous ftp archive: FTP.AIC.NRL.NAVY.MIL (see v6n5 for details)

Get a copy of AI Expert Magazine from the newstands and scan the ads to
find (cough, cough) "inexpensive" shell programs that let you quickly
build expert systems, genetic algorithm-based learning programs, and
neural networks.  ($3.95/issue in US, subscriptions 1-800-274-2534 in
US, or 1-303-447-9330 outside the US).

You lot in the U.K.:  See if Richard Forsyth's company Warm Boot
Limited still sells Beagle, a genetic algorithm shell for IBM PC's.

Oh, if anyone out there wants to get seriously rich, here's a tip: The
new Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) that Apple and Sharp are about
to start selling will provide a new platform for delivery of super
outrageous computer games, a new market segment for computer games,
and a market for new kinds of computer games.  Many of these games
will have "painless" educational content, and will help to achieve the
goal of "learning on demand" that is being talked about now.  Contact
the Small Business Administration to find out how to get money from
the US Government to develop socially beneficial educational games.
I'd like to see one that teaches kids the three classic forms of
reasoning: deduction (A, if A then B, so B fer sure), abduction (B, if
A then B, so maybe A), and induction ( A, B, so maybe if A then B).
Then maybe in twenty years presidential elections would be more
interesting.

PDAs will totally blow away older products such as the GameBoy, and
will even give the new pen-based computers a tough challenge to match
their performance and ease of use.  Apple's "Newton" PDA will have a
RISC processor twice as powerful as a Mac IIfx to run your games on,
and a pen-based interface to support new styles of direct interaction
with the action on the screen.  Draw the course you want your
submarine to follow right on the map; draw notes on a staff to play a
tune that will (hopefully) put the troll to sleep; run wires to
connect the logic gates that control your battlebot; sketch in the
missing part of the famous painting; copy that Old High Martian
inscription from the crumbling wall to show the Professor; try to
forge Leisure Suit Larry's signature in the guest book at the Blue
Oyster Bar.

Later models of Apple's PDAs will have packet radio modems that will
allow you to connect to the Internet and participate in real-time
global multiple-player games.  Send MPEG-compressed video of your own
face to people who never did you any harm.  Engage in mortal combat
with other scramjet jockeys around the world while riding the bus to
work!

Continuous speech recognition for vocabularies of a few hundred words
will probably be available on PDAs in a year or two, using Apple's
Casper software (Carnegie-Mellon University's Sphinx system, but
speeded up 35-40 times).  Similarly, Apple's Galatea software will
allow your characters to speak arbitrary sentences with really good
pronounciation (sorry, Talking Moose!).  Apple has been demoing these
two programs lately as research prototypes, but I see that already the
desktop Cyclone Macs out early next year are rumored to have speech
recognition built in.  Sharp will be selling low-cost, low-end
versions of PDAs early next year with fewer features than Newton.  In
a few years they will probably be $49.95 in K-Mart, come in six
designer colors, and half the kids in Junior High will carry one along
with their Walkman.

For those of you wondering what programming language to learn, Apple
is now circulating a specification for Dylan, a very powerful new
dynamic language for scripting applications for Newton and other PDAs.
Based on the Scheme dialect of Lisp, it is perfectly suited to
artificial intelligence programming styles.  Apple claims that Dylan's
strong point is a seamless integration between the programming and
execution environments to allow rapid development.  They see Dylan as
a kind of "HyperCard of the 90's" that --like HyperCard-- will allow
thousands of "ordinary" people to develop new applications for PDAs
without being professional programmers.

Scientific American had a special issue recently on genetic algorithms
(June '92?).  Don't miss Holland's tutorial and the 1-page story about
the Russian programmers who are going to offer a game/simulation of a
tank of pretty fish, which you can breed to produce new kinds of fish,
exchange with your friends, enter in ALife 4-H shows, etc.  I think it
said the fish's chromosomes are over 600 bits long, and they control
not only the fish's appearance, but its behaviour.

Dec 91 Scientific American had a nice article on Rod Brooks' robot
insects at the MIT AI Lab and other interesting, current AI/robotic work.

Sep 91 Scientfic American had a story about how far radio-linked
computing might go, as Xerox Palo Alto Research Center sees it.  So
many computers in each room that you can't count them all!

Does anyone know what General Magic is developing?

Happy hacking!!  -- and don't forget to tie your games into the local
virtual reality arcade center.

-- 
Grandpaw Bill's High Technology Consulting & Live Bait, Inc.
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer