Worksheet 1

Comments are in Italics.

1. State the topic of interest that you may wish to take forward into a project

The topic of interest is the use of combined Artificial life (A-Life) and Artificial intelligence (A.I.) techniques to create a self sustaining, believable eco-system within a game environment.

Very good, you seem to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve from this project.

2. Indicate the issues surrounding this topic that you may wish to investigate.

The issues would be if the eco-system was to be populated by different groups of autonomous agents, how would these agents know and be able to behave and respond in an appropriate manner as to create the most believable and immersive application possible.

The agents would not only have to be able to respond to other agents and objects within the eco-system, but also able to respond to user interaction – the user would be able to alter aspects such as the amount of food and water available, and also be able to select and kill agents at will. The user would be able to observe the effects of their actions and see how the eco-system would respond to the changes that they have made.

A.I and A-Life techniques would have to be investigated in order to offer the best solution to the issues mentioned above.

3. Outline your initial ideas about how you would carry out the practical aspects of the project. i.e. what do you envisage yourself actually doing for the project.

Finding and creating a list of both A.I. and A-Life techniques that would be the most useful and appropriate for the project. Research into each of these techniques would then be conducted in an attempt to find not only the most appropriate techniques, but also the techniques that would be possible within the given time limit.

For the practical side of the project, I would create either a 2D or 3D (ideally 3D for a more immersive experience) environment. The agents would then be placed within the world and free to roam around. Water supplies and foliage would be randomly located throughout the environment. The herbivores would track down the foliage to feed from and the carnivores would hunt down the herbivores for food. In order to make the eco-system self-sustainable, both groups would have the ability to reproduce.

The demo seems to be pretty impressive, if completed will show the techniques that you have learnt at work. Also look good for the show case at the end of the year.