Recently I've been messing around with machine learning and I wanted to see if I could create AI for the game I'm currently making. The AI should be able to solve the puzzle for you.
The game currently works as followed. You have a few tiles in a grid, some of them are movable some of them aren't. You click on a tile you want to move, and you drag it into a direction. It'll then start moving the tiles and optionally also the player character itself. The end goal is to reach the end tile. Level example, Solving the level
Playing the game yourself:
Whenever you select a tile (you do this by clicking), you then hold the mouse button down, and drag onto the direction you want the tile to move towards. Once the tiles are done moving, the player object will move one step in the same direction. If the player is on top of a tile that you move, it'll move with the tile. And afterwards do another step in the same direction.
I was wondering if it's possible (and if so, how) for machine learning to define a position on the screen, (optionally) click and then define a movement direction?
Please keep in mind that I'm fairly new to machine learning!
To give some more clarification:
The grid is static for now, to keep it simple for the AI. But later one, the goal is to generate a level randomly, and see if it can solve it.
In theory, all the AI should have to do, is select a tile to move (A number between 0 and the width of the grid, and the same for the height). And define a movement direction. Either (0, 1), (0, -1), (1, 0) or (-1, 0).
Falling off the grid will results in a reset.
Reaching the end of the grid results in a win.
Moving in an invalid direction results in a reset.
Based off of your bullet points, I would honestly suggest just implementing the A* Pathfinding algorithm, with some modifications to emulate machine learning. The A* Pathfinding algorithm determines the best path on a grid from point a to point b, and using clever programming you could achieve the result you want with a reasonable amount of overhead.
Something along the lines of having a list of "do not touch" grid points(death traps, etc), which gets filled as the AI runs into them, so on the next iteration it knows not to take that path. This is a very basic abstraction of your idea, but would be highly obtainable.
Obviously we cannot write the code for you, luckily there are tons of resources on A* Pathfinding to help you get started!
Here is a simple tutorial
Here is an implementation that was used in Unity
Here is a code review on someones implementation
Assuming you actually want to use machine learning and not just a pathing system:
I will lay out some pseudo code that you can use for a basic scenario of the AI learning a static board. There are different ways you can write and implement this code, I have only suggested one way. But before we get to that lets first discuss this project overall and some suggestions for it.
Suggestions:
I would say that you will want to measure the game state on the board, and not the mouse movements. So basically the AI is measuring what moves can be made. The mouse movement part is just a way for the player to interact with the board so it is not needed by the AI. It will be simpler to just let the AI make the moves directly.
I don't think that unity is a good platform for this kind of experimentation. I think you would be better off programming this in a console program. So for example using a 2 dimensional array (board) in a visual studio c# console program, or in a C console program via CS50 IDE (comes with free sign up via edx.org for cs50 https://manual.cs50.net/ide). I have suggested these because I think Unity will just add unnecessary layers to a machine learning experiment.
My assumption is you want to learn machine learning, and not just how to make an ai solve a puzzle in your game. Because in the latter case better options would be a proper pathing system, or having the ai brute force several attempts at the puzzle before moving and select the solution with the fewest steps.
Pseudo Code:
Now onto some pseudo code for your machine learning program.
Assumptions:
A. You have a board with set dimensions that you can pass to the Ai at the start.
B. There are tiles on the board the AI cannot move into (obstacles).
C. The AI should learn to solve the problem, instead of having the answer at the beginning because of good code that we designed (like a decent pathing system).
D. We don't want the AI to brute force this by trying a billion different combinations before moving, because this suggests perfect understanding of its environment. If the ai has perfect understanding of its environment then yes, it should use brute force where reasonable.
Coding Logic:
Scenario 1: The AI plays on the same board every time with the same starting conditions.
I. You start by setting a discrete amount of time in which the AI makes a move. For example 1 move every 1 second.
II. Have a counter for the number of moves made to reach the end tile, and record the sequence of moves associated with this counter.
III. If the AI has no history with which to make a move it makes a move in a random direction.
IV. If the move is invalid then the counter increases and the move is recorded, but the AI stays on the same tile.
V. When the AI completes the puzzle the counter and sequence of moves is stored for later use.
VI. In subsequent play throughs the AI always starts by selecting the paths it has tried with smallest count.
VII. Once the AI begins moving it has a 1% chance per move to try something different. Here is an example. When the 1% is triggered the AI has a 50% to try one of the following:
a. 50% chance: It checks through all the sequences in its history to see if there is any section in the past sequences where the counter between its current tile and the finish tile is shorter than its current path. If there are multiple it selects the shortest. When the AI finishes the round it records the new total sequence taken.
b. 50% chance. The Ai makes a move in a random direction. If it made a move in a random direction. Subsequent moves again follow this logic of 50% chance check, and 50% chance move randomly again. When completed again record the sequence of moves.
VIII. You can seed this by making the AI run the puzzle a 10,000 times in a few seconds behind the scenes, and then when you observe it afterwards it should have selected a reasonable path.
If a computer can brute force a problem in reasonable time it should start with that. However bear in mind that machine learning in a computer program where the machine already knows all the variables is different from machine learning in the environment, where for example you have a robot that has to navigate an unknown environment. The above code should work in the latter case. You may also want to investigate the idea of the AI mapping out the entire terrain by trying to move to every tile and forming an understanding of the environment, then just brute forcing a solution once it understands the variables.
In a non static environment you will want to enhance the valuation system. This answer is already too long so I won't go into it.
Short answer to both questions: Yes,
You can create an ai that uses either gamestate (so it can read the objects/properties of your grid) or you could use raw-screen input combined with image processing, which is a hard thing to create, and expensive (computational) to run.
On the Unity forms there are several answers to the question "How to mimic mouse input" or alike. Take a look here:
https://answers.unity.com/questions/564664/how-i-can-move-mouse-cursor-without-mouse-but-with.html
If you are looking for the code for the AI, sadly, you are out of luck. There are lots of ai tutorials online to create a simple ai for such a game. I would advice not to dive head-first in the fancy stuff (like neural networks) and start simple. It would be the best, in my opinion, too start with creating an (class) structure for your ai, and start learning AI by practice. Start with an "AI" that just randomly returns something, then see what you can learn & manage online and make other versions.
For one of the first AI's, take a look into goal-driven AI's or state-machines. I think they should be able to give nice results, given your gifs.
Related
I'm a beginner in game development and want to create a top-down game using tilemaps. I'm using Godot as my game engine but a general C# solution is fine.
I'm looking to generate lakes in the tilemap but I can't come up with any ideas that might work due to my inexperience. Previously I tried using Simplex, but I decided against it due to the lack of control over where the lakes spawn.
Performance is somewhat important but the world will be finite and not procedural, similar to Terraria.
I'm open to any ideas on the matter that would be reasonable within a videogame.
So for a finite world size, I can sketch an approach for you that you can try out. It is not language specific but you should be able to do that (easily) with C#:
The tiled world is represented as a bitmap: 0=land, 1=water
To generate a lake, mark the starting tile as water and add its coordinates to a queue
Deque a point from the queue. For that tile and for each direction, randomly decide if that adjacent tile is also water. Add newly added tiles to the queue.
Control the lake shape by different probabilities for different directions
Control the size of the lake by either limiting the iteration count or by decreasing the chance of a new water tile by the distance from the starting point
Repeat until the queue is empty.
Let me know how this workes out - I have only tested it using my mental code simulator so mileage may vary;) If you need help in implementing that approach, don't hesitate to ask.
I want to know, is there any way to detect within our game against speed hack applications like game guardian?
I searched all over the internet but I didn't get a satisfying answer.
The solution is not more software on top. The solution is not being vulnerable to this from the start.
Example:
If you allow your users to send your server their coordinates on the world map ("I am the blue player and since I moved my full allowance, I'm now at 156/467"), it's trivial for somebody to write a teleport cheat. Just send different coordinates, boom teleported. Kids play.
If you only allow your users to send messages of intent to your server ("I am the blue player and I intend to move my full allowance in the direction of 156/467") and let your server figure out what that means (is the player allowed to move, what is his allowance, how far will the blue player get in one unit of time) and send the result back, you will never have that problem.
Do not trust client input. First rule of video game security: The client is in the hands of the enemy.
There is little point in shoving more and more software on top of your client if you keep trusting your client. Just stop and design your game so the client can send intent and the server determines outcome.
It depends on your game, but you can try detecting speed hacks by simply checking player position every frame.
Determine maximum possible move distance per second and put it in constant, so that the player wouldn't be able to change that at runtime.
Cache current position.
On next update, check the distance the player travelled and multiply it by the Time.deltaTime.
If the player travelled more than maximum allowed, the player must have cheated.
Return to step no. 2
It will be framerate independent checking as you will be using maximum allowed distance per second.
If the server has all player positions at all time and your problem is with speed hacking the solution is not that hard (assuming player position is being sent to server constantly).
Please do the following, first before updating player position check if the distance between current position and old position isn't too big
var distance = Vector3.Distance(old.position, currentposition);
if(distance<=alloweddistance)
...
and if it is avoid updating position\set player to old position\kick player. A better solution to even that, is to not allow players to send their current position to server, rather send direction they are moving and speed. The server should change their position with the direction and move speed, not client.
I found Solution for my own project that is online multiplayer and it works for any online game.
For solving this problem just we need to calculate time in server. for example we can use stopwatch and doing this in client side... and in an specific situation we can compare them over network and if there was any difference between them, (some thing like more than 3 second) then becomes clear that player is used speed hack.
I tried this method in my game and it works fine.
I develop a (really) simple puzzle game that asks you to join a point A to a B (enter/exit) using a ball and mechanisms that you can rotate to give the correct direction to the ball in order to join the exit.
Here is screenshots of a simple level, showing clearly the purpose of the game:
1) New level started, the mechanisms are rotated in a random way
2) Level is completed, all the mechanisms are rotated properly to give the ball the right path to join the exit
Question:
How can I create an algorithm allowing me to automatically generate levels by taking into account the rotations and leaving only one possibility for the player to complete the level?
I'd also like to add more complexity by adding more mechanisms (to create creating difficulty levels).
I don't think it's necessary to talk about tech, but I'm using C# and Unity.
Let me know if you need more information.
Thank you!
If you look at the second image, the game solution is the broken line starting at "ENTER" and ending at "EXIT".
You can create a new level by creating such a line (randomize the number of 'breaks' and their direction). Then you turn each corner into a rotating mechanism thingy. There will only be one legal solution since you will have to rotate the thingies just the right way.
I am creating a tower defense game, i need help with a method or program to make it a tile map so then i can slowly input enemies on a road have turrets that shoot at them etc, i have already tried:
Inputting a picture one by one which i failed on.
Also i tried using the program called tiled but i failed on understand how that makes it tile map so i am pretty lost on the definition on tile map now.
Could someone make some suggestions, links, explanations would be very helpful?
You can load maps generated by 'Tiled' using 'TiledSharp'.
You'll have to figure another way for getting the enemies to move on the map, getting the towers to shoot them, etc. Try this for a start:
Algorithms for realtime strategy wargame AI
You can also try to use Unity3D that might already have something ready for use (unless, of course, the reason is for you to learn the algorithms rather than making the game).
If you need more help please specify exactly what it is you're looking for, i.e. displaying the map, moving the forces, shooting at the forces, UI, etc.
In my Unity game players are able to chop down trees using for example an axe. The tree then gets removed from the terrain and replaced by a falling tree prefab. This works fine in small scale. I am looking for a more effective way to do this though, because:
The entire terrain needs to be reloaded if a tree is cut down. If the terrain is very large and complex this means that the entire game freezes for a few seconds whenever a tree is cut down.
It works very poorly in multiplayer. In order for the terrain to stay in sync, all players terrain needs to be reloaded each time a tree is cut down. This means everyone's game freezes every few minutes.
I have thought about "chunking" the terrain but the entire terrain is already built and I don't know of a way to break it up into parts after it has been made.
Any ideas will be appreciated! I'm about an intermediate level programmer so I don't need anyone to write the code for me here, I just need an idea or suggestion as to the best way to do this?