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Algorithms that select which algorithm should play which game

togelius.blogspot.com

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Re: Algorithms that select which algorithm should play which game

#21

Glad you submitted this as I've needed an update of game AI field. A bit different than it was in my day but still shows what I argued all along: hybrid methods will be the best. Far game generation, I agree that generating many new, unpredictable experiences for the algorithm is ideal. I also agree it's within computational reach. Doesn't necessarily take AI, though. For instance, much of that could be done with dec…

Glad you liked it! We have done some work on trying to generate complete games - an overview of it can be found in this book chapter: http://pcgbook.com/wp-content/uploads/chapter06.pdf The most similar to what you describe is probably the ASP approach to game generation.

Answer-Set Programming is here:

http://pcgbook.com/wp-content/uploads/chapter08.pdf

Thanks for link anyway. Yeah, it's a subset of my approach but a good one for clear intro to subject. As they were describing it, my mind drifted back to attempts at automated programming. I've seen recent work under banner program synthesis. In any case, I was thinking how they specified facts & constraints to force generation of results could be applied to software-rewriting. You start with unsafe code expressed with certain meaning/semantics, extract those as abstract rules, and then use them + safety heuristics to synthesize equivalent program that's safe.

Re: Algorithms that select which algorithm should play which game

#22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, appreciated! The difference between meta-heuristics and hyper-heuristics is that the former is a much broader concept, including such things as genetic algorithms. Hyper-heuristics is specifically about selecting among heuristics, which excludes e.g. evolutionary algorithms. Graham Kendall, one of the inventors of the concept, explains that they would have called it meta-heuristics if that name was not alread…

... so hyper heuristics is meta-heuristics except leaving out one of your most promising options -- genetic algorithms? Or just refusing to use that at the meta stage? The difference still seems dubious. Your paper with the grid includes genetic algorithms to select from, so I guess it is not using GA at the meta level. Hyper as in a hypercube selection space of options? Maybe not because you use a decision tree for…

Meta-heuristics as conceptualized by many (most?) does not include selection among algorithms. Hyper-heuristics does. It's fine if some of the algorithms selected among are meta-heuristics. Yes, this is very confusing, and yes, better terminology is needed. In particular, we should probably stop using the term meta-heuristics, because it has too many incompatible meanings.

Re: Algorithms that select which algorithm should play which game

#23
post #7

For those of you interested in this general area, I suggest taking a look at General Game Playing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_game_playing Disclaimer: My PhD advisor was the originator of this idea.

And general video game playing :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_video_game_playing

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