I’ve been tempted to write-up a small Genetic Algorithm tutorial for some time now, but the concepts involved, and even the coding is so simple and intuitive, and there are so many good guides out there that it simply didn’t make sense to repeat what others have said so well. So what I decided to do, was to solve a simple problem with a GA, in a format that doesn’t require you to fire up your development environments, but allows you to have a close look at the code itself. Excel and VBA are a perfect combination for this purpose.
Browsing Posts in AI & Machine Learning
Author: Penny Sweetser
Publisher: Charles River Media
ISBN 10: 1-58450551-6
Companion Site: http://www.emergenceingames.com/
My Rating: 6/10 (Interesting)
Summary: This book is a compendium of information on methods of increasing interactivity in your games, and even though it does not deliver on the promise of developing methodologies to design for emergence in games or offer analyses of complex dynamic game systems, it does a good job of introducing the reader to the field, especially if you are willing to read all the reference material introduced in the book.
Review:
Emergence and complexity in game systems are my main research interest, so when i got my hands on this book, I was overjoyed by the prospect of reading up on innovative methods to design for emergence, and gauge the types and extent of emergent behaviors based on design templates. I picked up a hot tea, and sat down, expecting to find original ideas and a gain deep understanding of complexity in games. As always, I jotted down notes about my experience with the book, as I read on. This review is a summary of those notes.
In part one of this series, “Defining Emergence and Complexity in Video Games”, I tried to define the concepts of complex systems and emergent behavior and how they apply to video games. I also tried to convince you that “emergence” is a good thing in games, and that it is worthwhile to consider designing your games so that there is a chance of “benevolent” emergence to appear. Now it’s time to introduce a number of techniques to assess the possibility and maximize the potential of emergence.
In this article, I will borrow concepts from the field of cellular automata and by studying the correspondence between CAs and video games, I am hoping to draw on the accumulated knowledge about CAs and apply it to the less formalized field of computer game design. The reason why I chose CAs as the source of comparison is the fact that they are probably the simplest constructs capable of clearly displaying emergent behavior (besides some sets of differential equations, but those are not as intuitive).
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