Pogamut Yearly Report 01/2014

jakub.gemrot Monday 27 of January, 2014
Hi! It's been quite time since our last update, but no worries, we're not resting!

First of all, AMIS is currently cooperating with the AI Development team at Warhorse (Prague Game Studios) on the AAA computer game called Kingdom Come: Deliverance where members of our research group work on key components of the AI system responsible for NPC-NPC social interactions and provide consultations on the currently developed AI core for decision making of singular NPCs. The game looks great and I think that all Gaming-AI-Positive folks should keep an eye on it, be prepared for next-gen open-world RPG.

Second, Pogamut v3.6.0 is out that features navigation meshes for UT2004 maps! Even more, we were able to export complete geometry of the most UT2004 maps out and make them available to the bot. That means you can perform not-so-expensive raycasting on the bot side allowing you to aim your rockets well or perform safe dodges. Moreover, new version of GameBots2004 contains new asynchronous message LocationUpdate that contains bot's location, rotation and velocity and is sent 5x faster than synchronous Self message allowing you to react on bot movement more precisly.

Third, experimental environment featuring complex cooking has been released under the name EmohawkVille RPG. The environment is based on the Unreal Development Kit so it is completely free to use. It features various kitchenware and the stove allowing you to cook meals, i.e., you may pick up some tomatoes, a knife, slice them on the cutting board and perhaps fry them on the pan ... but take care not to burn them! They won't be tasting
well then. Not only that bots can be tought to cook, you can actually to cooperate with them as well as all actions are available to a human player as well! More information about the environment can be found in this paper. The implementation is extensible and in theory can be used as the basis for creation of arbitrary items, actions and simulation of various processes (as is the cooking or frying currently). Kudos go to David Holan, the developer of EmohawkVille RPG mod.

Fourth, our yaPOSH graphical plan editor and debugger has reached mature state. yaPOSH is a variation to POSH selection (POSH without parallels and slip-stak) that allows you to separate a high-level logic of your reactive behavior into a graphical plan. It forces you to separate your behavior code into so-called actions and senses that you code in Java and compose into a reactive plan within yaPOSH editor. Even though the editor is great,
the true power of yaPOSH comes from its debugger that allows you to watch the plan execution during run-time and place breakpoints on its node (breaks are synchronized with the environment!). More information about yaPOSH can be found in this paper. Kudos go to Jan Havlicek, the main author of yaPOSH, its editor and debugger.

Our future plans are to radically improve navigation modules so it is 99.99% reliable and to create new formation manager that will allow you to easily move squads in team games like capture-the-flag. We are also working on the EmohawkVille RPG, easying its hard corners.
We have also started a project that tries to optimize pathfinding for ground units in combination with air transports in Starcraft.

Happy Pogamut-coding! And if you try any new stuff from above, let us know!
Pogamut Team

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