Counter-Strike Agents IST, AASM,

Counter-Strike Agents2 The Game Counter-Strike is a First Person Shooter (FPS) game Counter-Strike is a mod for Half-Life (HL) –Other mods: Team Fortress, Deathmatch Classic, Natural Selection, etc. Furthermore, it is a team-based FPS There are two teams: terrorists and counter-terrorists There are three kinds of maps: –Bomb defuse –Hostage rescue –VIP Assassination In bomb defuse maps, terrorists are required to plant and detonate a bomb while counter-terrorists try to prevent them

Counter-Strike Agents3 The Project The goal is to develop intelligent agents for both teams in Counter-Strike The project focuses on bomb defuse maps –Maps with destructible obstacles, doors or elevators are avoided The main objectives, worth 80% of the grade, include: –Develop a reactive agent –Develop a BDI agent –Develop cooperation strategies for both teams –Evaluate and compare the aforementioned architectures A secondary objective, worth 20% of the grade, is to explore an additional topic –Be creative. What would you like to explore? –Some suggestions: emotions, interaction with humans and learning

Counter-Strike Agents4 The Tournament At the end of the semester, projects will be confronted in a tournament Submitted agents must conform to the provided interfaces –Cheating implies immediate disqualification Score in the tournament is defined by: –Whether the goal was achieved –Number of kills –Time remaining when the goal was achieved No Bonus points this year 

Counter-Strike Agents5 Schedule 1 st Delivery: 26 st of May, 2008 –Requires full implementation of the reactive agent Final Delivery: 17 th of June, 2008 Laboratories: –Lab.8 – Introduction to the Project –Lab.9 – Reactive Agents (May 19 th ) Do not wait until this day to start working. Use this lab to ask questions and solve problems. –Lab 10 – BDI Agents & Cooperation - (May 26 st ) –Lab.11 – Agent comparison – (June 2 nd )

Counter-Strike Agents6 AASM CS Agents Platform The AASM CS Agents Platform supports the creation of agents in Counter-Strike Provides sensors and actuators agents use to interact with the world The platform modules support: –Navigation, free navigation and waypoint navigation –Combat –Finances –Vision, Hearing and Radar –Communication Regarding the inner workings, agents in Counter-Strike run as a HL mod –A mod is a Dynamic Link Library (DLL) file which is generated from the code

Counter-Strike Agents7 Agent Lifecycle The agent’s decision cycle

Counter-Strike Agents8 Navigation Interfaces (1/2) The Navigation Interface supports basic navigation actuators –Move forward, backwards and sideways, rotating, jumping, ducking The Free Navigation Interface supports automatic navigation to world positions –Builds on the Navigation Interface The Waypoint Navigation Interface supports graph-based navigation –Graph positions are called waypoints –Waypoints are knowledge about the world: normal, goal, camping, etc. –Pathfinding includes A* search and the F-W shortest path algorithm –Separate reactive interface considers only visible waypoints –Builds on the Free Navigation In.

Counter-Strike Agents9 Navigation Interfaces (2/2) Maps with reviewed waypoint data include: de_dust, de_dust2, de_airstrip, de_inferno, de_piranesi, de_survivor These can be used as reference throughout development However, evaluation and tournament are not limited to them Collision detection and handling solutions are provided with the platform –See the agents::interfaces::ICollisionHandler interface But, these algorithms may be extended –See the agents::interfaces::ICollisionManager interface Counter-Strike is a complex multi-agent system, collision handling is very much part of the challenge of building intelligent agents

Counter-Strike Agents10 Combat & Finances Interfaces The Combat Interface supports: –Aiming –Firing –Weapon selection –Arming/defusing the bomb The Finances Interface supports buying weapons and armory Combat & Finances demonstration

Counter-Strike Agents11 Vision, Hearing and Radar Interfaces The Vision Interface supports: –A 90º field-of-view constraint –Seeing other agents –Seeing weapons on the floor –Seeing the bomb The Hearing Interface supports: –Perceiving the direction to the bomb based on bomb ticking –Influenced by distance and time to detonation The Radar Interface supports: –Perceiving teammates location with limited precision –Perceiving the bomb location for terrorists

Counter-Strike Agents12 Communication Interface Two kinds of communication are supported: chat and radio Chat provides flexible generic communication Radio provides predefined communication with sound Besides message content, the following information is available to the receiver: –Timestamp –Sender identification and radar location

Counter-Strike Agents13 Debugging Step-by-step debugging in MS Visual Studio 2005 –See {SDK Home}\aasmCsAgents\docs\debugging.htm Debug library –Print to console –Log to a file –See the util::debug namespace

Counter-Strike Agents14 Further Documentation API files at {SDK Home}\aasmCsAgents\docs\api\index.html Help on installation, debugging and waypoints at {SDK Home}\aasmCsAgents\docs\ Resources in the ‘Projects’ section at the course’s homepage