Bug#379842: RFP: orts -- a programming environment for studying RTS AI problems
Package: wnpp
Severity: see below
* Package name : orts
Version : x.y.z
Upstream Author : Michael Buro <mburo_DELETE_@cs.ualberta.ca> omit
_DELETE_ to get the correct address
* URL : http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mburo/orts/
* License : GPL
Description : ORTS is an AI programming environment for RTS games.
ORTS is a programming environment for studying real-time AI problems
such as pathfinding, dealing with imperfect information, scheduling,
and planning in the domain of RTS games. These games are fast-paced
and very popular. Furthermore, the current state of RTS game AI is
bleak which is mainly caused by the lack of planning and learning -
areas in which humans are currently much better than machines.
Therefore, RTS games make an ideal test-bed for real-time AI research.
Unfortunately, commercial RTS games are closed software which prevents
researchers from connecting remote AI modules to them. Furthermore,
commercial RTS games are based on peer-to-peer technology - which in a
nutshell runs the entire simulation on all player machines and just
hides part of the game state from the players. By tampering with the
client software it is possible to reveal the entire game state and
thereby gain an unfair advantage. We feel that this is unacceptable
for playing games on the internet. We therefore started the ORTS
project to create a free software system that lets people and machines
play fair RTS games. The communication protocol is public and all
source code and artwork is freely available. Users can connect
whatever client software they like. This is made possible by a
server/client architecture in which only the currently visible parts
of the game state are sent to the players. This openness leads to new
and interesting possibilities ranging from on-line tournaments of
autonomous AI players to gauge their playing strength to hybrid
systems in which human players use sophisticated GUIs which allow them
to delegate tasks to AI helper modules of increasing performance.
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