Dr. Mario played by Genetic Algorithm
comments | Posted in ai | geneticalgorithm on Tuesday, August 21 2007 05:06:00 GMT
Ok, I really like GAs and especially nifty usages for them. I just stumbled across an example of playing Dr. Mario using a GA. * Wallace NES GA with video!!
On first thought I believe an area for improvement (I haven't read all Wallace Posts so this may be done in part) for this GA would be to place pills in such a fashion that they always delete bugs on the screen for the first few generations until the number of pills on the screen is greater than the generation you are on. By doing so the successive generations will have more search space to traverse and take longer to end the game.
If you fight to make space in the beginning, due to the nature of the game (you lose if you hit the top of the screen) you're GA would be able to switch strategies to a "cleanup" function if the number of pills on the screen got too big.
This tactic would be similar to how some humans play. Build areas of the screen towards being deleted and if things get out of control, work solely to clean up your mess.