Counter-Strike AgentsIST, AASM, 2007-2008

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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

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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

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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

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Schedule• 1st Delivery: 26st of May, 2008

– Requires full implementation of the reactive agent

• Final Delivery: 17th of June, 2008

• Laboratories:

– Lab.8 – Introduction to the Project

– Lab.9 – Reactive Agents (May 19th) Do not wait until this day to start working. Use this lab to ask questions and solve problems.

– Lab 10 – BDI Agents & Cooperation - (May 26st)

– Lab.11 – Agent comparison – (June 2nd)

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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

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Agent Lifecycle

modAPI:StartFrame

Agent::main

Agent::think

Agent::preThink

Agent::postThink

The agent’s

decision cycle

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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.

moveToDestination

update

Reached destination?

Yes

No

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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