Sunday, November 26, 2006

Genetic algorithms for Dr. Mario Strategy!

It turns out that one Paul Kuliniewicz has decided to build an AI to play Dr. Mario -- or more accurately, to learn to play Dr. Mario and then play it, using, ironically, genetic algorithms. It's called Wallace, and it builds up and breeds different strategies for pushing pills around. This seems like a pretty good domain -- and I suppose puzzle games of this sort are in general... I wonder if anybody's done something like this for Tetris? Other real-time puzzle games?

The interesting thing about this -- he's hooked his evaluation function for evolutionary candidates into the NES emulator. Pretty clever stuff!

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