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Experimental game dev AI launches first official game, free for the holidays
"Angelina" is the brainchild of Imperial College London computer science PhD student Michael Cook, and it's just helped craft its first official game release: A Puzzling Present. You read that correctly -- a computer AI helped to develop, test, and produce a full on video game (which was subsequently released to the Google Play store late last week). The game's even free, should you not trust a synthetic brain to produce your Santa-based mobile platformers. Cook revealed his project to the world back in March as part of his PhD work -- he calls it, "an investigation into the ways in which software can design creatively." And while the theme of A Puzzling Present isn't exactly what we'd call wildly creative, Cook promises the level design and sheer fun to be top notch. Or at least he's hoping as much, lest Angelina's algorithms need adjusting -- regardless, the game is currently free on Android, should you wish to test your wits against a cold, calculating machine (and who doesn't?).
AI system programs a game with a suspicious theme
All right; we're done. Throwing in the towel, getting the heck outta Dodge and all that. The robot apocalypse is coming to a head faster than we thought, and it's time for us to move to our safe-hut deep in the jungles of Malaysia. Goodnight, everyone!Michael Cook, a computer scientist at Imperial College London, has created an AI system that designs games -- clever, complex, slightly sadistic games -- and he has named it Angelina. Angelina has used "co-operative evolution" to make Space Station Invaders, an 8-bit platformer about a scientist trying to escape a space station full of aliens and homicidal robots. Cook provided the graphics and sound effects for Angelina, but still, we have to wonder how comfortable he is with that particular in-game scenario.We just spent the past 10 minutes playing a game designed by a computer, and we enjoyed it. This is of course all a part of the machines' master plan -- get us complacent, then wham. Lasers everywhere. Either that or we can expect a flood of educational games about adopting children from third-world countries any day now.
Angelina: the experimental AI that's coming for our game dev jobs
Ok so, maybe Angelina couldn't have created Skyrim all on her own, but the experimental AI from Michael Cook (a computer scientist at Imperial College London) is still quite impressive. The artificial dev is able program enemy behavior, layout levels, and distribute power ups with random attributes. While many elements of a game like Space Station Invaders (which you can play at the more coverage link) are designed by human hands, it's Angelina's ability to act as a composer building something fun from the various ingredients that's so interesting. Before setting a level in stone she plays through the possible combinations, determining which will be most enjoyable for a human player. Hit up the source link for loads more info.
