[game_preservation] Computers playing videogames

[Andrew Armstrong]

Hahaha, I love that Magnaflux Runner! Wow, the AI actually is doing a 
full-screen inspection that gets interrupted, that is amazing, so sooo 
metagame :) It actually is an awesome idea for an actual indie-game, 
like ROM CHECK FAIL which itself is very cool and weird.

Playing through interactive games (ie; text based, movie based, or 
screen-based "scene games" I guess) is an interesting feat - AI might 
well be possible to do this, if there are well defined inputs and can be 
played quickly (or if you have enough time to wait since no doubt 99% of 
the options lead to a game over screen). I am sure I read something 
about text-based ones being relatively easy - and honestly quite 
possibly this would be a cinch to program anyway (executing every known 
input and recording the outputs independently will get you a nice tree - 
although for large trees memory becomes a problem - easier in 
movie-based ones with much smaller trees though).

Andrew

Mike Melanson wrote:

> Andrew Armstrong wrote:

>> Games can already play themselves :) You used to be able to set the 

>> Left 4 Dead bots to "play without humans" and just move themselves. 

>> The AI director there already plays the zombie side if it isn't 

>> versus :)

>

> Here's a game called Magnaflux Runner (end of the post) that plays 

> itself-- with bizarre results due to a certain bug:

>

> http://games.multimedia.cx/10k-push/

>

> Also, I have a plan one day to create a program that can interpret the 

> most inane interactive movie games ever created:

>

> http://multimedia.cx/eggs/dumbass/

>

> I think for a few such titles, I should be able to implement a mode 

> that can solve the game by itself (basically a naive maze-solving 

> algorithm).

>