| Galactic Arms Race | |
|---|---|
 Galactic Arms Race logo. | |
| Developer(s) | Evolutionary Games |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | 2010,2012 |
| Genre(s) | Shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single player Multiplayer Co-op PVP |
Galactic Arms Race (GAR) is a space shooter video game first released in 2010 by American studio Evolutionary Games in association with the Evolutionary Complexity Research Group at UCF (EPlex).
GAR is a hybrid space shooter and Action RPG with single player, co-op, and PVP on dedicated servers for up to 32 players. Players fly a space ship, destroy enemies, earn money and experience, gain levels, find items, and upgrade their ships. The main feature that differentiates GAR from other space shooters is a procedural content generation (PCG) system that produces unique particle system weapons. The game attempts to create weapons that players will like based on usage statistics of existing weapons using a custom version of the NEAT evolutionary algorithm. [1] GAR is one of the earliest video games to incorporate procedural content generation that is automatically and implicitly driven by player choice. [2]
The game runs on Windows only because it uses the Microsoft XNA framework for graphics and sound. Initial versions were released for free in 2010. A commercial version became available via Steam and Desura in 2012. [3] Currently the developers are redoing their UI as the Microsoft XNA platform was killed off by Microsoft. The developers will likely change over to MonoGame which is an open source implementation of XNA. [4] [5]
Galactic Arms Race was a finalist in the 2010 Indie Game Challenge. [6] A paper detailing the game's weapon evolution algorithm won the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games. [7] An early version of the game won an Editor's Choice Award on AiGameDev.com. [8]
NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) is a genetic algorithm (GA) for the generation of evolving artificial neural networks developed by Kenneth Stanley and Risto Miikkulainen in 2002 while at The University of Texas at Austin. It alters both the weighting parameters and structures of networks, attempting to find a balance between the fitness of evolved solutions and their diversity. It is based on applying three key techniques: tracking genes with history markers to allow crossover among topologies, applying speciation to preserve innovations, and developing topologies incrementally from simple initial structures ("complexifying").
Microsoft XNA is a freeware set of tools with a managed runtime environment that Microsoft Gaming developed to facilitate video game development. XNA is based on .NET Framework, with versions that run on Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio can help develop XNA games. The XNA toolset was announced on March 24, 2004, at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California. A first Community Technology Preview of XNA Build was released on March 14, 2006.
Torque Game Engine, or TGE, is an open-source cross-platform 3D computer game engine, developed by GarageGames and actively maintained under the current versions Torque 3D as well as Torque 2D. It was originally developed by Dynamix for the 2001 first-person shooter Tribes 2. In September 2012, GarageGames released Torque 3D as open-source software under the MIT License.
In video games, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-playable characters (NPCs) similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in 1948, first seen in the game Nim. AI in video games is a distinct subfield and differs from academic AI. It serves to improve the game-player experience rather than machine learning or decision making. During the golden age of arcade video games the idea of AI opponents was largely popularized in the form of graduated difficulty levels, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on the player's input. Modern games often implement existing techniques such as pathfinding and decision trees to guide the actions of NPCs. AI is often used in mechanisms which are not immediately visible to the user, such as data mining and procedural-content generation. One of the most infamous examples of this NPC technology and gradual difficulty levels can be found in the game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (1987).
In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated content and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In computer graphics, it is commonly used to create textures and 3D models. In video games, it is used to automatically create large amounts of content in a game. Depending on the implementation, advantages of procedural generation can include smaller file sizes, larger amounts of content, and randomness for less predictable gameplay.
Small Arms is an action video game, developed by Gastronaut Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released for the Xbox 360 on November 22, 2006 at Xbox Live Arcade.
Spore is a video game developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright, released in September 2008. The game has drawn wide attention for its ability to simulate the development of a species on a galactic scope, using its innovation of user-guided evolution via the use of procedural generation for many of the components of the game, providing vast scope and open-ended gameplay.
Xbox Live Indie Games were video games created by individual developers or small teams of developers released on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox 360. The games were developed using Microsoft XNA, and developed by one or more independent developers that are registered with App Hub. Unlike Xbox Live Arcade titles, these were generally only tested within the local creator community, had much lower costs of production, and generally were less expensive to purchase. The service was released to widespread use alongside the New Xbox Experience, and as of November 2014, over 3,300 games had been released on the service, many receiving media attention. All Indie Games currently require the user to be logged into their Xbox Live account to initiate the start-up of each game. Indie Games were not available in Australia due to local classification requirements which were unable to be fulfilled, though there were workarounds which allowed Australian users to download them regardless. The Xbox Live Indie Games program did not continue with the release of the Xbox One, and the marketplace for these games was shuttered on October 7, 2017.
Mass Effect 2 is an action role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Microsoft Game Studios and Electronic Arts for Windows and Xbox 360 in 2010 and published by Electronic Arts for PlayStation 3 in 2011. It is the second installment in the Mass Effect series and a sequel to the original Mass Effect. The game takes place within the Milky Way galaxy during the 22nd century, where humanity is threatened by an insectoid alien race known as the Collectors. The player assumes the role of Commander Shepard, an elite human soldier who must assemble and gain the loyalty of a diverse team to stop the Collectors in a suicide mission. Using a completed saved game of its predecessor, the player can impact the game's story in numerous ways.
The Zune HD is a portable media player in the Zune product family released on September 15, 2009, by Microsoft. It was a direct competitor with Apple's iPod Touch series of mobile devices. It was initially released in 16 and 32 GB capacities. A 64 GB version was released on April 9, 2010. It has a touchscreen interface for navigation and included Wi-Fi for synchronization, access to the Zune Marketplace and Web browsing.
Black Shades is a free and open-source video game developed by Wolfire Games. Originally released for Mac OS 9 it was ported to other platforms due to the source code availability. The player controls a psychic bodyguard who is tasked with protecting a VIP from a horde of zombies, snipers and other assorted would-be assassins.
Georgios N. Yannakakis is Director and Professor at the Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta and Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Games. He is one of the leading researchers within player affective modelling and adaptive content generation for games. He is considered one of the most accomplished experts at the intersection of games and AI.
Microsoft XNA Game Studio is a discontinued integrated development environment (IDE) for building video games on the Microsoft XNA platform. Such video games can run on Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, Windows Phone and the Zune. XNA Game Studio is targeted at hobbyists and experienced programmers, and is primarily used to develop 2D and 3D video games for various Microsoft platforms. XNA games can be published for the Xbox 360 using an XNA Creator's Club membership, that has a yearly fee.
Desura was a digital distribution platform for the Microsoft Windows, Linux and OS X platforms. The service distributed games and related media online, with a primary focus on small independent game developers rather than larger companies. Desura contained automated game updates, community features, and developer resources. The client allowed users to create and distribute game mods as well.
Space Pirates and Zombies (S.P.A.Z.) is a real-time strategy video game released on August 15, 2011, on the Steam distribution platform. with a top-down perspective based around space combat. The game was developed by a two-man team under the studio MinMax Games using the Torque engine. The game was later ported for Mac OS X and Linux systems.
Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is a cross-platform software development library designed to provide a simple application programming interface (API) to various multimedia components in computers. It is written in C++ with bindings available for Ada, C, Crystal, D, Euphoria, Go, Java, Julia, .NET, Nim, OCaml, Python, Ruby, and Rust. Experimental mobile ports were made available for Android and iOS with the release of SFML 2.2.
MonoGame is a free and open source C# framework used by game developers to make games for multiple platforms and other systems. It is also used to make Windows and Windows Phone games run on other systems. It supports iOS, iPadOS, Android, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch. It implements the Microsoft XNA 4 application programming interface (API). It has been used for several games, including Bastion, Celeste,Fez and Stardew Valley.
Solar 2 is an open world sandbox video game developed by Australian developer Jay Watts' video game studio, Murudai. It was released on 17 June 2011 on Steam for Microsoft Windows and on 19 June 2011 on Xbox Live Indie Games for the Xbox 360. The game was developed with Microsoft's XNA tools, and its development was inspired by indie games such as flOw. The game follows the player in their mission to accumulate enough mass to become several astronomical objects, eventually becoming a Big Crunch, which then produces a Big Bang.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques are used in video games for a wide variety of applications such as non-player character (NPC) control and procedural content generation (PCG). Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that uses historical data to build predictive and analytical models. This is in sharp contrast to traditional methods of artificial intelligence such as search trees and expert systems.
Kenneth Owen Stanley is an artificial intelligence researcher, author, and former professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida known for creating the Neuroevolution of augmenting topologies (NEAT) algorithm. He coauthored Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective with Joel Lehman which argues for the existence of the "objective paradox", a paradox which states that "soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it". While a professor at the University of Central Florida, he was the director of the Evolutionary Complexity Research Group (EPlex) which led the development of Galactic Arms Race. He also developed the HyperNEAT, CPPNs, and novelty search algorithms. He also co-founded Geometric Intelligence, an AI research firm, in 2015.
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