Call for Participation: The GVGAI 2016 Competitions

[Diego Perez]

Dear all,

*** Apologies for cross posting ***

We are pleased to announce the official kick-off of the GVGAI 2016 competitions.

At the moment, 3 of our tracks are ready for you to start working on them. Namely, the Single Player Planning, 2-Players Planning and Level Generation tracks. Information about the specific tracks, including deadlines for submissions, are indicated below.

The code for all tracks is integrated in the master branch of the repository, you can find it here: 

https://github.com/EssexUniversityMCTS/gvgai

And there is documentation available, for all tracks, here:

https://github.com/EssexUniversityMCTS/gvgai/wiki

We welcome you to submit your controllers/generators to the following tracks:

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          Level Generation track

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Participants will be able submit their Java Level Generators that generate levels for any VGDL game within a certain time as zip files. If the generator exceeds this time, it will be disqualified. To start developing your level generator, you need to download the framework and read the documentation (https://github.com/EssexUniversityMCTS/gvgai/wiki/Creating-Level-Generators) to start hacking your level generator in the framework. The framework contains 3 sample level generators (random level generator, constructive level generator, and search based level generator).

The submitted generators will be tested on our servers and during a fixed amount of time the user will receive the results. The results show if there is any compilation or run time errors, followed by list of the satisfied constraints (https://github.com/EssexUniversityMCTS/gvgai/wiki/Constraints). Based on the number of submissions, it might be impossible to judge all the submissions by humans during the competition; in that case, some submitted generators might be disqualified based on the percentage of satisfied constraints.

The qualified level generators are tested using human judges. Our system will randomly choose two different generated levels from two different level generators. The system allows the human judges to play the selected levels for any number of times. The system also ensures that each level is picked at least once to be played. After the judges finish playing the two levels, they indicate a preference between them. All the judges' preferences are recorded into a SQL database and the most preferred generator across all games wins the competition.

This track runs for IJCAI 2016, and the deadline for submissions is 1st July. Submissions will be enabled during the following weeks, which we'll announce in due time.

For questions or comments about this track, please contact Ahmed Khalifa (aak...@nyu.edu) and Julian Togelius (julian....@gmail.com).

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        2-Players Planning track:

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In this new track, your controller plays 2-player (adversarial or collaborative) games alongside with the other agents submitted to the competition. There is an initial set of 10 2-player games (descriptions here: http://www.gvgai.net/training_set.php?rg=2001, examples/2player/ in the framework), and documentation can be found about how to create a controller here: https://github.com/EssexUniversityMCTS/gvgai/wiki/Creating-Multi-Player-Controllers New sample controllers have been created for this track, and are also included in the framework. You can run TestMultiPlayer.java to try this version of the framework.

Server submissions are not open yet, so we'll make another announcement when this is ready.

The results of this competition will be announced at WCCI 2016 (26th July), and a deadline for submissions is set for the 7th July. There will be another leg of this track at CIG 2016 (20-23 September), with a deadline set for the 1st September.

For questions or comments about this track, please contact Raluca Gaina (rdg...@essex.ac.uk) and me (dpe...@essex.ac.uk).

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      Single Player Planning track:

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Our original track. Same deal as in previous years, but with new games in the hidden sets. Prepare your agent to play in single-player games. The server is re-opened for submissions already.

The results of this competition will be announced at GECCO 2016 (20-24th July), with a deadline set for the 1st July. The second leg for this track will happen at CIG 2016 (20-23 September), with a deadline set for the 1st September.

We have made public a new game set (http://www.gvgai.net/training_set.php?rg=8). This was the test set used for the CEEC 2015 competition. The games and levels are also included in the framework.

For questions or comments about this track, please contact me (dpe...@essex.ac.uk).

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Our fourth track (Single-player learning track) is not ready yet; you'll receive information in due time, but the results will be announced at CEEC 2016 (28th-30th September), with an expected deadline in the first weeks of the same month. For questions or comments about this track, please contact Spyridon Samothrakis (ssa...@essex.ac.uk).

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Best wishes, and best of luck!

Diego & the GVGAI team - http://www.gvgai.net/about_us.php

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Diego Pérez Liébana

Lecturer in Computer Games and Artificial Intelligence

School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering

University of Essex

email: dpe...@essex.ac.uk

web: http://www.diego-perez.net​