December 14th-17th 2012 :: Theme: You are the Villain
Stop the side-scroller hero from rescuing the princess!
The "player" is an AI that uses neural networks trained with the Neuro-Evolution of Augmenting Toplogies (NEAT) algorithm: http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=9897.0
You need to have the VS2010 redistributable package installed to run the game.
Select the items you want to use to prevent the player from making it to the princess, place them appropriately, and then hit "play" so that the AI can try to beat the level. If it finds a solution before it reaches 100%, you lose!
EDIT: I had to perform a post-compo bug fix, since the screen just turned black for some people, making it unplayable. It should work now.
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 100% |
| #12 | Innovation(Jam) | 4.01 |
| #30 | Fun(Jam) | 3.61 |
| #30 | Overall(Jam) | 3.76 |
| #43 | Theme(Jam) | 3.90 |
| #128 | Humor(Jam) | 2.76 |
| #138 | Mood(Jam) | 2.93 |
| #212 | Audio(Jam) | 2.36 |
| #233 | Graphics(Jam) | 2.73 |
Comments
This was a pretty cool game concept. I wish there were more levels, because I'm a villainous bastard.
Fits the theme perfectly! The Hero Must Die, says it all! Loved it!
@OU GDA and @xandy: Hmmm, that's very strange. Could you try updating your graphics drivers?
Well done concept ! Sometimes the hero is cheating he's trying to go through walls but other than that no problem it's good !
Great! Clean, cute, fun. Doesn't feel very villainous, but I like it :)
Fun game. The AI sometimes got stuck in a tile but that was when it was UTTERLY DEFEATED anyway. BWUHAHA!! Simple but correct sound effects. Cool use of AI as a protagonist.
Good work on the AI! It can be quite difficult to trick sometimes.
> OU GDA says ...
> Dec 18, 2012 @ 4:35am
> when i run it all i get is a solid black window :(
That happened to me too. I run a Win8-x64 system.
Really really cool game, I love the planning aspect ;) The game lacks a really complex level though!
Awesome idea.
As I understand I can only complete 7th level by cheating.
@tumoxep: Thanks for playing! How were you able to cheat? The last level can be done with only one item, since I made the spikes a bit too wide accidentally. But, it can also be beaten the way it was intended :)
Pretty entertaining. It would be nice if the hero actually died though.
Awesome puzzle game, challenging, and the graphics are simple but work perfectly, congrats!
@Swolf: He dies if you make him hit the spikes! Sometimes they will evolve to just give up though.
Very cool use of NNs. I'll check out the paper at some point, but a comment/blog post about how you implemented this in the game would be great - what type of NN did you use and how was it structured? What did you use for inputs/outputs? How did you decide a sensible direction to move the weights, rather than "you died, try something else"?
The game itself is pretty fun, although the other aspects are nothing special - it's the technology that stands out here.
@Sim: The neural networks have 27 inputs. 2 of them are the x and y distances from the goal (signed), and the remaining 25 form a 5 by 5 grid around the bot that tell it what the tile types are (sort of like vision). There are 3 outputs: move left, move right, and jump. They are all boolean (true if neuron output > 0.5, false otherwise). The networks are recurrent. The structure is evolved as well, so it varies depending on the task. The weights are perturbed by a random amount in a random direction. The bots are evaluated based on how close they got to the princess. Death is not a cost. The version I uploaded ran for only 30 generations, although I should have probably made it go for longer. I was at first concerned about performance, but when I took it out of the IDE it ended up being pretty fast anyways. I chose a average species populations size of 40.
@CireNeikual: That's really helpful, I can understand what's happening now. Thanks a lot!
I'm just getting a black window when I try to run this (I'm using Windows 8)
I... I can't say how much I love this game.
It is so simple, but the AI make it so complicated and you can make so many puzzles with it...
Fantastic AI, I'm always impressed when someone can make good AI, it's really difficult. Thanks to this idea can work and... Well, just a really good game!
Noooo...Princes was not saved :( Well played CireNeikual! Nice puzzle concept, I had fun. Graphics could use some tweaks - less visible grid and some tile variations, but that's just a minor complain. Good game, I would gladly play longer version of it.
That was way better than the screenshots make it look. I was expecting Yet Another Platformer, but this is really clever :)
More levels please!
I really like this! Neural networks are my favorite model for machine learning applications. :P Very well implemented into this theme-appropriate game. Great work!
Awesome use of AI! Some of the levels were a little too obvious, but it was pretty cool to see how the AI handled situations. It might be cool to have more blocks and see how the AI handles perhaps 6 different obstacle types.
Really cool idea, the AI is somehow slow, but still worth playing.
The AI plays its role really well, awesome. I had to think and retry a lot during some levels.
You could have named your zip/exe same as the entry, I got troubles finding it again through LD search.
Unfortunately I get a black screen as well. Shame because I've worked with NNs before and I'm really interested in how you used them in this game.
I'll try again on a different computer when I can.
It works well. It does raise the discussion that there is never a bad guy, only level designers.
I really like the concept! I was disappointed when I beat it because I wished there were more levels.
Wow! Good idea.
A Puzzle game with cool AI!
It's fun to play, and I am still trying to pass the level 5 lol.
Good job!
Wow, this is probably the best I have played on this LD so far! Great job!
I'd like to play, but I also receive a black screen on M11x AlienWare.
This is an original gametype! And its fun as well.
Its a shame that when you have the right solution right away, you don't see the AI trying all these different tactics in vain. But I understand that just watching the AI for hours on end wouldn't be very fun.
This is really cool, love the neural network use.
I ended up finding a one tile solution to the final level too, in a way that seems to have tricked the AI, but would otherwise be really easy to solve. SPOILER HERE: http://imgur.com/6MNhy
@ethankennerly That's really weird, I thought I fixed this problem. I will have to look into it further I guess.
@Norgg Yup, I found this one too after I submitted the game! The hit box for the spikes are a bit too large, and the AI has no sense of velocity, leading it to die there. Both of these things are fixed in the post-compo version though, check it out!
Very cool. Love that the AI tries to figure it out. Interesting approach to gameplay. Level start sound was pretty grating.
Wow, the AI was really good! I had a tonne of fun trying to outwit it.
On the negative side, the sound and graphics weren't very good, but the excellent AI makes up for it. I would've loved more levels too.
Overall, great job!
This was great! This idea only works with a good AI, and yours was quite adequate. The only level that I found to be a puzzle was #5, but every one was fun. Gameplay wise, this is one of my favorite games of the compo so far.
Very very fun, too bad the challenging levels are post compo.
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awwww Windows