Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Generalizing Agent Plans And Behaviors With Automated Staged Observation In The Real-Time Strategy Game Starcraft, Zackary A. Gill

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

In this thesis we investigate the processes involved in learning to play a game. It was inspired by two observations about how human players learn to play. First, learning the domain is intertwined with goal pursuit. Second, games are designed to ramp up in complexity, walking players through a gradual cycle of acquiring, refining, and generalizing knowledge about the domain. This approach does not rely on traces of expert play. We created an integrated planning, learning and execution system that uses StarCraft as its domain. The planning module creates command/event groupings based on the data received. Observations of unit behavior …