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Pogamut Quarterly

Blog with regular quarterly and yearly Pogamut updates.
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Pogamut Yearly Report 05/2015

michal.bida Thursday 07 of May, 2015
Greetings to all Pogamut users!

So... There were no news from us for almost a year now. Does it mean we've moved on? Does it mean we've stopped working on Pogamut? Hell no! In fact we've put together one of the biggest updates in Pogamut 3 history - we've got full fledged working NavMesh for Unreal Tournament 2004! How cool is that? Check out this video to see how it works:

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Direct link: https://youtu.be/5g_K6f8y9k0

Yes - we've been able to export UT2004 geometry and process it successfully with Recast. Just a note - in order for NavMesh to work, don't forget to put NavMesh static data you get from:
svn://artemis.ms.mff.cuni.cz/pogamut/trunk/project/Addons/UT2004NavMeshTools/04-NavMeshes

to ./navmesh folder (inside your bots project root dir). For more info about this, check lecture 5 on our lecture site.

You will find working NavMesh in the latest Pogamut release 3.7.0. New snapshot version is 3.7.1-SNAPSHOT.

Other important news is that we've been throwing our own AI competition Pogamut Cup on UT2004 with Pogamut (1on1 pure AI deathmatch). There have been already three events and next event registration deadline is 21.6.2015. Check out our Pogamut Cup tournament website for info on previous events and the recent one.

Other News:
  • yaPOSH editor improved + competence evaluation fixed
  • Bots that are run from command line now interpret more Java params (team, desired skill, skill, name) that may override values from Initialize command -> easing the way to conduct automated matches / tournaments
  • We now have Addons/UT2004Tournament-DM-Table project, that auto-performs 1v1 DM tournament between N bots (and it auto-produce Excel table with results!), already used, works perfectly
  • GameBots2004 has a new message LocationUpdate that can feed you with info about your bot location/rotation/velocity about every 75ms (can be configured)
  • We also have a new NavMeshNavigation, which works much better and smoother than previous UT2004Navigation not only because of NavMesh but also due to using new LocationUpdate message and computations that predict jumping results! For more information see the master thesis
  • Addons/UT2004TeamComm project can be considered mature enough, basically a chat server for UT2004 bots (you can even create private channels :-)) that allows you to send Serializable objects to other bots all/team/channel/private.
  • We have a prototype EmohawkVille project based on UDK that implements RPG cooking elements (Hells kitchen project). This adds a whole new domain for AI to solve (that is actually not an easy one). More information at EmohawkVille project site.

Latest installers:

Just to remind you:
amis-artifactory
    AMIS Artifactory
    http://diana.ms.mff.cuni.cz:8081/artifactory/repo


Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team (Jakub, Martin & Michal)

Pogamut Yearly Report 01/2014

jakub.gemrot Monday 27 of January, 2014
Hi! It's been quite time since our last update, but no worries, we're not resting!

First of all, AMIS is currently cooperating with the AI Development team at Warhorse (Prague Game Studios) on the AAA computer game called Kingdom Come: Deliverance where members of our research group work on key components of the AI system responsible for NPC-NPC social interactions and provide consultations on the currently developed AI core for decision making of singular NPCs. The game looks great and I think that all Gaming-AI-Positive folks should keep an eye on it, be prepared for next-gen open-world RPG.

Second, Pogamut v3.6.0 is out that features navigation meshes for UT2004 maps! Even more, we were able to export complete geometry of the most UT2004 maps out and make them available to the bot. That means you can perform not-so-expensive raycasting on the bot side allowing you to aim your rockets well or perform safe dodges. Moreover, new version of GameBots2004 contains new asynchronous message LocationUpdate that contains bot's location, rotation and velocity and is sent 5x faster than synchronous Self message allowing you to react on bot movement more precisly.

Third, experimental environment featuring complex cooking has been released under the name EmohawkVille RPG. The environment is based on the Unreal Development Kit so it is completely free to use. It features various kitchenware and the stove allowing you to cook meals, i.e., you may pick up some tomatoes, a knife, slice them on the cutting board and perhaps fry them on the pan ... but take care not to burn them! They won't be tasting
well then. Not only that bots can be tought to cook, you can actually to cooperate with them as well as all actions are available to a human player as well! More information about the environment can be found in this paper. The implementation is extensible and in theory can be used as the basis for creation of arbitrary items, actions and simulation of various processes (as is the cooking or frying currently). Kudos go to David Holan, the developer of EmohawkVille RPG mod.

Fourth, our yaPOSH graphical plan editor and debugger has reached mature state. yaPOSH is a variation to POSH selection (POSH without parallels and slip-stak) that allows you to separate a high-level logic of your reactive behavior into a graphical plan. It forces you to separate your behavior code into so-called actions and senses that you code in Java and compose into a reactive plan within yaPOSH editor. Even though the editor is great,
the true power of yaPOSH comes from its debugger that allows you to watch the plan execution during run-time and place breakpoints on its node (breaks are synchronized with the environment!). More information about yaPOSH can be found in this paper. Kudos go to Jan Havlicek, the main author of yaPOSH, its editor and debugger.

Our future plans are to radically improve navigation modules so it is 99.99% reliable and to create new formation manager that will allow you to easily move squads in team games like capture-the-flag. We are also working on the EmohawkVille RPG, easying its hard corners.
We have also started a project that tries to optimize pathfinding for ground units in combination with air transports in Starcraft.

Happy Pogamut-coding! And if you try any new stuff from above, let us know!
Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 01/2013

michal.bida Monday 15 of April, 2013
The last Pogamut release is Pogamut 3.5.1.

News:
  • There have been many improvements last year. Currently, we have migrated Pogamut plugins to NetBeans 7.1.2 and they have been known to work flawlessly in NetBeans 7.3 as well.
  • We have created two mini games in UT2004 with tournament system - Tag Game and Hide and Seek game, where the bots play this children games! Actually it is not that easy to create an optimal behavior for these games. Download example bots from our latest lecture site!
  • We have working example of bot on UT3! Download UT3 bot template and GameBotsUT3 from our Pogamut SVN or try our Experimental Pogamut UT3 Installer 3.5.1! UT3 bots are still beta - they are using slightly modified version of PogamutUT2004, but they are running and shooting!
  • We have a new version of POSH - yaPOSH - that features working debugger capable of breakpoints definition and stopping the bot AND the environment when it reaches those breakpoints - this is a great feature for debugging. Tutorial comming soon!
  • We have updated some of our tutorials - especially navigation bot tutorial and hunter bot tutorial!

We are working on:
  • UT2004 Nav Mesh generation with Recast tool. Navigation mesh could further improve pathfinding and path following for Pogamut bots in UT2004.
  • Pogamut Emohawk RPG project - extension of project Emohawk. We are adding bot actions such as cooking, trading, etc. This would create a new set of problems for bots in to solve and it will work on UDK!
  • yaPOSH tutorial

Latest installers:


Just to remind you:
amis-artifactory
    AMIS Artifactory
    http://diana.ms.mff.cuni.cz:8081/artifactory/repo

  • UT2004Tournament project implemented that allows you to easily conduct death matches / tournament
    • It automatically provide statistics about all bots from the tournament (except native bots)
    • THIS IS KILLER FEATURE FOR ASSESSING COMBAT BEHAVIOR QUALITY OF YOUR BOT!
  • We're constantly updating our projects based on UnrealEngine2
    • StoryFactory
      • This project allows you to create machinimas (short video scenes from 3D environments).
    • SteeringGame
      • This project shows how steering works in 3D environment featuring various steerings like "follow the leader", "wall following", "obstacle avoidance", etc.
    • SimDate 3D
      • This is a simple dating game where users goal is to assure Thomas and Barbara make it to the cinema together.
    • All these project are available at Pogamut Games Page and are free for educational purposes.
  • Planning4J (http://code.google.com/p/planning4j/) was updated and tested for both Windows and Linux environments. It now supports several planners including IPC planners (most of them under Linux) and ANA* - a fast planner for relaxed domains. See http://code.google.com/p/planning4j/wiki/SupportedPlanners for more info.
  • We have created a tool called T3D generator that allows for easy procedural creation of maps for Unreal - it is primarily targeted at UDK. See http://pogamut.cuni.cz/pogamut-devel/doku.php?id=subprojects:t3dgenerator for more details.
  • It turns out it is possible to run UDK server on Linux, thus you can run experiments on Linux machines. However it is still quite cumbersome - see http://pogamut.cuni.cz/pogamut-devel/doku.php?id=guidelines:udk_on_linux

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 01/2012

michal.bida Thursday 29 of March, 2012
The last Pogamut release is Pogamut 3.3.0.

News:

Pogamut on conferences:
  • Pogamut Demo Paper was accepted at AAMAS 2012.
  • SteeringGame Demo Paper was accepted at AAMAS 2012.

Just to remind you:
amis-artifactory
    AMIS Artifactory
    http://diana.ms.mff.cuni.cz:8081/artifactory/repo

  • UT2004Tournament project implemented that allows you to easily conduct death matches / tournament
    • It automatically provide statistics about all bots from the tournament (except native bots)
    • THIS IS KILLER FEATURE FOR ASSESSING COMBAT BEHAVIOR QUALITY OF YOUR BOT!
  • We're constantly updating our projects based on UnrealEngine2
    • StoryFactory
      • This project allows you to create machinimas (short video scenes from 3D environments).
    • SteeringGame
      • This project shows how steering works in 3D environment featuring various steerings like "follow the leader", "wall following", "obstacle avoidance", etc.
    • SimDate 3D
      • This is a simple dating game where users goal is to assure Thomas and Barbara make it to the cinema together.
    • All these project are available at Pogamut Games Page and are free for educational purposes.

We are working on:
  • We are thinking of creating a bot that could compete in next the BotPrize competition. The first step we have already done was collection of behavior data from human players and then their thorough analysis. The collected data are free for download, check the homepage of the project.
  • We're also working on PDDL editor, that will allow you to easily edit PDDL domains & problems featuring syntax-highlighting and syntax checking, but this is currently work-in-progress.
  • Work on debugger for SPOSH plans continues, we have working prototype that allows you to set up breakpoints into POSH plans interactively.

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 04/2011

jakub.gemrot Monday 19 of December, 2011
The last Pogamut release is Pogamut 3.2.4.

News:
  • We have created new tutorial covering how to setup Pogamut 3 with Maven. You can download the tutorial here.
  • Maven Plugin for testing bot's behavior mentioned in the previous post was finaly released, checkout the examples referenced from the homepage and start evaluating your bots!
  • We are thinking of creating a bot that could compete in next the BotPrize competition. The first step we have already done was collection of behavior data from human players and then their thorough analysis. The collected data are free for download, check the homepage of the project.
  • We're finally doing some experiment with planning alogirhtms, its running on UDK and for now we have published Planning4J library to Google Code that provides abstraction for running different planners, currently it allows you to execute BlackBox & MetricFF planners for your domain+problem.
  • We have created new example maven archetype - custom control server for UT2004 and UDK, more information here: Control Server Tutorial
  • We're also working on PDDL editor, that will allow you to easily edit PDDL domains & problems featuring syntax-highlighting and syntax checking, but this is currently work-in-progress.
  • We're constantly updating our projects based on UnrealEngine2
    • StoryFactory
      • This project allows you to create machinimas (short video scenes from 3D environments).
    • SteeringGame
      • This project shows how steering works in 3D environment featuring various steerings like "follow the leader", "wall following", "obstacle avoidance", etc.
    • SimDate 3D
      • This is a simple dating game where users goal is to assure Thomas and Barbara make it to the cinema together.
    • All these project are available at Project Emohawk Download page and are free for educational purposes. More information about them at Project Emohawk Page.

Pogamut on conferences:

Just to remind you:

We are working on:
  • We have finished SharedKnowledgeDatabase for UT2004 bots that allows you to easily synchronize information from various "local" bot worldviews to obtain (e.g.) current team knowledge about the state of the environment. We're currently working on tutorials on how to utilize it. For now, you can find it in version 3.2.5-SNAPSHOT under class name SharedKnowledgeDatabase.
  • We are working on Pogamut Maven archetypes/NetBeans plugin support - this will add our example projects once more to NetBeans "New Project" menu (this feature is currently broken, but it can be easily bypassed thanks to Maven)
  • Work on debugger for SPOSH plans continues, we have working prototype that allows you to set up breakpoints into POSH plans interactively.

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 03/2011

michal.bida Tuesday 25 of October, 2011
The last Pogamut release is Pogamut 3.2.4.

News:

Just to remind you:

  • UT2004Tournament project implemented that allows you to easily conduct death matches / tournament
    • It automatically provide statistics about all bots from the tournament (except native bots)
    • THIS IS KILLER FEATURE FOR ASSESSING COMBAT BEHAVIOR QUALITY OF YOUR BOT!
  • StoryFactory project is now at version 2.0 - it is a simple tool for scripting stories in Unreal Engine 2. More info: Emohawk homepage

We are working on:
  • UT2004Analyzer - a package build on top of UT2004Tournament that allows to define metrics which can be use to assess the bots performance.
  • we're are finishing the work on Team of bots support. It will provide a possibility to have bots with shared worldviews which you could use for inter-agent communication using your own custom messages.
  • we are working on Pogamut Maven archetypes/NetBeans plugin support - this will add our example projects once more to NetBeans "New Project" menu (this feature is currently broken, but it can be easily bypassed thanks to Maven)
  • work on debugger for SPOSH plans continues
  • New set of tutorials covering first steps with Maven

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 02/2011

michal.bida Monday 01 of August, 2011
The last Pogamut release is Pogamut 3.2.4.

In 3.2.4 we already have:
  • Added new CTF bot example (check our Amis Artifactory).
  • Added example projects also to PogamutUDK
  • Moved to May UDK version
  • Added module UT2004Navigation that wraps the interface to pathExecutor in a more user friendly way (now it is possible to call repeatedly .navigate method from logic)

Just to remind you:

  • UT2004Tournament project implemented that allows you to easily conduct death matches / tournament
    • It automatically provide statistics about all bots from the tournament (except native bots)
    • THIS IS KILLER FEATURE FOR ASSESSING COMBAT BEHAVIOR QUALITY OF YOUR BOT!
  • StoryFactory project is now at version 2.0 - it is a simple tool for scripting stories in Unreal Engine 2. More info: Emohawk homepage

We are working on:
  • we're are finishing the work on Team of bots support. It will provide a possibility to have bots with shared worldviews which you could use for inter-agent communication using your own custom messages.
  • we are working on Pogamut Maven archetypes/NetBeans plugin support - this will add our example projects once more to NetBeans "New Project" menu (this feature is currently broken, but it can be easily bypassed thanks to Maven)
  • work on debugger for SPOSH plans continues
  • Emohawk interactive game built on Pogamut (first version available here)
  • New set of tutorials covering first steps with Maven

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 01/2011

michal.bida Wednesday 23 of March, 2011
We have release Pogamut 3.2.0 that has been fully mavenized. Maven is a tool that simplifies the build process of the project by clearly defining project dependencies. Read more about it at maven homepage.

Apart from Mavenization we're bringing many more new features as well!
  • Many improvements to Agent modules - they are now more stable again ;-)
  • New WeaponPrefs module introduced that allows you to easily manage preferences for weapon you bot should use with respect to the distance to target
  • New ImprovedShooting module using WeaponPrefs to automatically change weapons for you
  • KefikRunner now may be used instead of LoqueRunner for PathExecutor - it is also greatly documented, thus it makes perfect starting point for experiments with navigation
  • AgentStats module implemented that can be enabled to provide logging of interesting statistics about your bot (exported in CSV format that may be easily handled by R software!)
  • UT2004Tournament project implemented that allows you to easily conduct death matches / tournament
    • It automatically provide statistics about all bots from the tournament (except native bots)
    • THIS IS KILLER FEATURE FOR ASSESSING COMBAT BEHAVIOR QUALITY OF YOUR BOT!
  • StoryFactory project is now at version 1.2 - it is a simple tool for scripting stories in Unreal Engine 2. More info: Emohawk homepage

We are working on:
  • we're are finishing the work on Team of bots support. It will provide a possibility to have bots with shared worldviews which you could use for inter-agent communication using your own custom messages.
  • we are working on Pogamut Maven archetypes/NetBeans plugin support - this will add our example projects once more to NetBeans "New Project" menu (this feature is currently broken, but it can be easily bypassed thanks to Maven)
  • work on debugger for SPOSH plans continues
  • Emohawk interactive game built on Pogamut (first version available here)
  • New set of tutorials covering first steps with Maven

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 04/2010

michal.bida Wednesday 12 of January, 2011
During the end of 2010 we were working on 3.1 release - fixing installer and other issues. Current state of the art is that UT2004 bots should work fine. UDK bots as well, but UDK bots were not properly tested yet. DEFCON should work too, but the code requires finishing touches and some debugging that we will focus on in next releases. Note that we have fixed several minor bugs that are not in the installer, but are already in Pogamut SVN. Consult how to use Pogamut SVN version.
  • In a nutshell: Pogamut 3.1 was released and should be stable

We are working on:
  • we're seriously working on Team of bots support, meaning you will have a possibility to have bots with shared worldviews which you could use for inter-agent communication using your own custom messages
  • we're working on UT2004DeathMatch class that will allow you to easily run tournaments of bots, just wrap all contestant bots into jar file and let UT2004DeathMatch execute them, observe, create UT2004 replay + CSV/HTML report
  • We want to convert our build scripts from Ant to Maven, there around 20 Pogamut projects and dependencies between them are getting more and more complex, migration to Maven will hopefully make it easier to set up continuous integration and the whole ecosystem of healthy software project
  • more complex examples - advanced Hunter bot
  • work on debugger for SPOSH plans continues
  • Emohawk interactive game built on Pogamut and StoryFactory - simple tool for scripting stories in Unreal Engine 2. More info: Emohawk homepage

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If yes and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team

Pogamut Quarterly Report 03/2010

michal.bida Monday 18 of October, 2010
We have been working hard on Pogamut 3.1 and we have first release candidate that is in a beta stage: consult news here!

What you will find in this Pogamut 3.1 beta?
  • Pogamut has been ported to Unreal Development Kit (UDK)!!! UDK is a set of tools build around the latest Unreal engine and the best thing is that it is free for non-commercial purposes. So UDK+Pogamut=free platform for bot development education/research. The main Pogamut installer now contains Pogamut API for UDK and also new version of Netbeans plugin that makes it possible to manage UDK servers, template projects for UDK bots are also included. Besides Pogamut installer you will also need to download UDK with GameBots installer!

  • A new IPathExecutor – after using the current implementation for a while, we came up with some enhancements - we have based our path finding code on LoqueBot that won BotPrize in 2008! Bots are now running 100% better. Consult the navigation bot tutorial concerning the changes.

  • PogamutDEFCON – an interface for the DEFCON game build on top of the Gavialib! (tutorial coming soon).

  • Timeline feature in Netbeans plugin has been fully debugged and there is a new tutorial showing how to work with this advanced log visualization. This feature is great for visualizing various decisions of the bot's logic.

  • UT2004MapsGenerator (tutorial + download) is a tool for easy and fast generating of sample maps with possibility of random adjustment of various parameters. The purpose of this tool is to create an environment for benchmarking the bots in UT2004. E.g. the goal is to create a most effective "lava map" bot (one of the types of the map that can be generated). Users will submit their bots, several lava maps will be generated, bots performances will be evaluated on these maps and the winner takes it all. :-)

  • Pogamut C# integration - we have made experimental bridge to the C# language, this means that bots can be coded also in C# but we cannot guarantee support for this feature in the future. For more information read the proxy manual and How to write a bot document.

  • ALMA tutorial was refactored and is again included in the installer (tutorial here). ALMA is an emotion model based on OCC theory providing bots with emotions. This tutorial shows how to build a Pogamut bot equiped with these emotions.

  • PojACT-R – an integration with the jACT-R library, which implements ACT-R. We have refactored our cognitive architecture PojACT-R (which was finished about a year ago). We have example bots tested and running and they are part of the installer!

We are working on:
  • Resolving issues with new NetBeans and Pogamut installer.
  • Debugger for SPOSH plans.
  • There is a pre-alpha version of our Finite State Machine Visual Editor, which might one day be an alternative to the SPOSH editor.

Do you have a project built on top of the Pogamut platform? If true and you want it to be mentioned in the next release of "Pogamut quarterly" or have a link from the Pogamut homepage, then let us know! :-)

Please refer to this paper when citing the Pogamut in an academic publication:

Gemrot, J., Kadlec, R., Bida, M., Burkert, O., Pibil, R., Havlicek, J., Zemcak, L., Simlovic, J., Vansa, R., Stolba, M., Plch, T., Brom C.: Pogamut 3 Can Assist Developers in Building AI (Not Only) for Their Videogame Agents. In: Agents for Games and Simulations, LNCS 5920, Springer, 2009, pp. 1-15.

Thank You!

All the best,
The Pogamut Team
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Acknowledgement

This work is supported by GA UK 1053/2007/A-INF/MFF (2007-8), GA UK 351/2006/A-INF/MFF (2006-8), the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic (grant MSM0021620838) (2008-9), by the Program "Information Society" under project 1ET100300517 (2006-9), and the project Integration of IT Tools into Education of Humanities (2006-8) and by the project CZ.2.17/3.1.00/31162, which are financed by the European Social Fund, the state budget of the Czech Republic, and by the budget of Municipal House Prague.