Data Stream Mining Algorithms for Building Decision Models in a Computer Role-Playing Game Simulation

Abstract

Computer games are attracting increasing interest in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) research community, mainly because games involve reasoning, planning and learning. One area of particular interest in the last years is the creation of adaptive game AI. Adaptive game AI is the implementation of AI in computer games that holds the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, i.e., to exhibit adaptive behavior during the play. This kind of adaptation can be created using Machine Learning techniques, such as neural networks, reinforcement learning and bioinspired methods.In order to learn online, a system needs to overcome the main difficulties imposed by games: processing time and memory requirements. Learning in a game needs to be fast and the memory available is usually not enough to store a large number of training examples to a traditional Machine Learning technique. In this context, methods for mining data streams seem to be a natural approach. Data streams are, by definition, sequences of training examples that arrive over time. In the data stream scenario, algorithms are usually incremental and capable of adapting the decision model when a change in the distribution of the training examples is detected. One particularly interesting algorithm for mining data streams is the Very Fast Decision Tree (VFDT). VFDTs are incremental decision trees designed specifically to meet the data stream problem requirements.In this paper, we analyse the use of VFDTs in the task of learning in a Computer RolePlaying Game context. First, we simulate data from manually designed tactics for a Computer RolePlaying Game, based on Spronck's static tactics, and test the suitability of VFDT to rapid learn these tactics. Afterwards, we conduct an experiment in order to simulate a data stream of examples where changes of tactics occur over time, and analyse how VFDT and some of its variations respond to these changes in the target concept.