Ms. Pac-Man Versus Ghost Team CIG 2016 Competition

TL;DR

This paper revives the Ms. Pac-Man Versus Ghost Team competition by introducing an updated game engine with partial observability, new multi-agent approaches, and preliminary results on communication and environment challenges.

Contribution

It presents an updated game environment, new multi-agent strategies, and initial findings on the impact of partial observability and communication in the competition.

Findings

Partial observability affects agent performance

Communication benefits ghost coordination

New game engine facilitates research in multi-agent systems

Abstract

This paper introduces the revival of the popular Ms. Pac-Man Versus Ghost Team competition. We present an updated game engine with Partial Observability constraints, a new Multi-Agent Systems approach to developing Ghost agents and several sample controllers to ease the development of entries. A restricted communication protocol is provided for the Ghosts, providing a more challenging environment than before. The competition will debut at the IEEE Computational Intelligence and Games Conference 2016. Some preliminary results showing the effects of Partial Observability and the benefits of simple communication are also presented.