Intelligent Middle-Level Game Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of intelligent middle-level game control, enabling players to guide characters through intuitive body part manipulation, bridging high-level commands and low-level joint control, demonstrated via a two-player martial arts game.

Contribution

It proposes a new control abstraction level for games, utilizing movement intelligence and CMA-ES for continuous character control, and evaluates its effectiveness through a novel game prototype.

Findings

Enables intuitive character guidance via body part dragging.

Produces innovative gameplay without interface frustration.

Demonstrates feasibility of middle-level control in multiplayer game.

Abstract

We propose the concept of intelligent middle-level game control, which lies on a continuum of control abstraction levels between the following two dual opposites: 1) high-level control that translates player's simple commands into complex actions (such as pressing Space key for jumping), and 2) low-level control which simulates real-life complexities by directly manipulating, e.g., joint rotations of the character as it is done in the runner game QWOP. We posit that various novel control abstractions can be explored using recent advances in movement intelligence of game characters. We demonstrate this through design and evaluation of a novel 2-player martial arts game prototype. In this game, each player guides a simulated humanoid character by clicking and dragging body parts. This defines the cost function for an online continuous control algorithm that executes the requested movement. Our control algorithm uses Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (CMA-ES) in a rolling horizon manner with custom population seeding techniques. Our playtesting data indicates that intelligent middle-level control results in producing novel and innovative gameplay without frustrating interface complexities.