A periphery of pogamut: From bots to agents and back again

Abstract

Despite virtual characters from 3D videogames - also called bots - seem to be close relatives of intelligent software agents, the mechanisms of agent reasoning are only rarely applied in videogames. Why is this? One possible reason is the incompatibility between representations used by agent decision making systems (DMS) and videogame worlds, as well as different handling of these representations. In recent years, we developed Pogamut, which is a toolkit for coupling videogame worlds with DMSs originating within the agent oriented research as well as other disciplines, allowing for controlling in-game characters by these DMSs. To this end, Pogamut features an interface bi-directionally bridging the "representational gap" between a game world and an external DMS. This paper conceptualises functionality of this interface based on our experience with connecting Pogamut to various game worlds, most notably Unreal Tournament 2004. We present a general abstract framework, which verbalises requirements an agent researcher must fulfil in order to employ his/her reasoning mechanism for controlling in-game virtual characters. This paper also reviews Pogamut, which the researcher can utilise. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.