NeverGiveUp

2006-04-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

SGD125-01 Essay Topic 4

What is the best AI in a game that you have played? Why?

The best AI in a game that I have played was in Need for Speed Underground 2. This is a street racing game where you have to develop a reputation and customize your ride to enhance the performance and looks. There are several different race modes including drag, sprint, circuit, out run, and drift. The AI that caught my attention was particularly in the race mode where you challenge an individual racer on the street to try to “Out run” each other. You both start the race while rolling down the city streets or freeway. Who ever has the lead has to increase the distance between them and the opponent to a specified distance in order to win the race. The player in the lead can go wherever they want as long as the other player does not pass them going the same direction on a street. Whoever is behind has to keep the leader from getting too far away geographically and then pass them going the same direction on a street so they can become the leader and have a chance of winning the race.
The computer player will dive down the freeway and at the last moment before a turn it will bump you to the right or left and take a quick exit the other direction. The NPCs will also cut you off, draft off you, and take short cuts to get ahead of you. It is a nice challenge at the harder stages of the game.

What is the worst AI in a game that you have played? Why?

The worst AI in a game that I have played was in a baseball game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I say this because after I got used to the patterns of the NPC fielders and pitcher, it was a matter not of who would win, but of whether or not I would shut out the computer entirely and how many dozen points I would score. If I hit a pop fly with any players on base and managed to tag back to the base the player was on, I could run to the next base and all the computer would do is keep throwing the ball to whichever base I just came from until I made it home (it must have still been assuming that I still needed to tag up). Most of the time if I threw a pitch about half way to the batter, like it would be a ball, and then cut it back across the plate the batter would just watch the strike pass.

2006-03-26T22:48:00.000-08:00

SGD125-01 Essay Topic 3

What is your favorite game of all time? Why?

My favorite game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. It is for the Super Nintendo system. It is a role playing game in which you are an adolescent boy who must rescue a princess (actually several princesses) from several different dungeons across the land of Hyrule and the Dark World, which is sort of the evil twin parallel universe of Hyrule.

The product description from Nintendo is as follows.

Category: AdventurePlayers: 1 playerRelease Date: Apr 01, 1992
Publisher: Nintendo Developer: Nintendo
Article source: Nintendo PowerReturn to an age of magic and heroes! The elegant Princess Zelda calls for Link's help to restore the Triforce and defeat Ganon. When Zelda learns that Ganon has acquired a piece of the Triforce, she hides the remaining pieces in an effort to save Hyrule. Thus, the adventure begins!Link's mission to restore the Triforce and search for Princess Zelda allows him to venture into twisting mazes, dungeons, palaces, and shadowy forests. Link precariously maneuvers his way through eight dark dungeons. During his search of Dark World labyrinths, Link gathers magical items and mighty weapons. He must also fight against evil enemies and big bosses. Special items like the power glove, hookshoot, and magic flippers allow Link to be clever and crafty in his quest. As Link, you must prevent Ganon's evil plot from shattering the peaceful Hyrule.The Legend of Zelda offers a rich adventure for all gamers. Whether you are a young knight, heroine-in-training, or a seasoned warrior, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past will delight!

There are a few screen shots at http://www.zelda.com/universe/game/past/.

There are several reasons that I found this to be such a great game. One reason is that you are part of a story with a definite purpose. You have something to achieve and are praised for accomplishing tasks. There are town’s people that you interact with throughout the game as well as the princesses that you rescue of course.
Another reason is that you attain better tools/weapons/power as you progress through the game. Enhancement of your abilities is rewarding and increases the factor of fun as well as giving you something to look forward to, as opposed to more of the same. This is one way that the flow of game play is controlled. Specific items or abilities are required to reach any given dungeon, flippers to swim through water for example. Somewhere in each dungeon is hidden a new tool or weapon that is needed to defeat the dungeon.
Another quality of the game that I find to be excellent is that much of the game involves problem solving skills. Many of the dungeons are various forms of puzzles and require you to find new ways to use a combination of your acquired tools and skills especially featuring the most recently acquired of those. Sometimes you have to change something in the room directly above or below you (lighting or move a statue) to proceed from that room.
There is plenty of physical action and fighting enemies with your sword and other tools. It does require a certain amount of timing, strategy, and skill; however I found the game to be a challenge without being impossible. Some other games, in contrast, are nearly unbeatable or require such a large amount of chance that they are very discouraging and frustrating. This was not the case for me.
I have some of the fondest memories of playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for hour upon hour. This game just sticks out in my mind as being the best.

What is your favorite current game? Why?

My current favorite game is Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow. This game is made by UBISOFT and I have played it for the Xbox platform. The following link is for a trailer about the game.
http://media.ubi.com/emea/scpt/videos/SCPT_release_trailer.wmv
You are highly trained covert military agent sent in when there needs to be no trace that you were ever there.
The main aspect that impresses me about this game is the exceptional use of a couple of features of current technology that are usually completely irrelevant in most games I have played. This is light levels and noise levels. Your gear is equipped with a sensor that lets you know how much noise you are making when you walk and more importantly how visible you are based on how much light is hitting you. Most of the time you cannot let yourself be seen and are not allowed to actually kill anyone. You have to quietly and invisibly sneak up on people and knock them out. Then you must hide the body in a dark corner so that someone else won’t find it and get suspicious.
As with the game I listed as all time favorite, this game involves a decent amount of problem solving. You have to figure out how to overtake the enemies based on their position and the light levels. You can shoot out some lights with a silenced gun without drawing too much attention to yourself in order to increase the area that you can access without being seen. This game has a plot in which you are a main character as well. You have specific missions and tasks.
Another impressive feature of this game is the visual settings at your disposal. In addition to regular vision you can use night vision goggles or heat sensing lenses. Both can be used to cleverly overcome many obstacles throughout your missions, especially since the shadows are your friend.
This game does involve killing and violence but there is there is a lot of intelligence required to complete each task and not just a trigger happy finger. There are some screen shots of the game at http://www.gamershell.com/pc/splinter_cell_pandora_tomorrow/screenshots.html.

Resources Used:
http://www.zelda.com/universe/game/past/
http://www.nintendo.com/gamemini?gameid=m-Game-0000-572

http://www.splintercell.com/us/splintercellpandoratomorrow.php
http://media.ubi.com/emea/scpt/videos/SCPT_release_trailer.wmv
http://www.gamershell.com/pc/splinter_cell_pandora_tomorrow/screenshots.html

2006-03-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

SGD125-01 Essay Topic 2

Familiarize yourself with the following exciting debates in the
field of natural and Artificial Intelligence:
· The Chinese Room Argument
· The Turing Test
· The Loebner Prize Competition
· The Symbol Grounding Problem

Publish your thoughts on the following questions:
· Is the Turing Test a good test for Intelligence? Why or Why not?

No, it is an interesting concept but not a truly good test for intelligence. Just because something can give the appearance of something else is not reason to declare it to be that something else. For example, there is a bug that was created with the look of a leaf. It can sway like a leaf being blown by the wind. It can hold onto the branch of a tree like a leaf. If someone were given certain means with which to examine and compare this bug with a real leaf (look through a window but don’t touch maybe) and asked to see if they could tell which was the leaf, would this prove that the bug was also capable of photosynthesis?
I do recognize that it is a good test as to whether or not a computer can give the appearance of intelligence, but beyond that I think it is stretching the results of The Turing Test to say it is measuring actual intelligence. According to dictionary.com, intelligence is: The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. The Turing Test may be able to measure acquired “knowledge”, but will the person asking questions really be able to tell if the person or computer on the other end of that response really understands how to apply the information that it is reciting?

· Will computers eventually be able to pass a CAPTCHA test? Why or Why not?

Yes, I think that computers will eventually be able to pass a CAPTCHA test. Greg Mori and Jitendra Malik claim they currently have an algorithm that will pass the EZ-Gimpy captcha test 92% of the time and the Gimpy captcha test 33% of the time. It uses some of the same ideas as “finding people in images, matching handwritten digits, and recognizing 3D objects”. If computers can already pass the EZ-Gimpy 92% of the time now, it probably won’t be long before it can do it all of the time.

· The Symbol Grounding Problem ->Take a concept from your everyday life, for example, drinking. Now try to make explicit what drinking means to you. You may be surprised how tightly concepts are tied to the body, are grounded in sensory motor experiences. Just to get you started, here are a few points. Drinking relates to liquids; liquids are kept in particular containers like cups or glasses. They can be hot or cold; if they are hot you can get burned. If you grasp the coffee cup, you move it to your mouth slowly. Why? Because you know that liquids spill when you move the cup fast. You then tilt the cup and move your lower lip forward so the liquid can drop into your mouth. You are applying the physical law that the surface of the liquid stays horizontal as the container moves. Then you sense the liquid and its temperature in your mouth, and perhaps in your throat and stomach. You also recognize various liquids by their specific reflective properties, viscosity, and so forth. This is what sensory-motor grounding is all about. Now try to do the same thing with an abstract concept, like responsibility.

Responsibility is related to obligation, commitment, and being the one that will make sure something happens, doesn’t happen, or is taken care of. Something can be the responsibility of one person or many. Responsibility assigns ownership of a task. The given task may range from a variety of things and is said to be the responsibility of that person or those people. For example: taking out the trash, showing up for work, paying debts, not harming other people, making legal decisions, whatever your job description is, and many other things. Responsibility can be ongoing like child support or span one specific point in time like showing up for an appointment.

Resources used:
- www.dictionary.com
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha#Origin http://
- www.cs.sfu.ca/~mori/research/gimpy/

2006-01-29T22:30:00.000-08:00

SGD125-01 Essay Topic 1

According to Dr. Hugo De Garis in "The Artilect War", would you be a part of The Cosmists or The Terrans? Explain your answer.
http://www.cs.usu.edu/%7Edegaris/artilectwar2.html

I would be part of the Terrans. This is of coarse assuming that the technology would actually be developed that would allow robots to become “smarter” than humans. The main reason for my decision is that humans are not perfect and therefore we cannot create anything that is perfect. If we created a robot that could actually learn and make decisions on its own, decisions that are not predefined or programmed specifically, then even if we thought we could control or limit the progression of these evolving creations, I don’t think there is any way to count on that being a certainty. Any flaw in a program that is building upon itself is bound to cause immense problems down the road. This is similar to a mathematical error that is being multiplied with other data. Any error is bad enough when it stands alone but when something is built upon it must be without flaw for there to be great certainty about the outcome any distance down the road. From my experience there are not any perfect programmers out there. Otherwise there would be one software producer that would completely take over because they could make a computer that would never hang up, crash, run inefficiently, or do anything other than what it was supposed to do.
Another reason that I would be a Terran is that I do not feel that just because we would potentially (in theory) create something “smarter” than ourselves even if by an enormous factor that we should simply step aside and say you (the robots) are better and more deserving to live than us so kill off our species if you see fit and continue our “evolution” toward greatness without us. By the way, I do not personally believe that we evolved from bacteria. No matter how fast the processor you put inside a robot or how closely it simulate “intelligence”, I don’t think that speed of response can be equated to life and the many mysteries that (in my opinion) God put into us humans when we were created or that we could possibly be able to create actual life from scratch.
I find Dr. De Garis to be in some ways very arrogant to even think that we could create something “smarter” than ourselves and yet at the same time very humble to think that we should step aside and let some theoretical creation of ours kill us off and somehow carry on a more meaningful existence. Anyway, I would be a Terran.

2006-01-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

Hi, this is my first blog.