Session:

LBP - Late Breaking Papers

Title:

Virtual Witches and Warlocks: A Quidditch Simulator and Quidditch-Playing Teams Coevolved via Genetic Programming

Authors:

Raphael Crawford-Marks
Lee Spector
Jon Klein

Abstract:

Games make excellent challenge problems for Artificial Intelligence. Two-player turn-based games (Backgammon, Checkers, Chess) are easy to program, and AI players can be benchmarked against humans of varying skill levels. Recently, more complicated real-time team games have received attention because of their dynamic environments and the necessity for coordination. The RoboCup Soccer Simulator is the most popular and well-known of these environments. However, the soccer simulator is restricted to only two dimensions, and does not realistically model physics. In 2001, Spector et al. proposed creating a simulator of the imaginary game Quidditch from the Harry Potter Books by J.K. Rowling. This article describes such a simulator and the coevolved quidditch-playing teams created for it using Genetic Programming.