You can add the cult classic Super Smash Bros Melee to the list of games soon to be dominated by AIs. Research at MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has produced a computer player superior to the drones you can already fight in the game. Its good enough that it held its own against globally-ranked players.

In case youre not familiar with Smash, its a fighting game series from Nintendo that pits characters from the companys various franchises against each other. Its cutesy appearance belies its strategic depth: The SSBM environment has complex dynamics and partial observability, making it challenging for human and machine alike. The multiplayer aspect poses an additional challenge, reads the papers abstract.

Its playing style, as so often seems to be the case with these models, is a mixed bag of traditional and odd:

It uses a combination of human techniques and some odd ones too both of which benefit from faster-than-human reflexes, wrote Firoiu in an email to TechCrunch. It is sometimes very conservative, being unwilling to attack until it sees theres a opening. Other times it goes for risky off-stage acrobatics that it turns into quick kills.

Thats the system playing against several players ranked in the top 100 globally, against which it won more than it lost. Unfortunately its no good with projectiles (hence playing Caption Falcon), and it has a secret weakness:

If the opponent crouches in the corner for a long period of time, it freaks out and eventually suicides, Firiou wrote. (This should be a warning against releasing agents trained in simulation into the real world, he added)

Its not going to win the Nobel Prize, but as with Go, Doom, and others, this type of research is a good way to see how existing learning models and techniques stack up in a new environment.

You can read the details in the paper at Arxiv; its been submitted for consideration at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Melbourne, so best of luck to Firoiu et al.

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Super Smash Borg Melee: AI takes on top players of the classic ... - TechCrunch