Following the 2004 Review of the Faculty of Information Technology this unit forms part of the Multimedia Games Development major established within the Bachelor of Information Technology and Systems degree.

This unit has been updated as part of a 2013 review in light of feedback received from students following semester 1 offering, 2013 and in light of improvements made to the prerequisite units for students enrolled in the Games Major of the BITS degree.

Request to hold this in Macintosh labs from 2014-> due to new software installed in standard labs no longer being suitable for the student assignments and lab work.

14/05/14 - Admin update: minor change to learning outcomes (as approved by ADE).

Sept 2015: Updated for course architecture process. Effective 2016.

Feb 2016: Updated course content and delivery to practice-based model with greater emphasis on programming practice in AI for real time simulation and games.

Sept 2016: Admin - CE updated workload from 4hrs studio based learning to 2 hrs lecture based learning and 2 hrs studio based learning.

17/02/2017 - Amended Unit Content - Removed the word Cinder in the last sentence because we are not using that library anymore. Semester 1,2017 implementation.

5/12/2018 - Amended learning outcomes, deleting the final one which relates to Cinder etc. to ensure unit is not tied to specific programming languages. I note that this was attempted regarding the Unit at 17/02/2017... it was seemingly unsuccessful as the text remained in the Learning outcome! This was a likely cause of confusion for students.

20/9/2019: Admin - updating exam duration to include additional 10 minutes as per University requirement.

Elective unit in the Games Major within the BIT degree, elective within the BCS and BCSAH degrees.

This is a required unit in the Multimedia Games Development major and builds on C++ programming for games development skills developed in the prerequisite unit FIT2049 Games Programming using C++. C++, programmed within a UNIX operating system, is used as the vehicle for students to understand the basic concepts of Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence techniques and implement them in the development of coherent virtual environments such as those typical of many computer games, virtual reality systems and even within biological simulation.

This unit is intended to provide an explanation and practical experience with the fundamental concepts of artificial life, artificial intelligence and virtual environments. It provides students with the opportunity to design and implement their own software utilising the techniques discussed in lectures. This unit equips students with knowledge and development skills that can be used in games, virtual reality and even when conducting biological simulation.

At the completion of this unit, students should be able to:

020119 Artificial Intelligence (60%) 020103 Programming (20%) 020115 Computer Graphics (20%)

This unit introduces topics in Artificial Intelligence (AI) suited to real-time simulation and computer games development. Using a practice-based and programming-led approach, the unit explores a number of fundamental concepts, techniques and algorithms that can be used to build real-time, interactive games, virtual environments and simulations. Starting with basic concepts in 2D discrete simulation, the unit progresses to continuous, 3D models, agent simulation, bio-inspired intelligence models and search algorithms. Programs are developed using the Processing environment in Java or C++.

Recommended resources

Reading list Recommended Texts:

Dario Floreano and Claudio Mattiussi, "Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence: theories, methods, and technologies", MIT Press, 2008.

Alan Dorin, "Biological Bits - A brief guide to the ideas and artefacts of computational artificial life", Animaland 2014 - Free Download http://users.monash.edu/~aland/BiologicalBits.html Video materials covering some background aspects of the course will also be available.

Monash Library Unit Reading List (if applicable to the unit) http://readinglists.lib.monash.edu/index.html

Some useful web resources

http://natureofcode.com/book/ http://www.ai-junkie.com/ann/evolved/nnt1.html www.gamedev.net

https://www.movingai.com/

Technological requirements

On-campus

* Active & Peer Assisted Learning

Examination (2 hours and 10 minutes): 40%; In-semester assessment: 60%;

1. Assignment 1: Path Finding: - 20% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2. Assignment 2: Agent Decision Making and Planning: - 20% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
3. Assignment 3: Evolution 20% : - 20% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
4. Examination 40% : - 40% - ULO: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Minimum total expected workload equals 12 hours per week comprising:

(a.) Contact hours for on-campus students:

Requires a studio computer laboratory with a C++ development environment installed. The Processing (https://processing.org) and Cinder (https://libcinder.org) environments are required for this unit.

FIT

FIT2049 or FIT2096