Implementing artificial intell

MITA Student within the Student Placement Program

MITA, in collaboration with the Faculty of ICT, Department of Artificial Intelligence within the University of Malta, and the Google Developers Group Malta Section has organised an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Hackathon. The event was open to students studying AI, Game Development and Arts and Design at tertiary level at the University of Malta, MCAST and other locally based universities.

The main aim for the Hackathon has been to allow opportunity for students from different technical and creative fields to come together and share their knowledge in order to successfully complete an assignment in the limited time allowed (45 hours). Students were split into 8 teams of around 3-4 persons each, where each person contributed their skill set towards reaching the objective. The assigned goal for this year’s Hackathon has been to design and develop game prototypes and proof of concepts centred around the theme of “Green Sustainability”. Additionally, and most importantly, students had to do this by utilising and implementing AI concepts.

In order to begin developing their concepts, students had to get familiarised with the game’s prototype theme, Green Sustainability. A short lecture was delivered in order to give students’ a brief overview of the subject matter. When it comes to the development and design of games, or any other program for that matter, it is of utmost importance that the developer and designer are well versed on the underlying purpose, use, and application of their program. Exploring and understanding both this, and the personas that will be playing the game, will prove to give the developer a competitive edge over others. Therefore, prior to conceptualising the game prototype, students were tasked with forming insights on the background of the game, understanding the stakeholders in their domain, and ultimately finding the most exciting story line (bearing in mind the theme of sustainability) that will underlie their game prototype. Once the students formulated their basic idea, they proceeded to lay out their plan for executing it. A game comprises of multiple single elements that must come together to capture the user’s interest, whilst also engaging them in the story line. Such elements include the background scene, shaders, object pooling, particles, player features, enemy and ally features, item features, sounds used, executable actions, and the general user graphical interface amongst other elements. Students had to critically give attention to each of these individual elements in order to construct a successful game prototype. For instance, some teams utilised Parallax scrolling in order to create the illusion of depth in their 2D scene. The technique of Parallax scrolling is an effective way that allows for background images to move past the camera more slowly than foreground images, thus, eliciting a sense of immer-