Intel and Facebook win Doom competition with artificial intelligence

Intel and Facebook each won one of the two parts of the VizDoom 2016 competition. In this competition, an artificial intelligence has to play a game of Doom, the version from 1993, as best as possible.

Facebook and its F1 team achieved by far the most points at Track 1 of the VizDoom2016 competition. The team won ten of the twelve matches. The artificial intelligence has to play a deathmatch game on a pre-specified map, with the rocket launcher as its only weapon. Participants can pick up medkits and ammo.

Track 2 was won by Intel’s team IntelAct. In this deathmatch part, the AIs play on three unfamiliar maps with different weapons and other items. This category is considerably more complex than Track 1, because the bots are playing in uncharted territory and they have to take into account the influence of the different weapons. Like Facebook, Intel dominated the segment: ten of the twelve games were also won.

Created on the VizDoom platform, the bots play in a similar way as a human would and react with actions to events they observe in the game. This platform is a popular way to train artificial intelligence, because of the simple 3D graphics combined with complex gameplay that invites you to try different strategies. For example, according to Engadget, the Clyde team chose to spawn camp.

The VizDoom environment lets users apply machine learning such as deep reinforcement learning to make the bots play better and better. The software agents only have direct access to the screen buffer and not to parts of Doom’s code.