AIIDE OPEN RTS GAME AI COMPETITION CALL FOR ENTRIES ANNOUNCED

Open Real-Time Strategy (ORTS) game AI competition invites students, hobbyists and all interested in real-time strategy games to check out the ORTS project and submit their best AI work for consideration

MARINA DEL REY, CA – April 12, 2006 – The Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE) Programming Committee today announced a call for entries for the premiere Open Real-Time Strategy Game (ORTS) AI Competition, with the winner announced at this year’s AIIDE Conference in Marina del Rey in June.

The AIIDE committee is spearheading the ORTS project, a programming environment for studying real-time AI problems such as pathfinding, dealing with imperfect information, scheduling, and planning in the domain of RTS games. “AIIDE fosters the convergence of the game development, academic, research and commercial communities, and with the ORTS AI competition, we’d like to raise awareness of the need for great AI in games, in particular,” notes Dr. Ian Davis, CEO of Mad Doc® Software and AIIDE Publicity Chair.

Dr. Davis continues: “RTS games make an ideal test-bed for real-time AI research, and we’d like to see participants have some fun with AI – we’d like to see some great ideas brought to the table through this event.”

The ORTS AI competition entry registration deadline is June 1, 2006, with the winner announced at AIIDE June 20-23, 2006. For full contest details, including descriptions of the game categories, tournament rules, and a brief ORTS overview, please visit the event’s official site at: http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mburo/orts/AIIDE06/. Everyone is welcome, there is no entry fee, and attending the conference is not required for participation. Trophies and cash prizes of $250 in each of three categories will be awarded at the show.

Sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, A IIDE 2006 is fast approaching. Please visit http://www.aiide.org/ to learn about this year’s event.

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About AIIDE

AIIDE is intended to be the definitive point of interaction between entertainment software developers interested in AI and academic and industrial AI researchers. Sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), the conference is targeted at both the research and commercial communities, promoting AI research and practice in the context of interactive digital entertainment systems with an emphasis on commercial computer and video games.