Game Engines to Model MAS: A Research Roadmap

Stefano Mariani, Andrea Omicini

Game engines are gaining increasing popularity in various computational research areas, and in particular in the context of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS)—for instance, to render augmented reality environments, improve immersive simulation infrastructures, and so on. Existing examples of successful integration between game engines and MAS still focus on specific technology-level goals, rather than on shaping a general-purpose game-based agent-oriented infrastructure. In this roadmap paper, we point out the conceptual issues to be faced to exploit game engines as agent-oriented infrastructures, and outline a possible research roadmap to follow, backed up by some early experiments involving the Unity3D engine.

(keywords) game engines; MAS; agent societies; environment; Unity3D; Unreal Engine

WOA 2016 – 17th Workshop “From Objects to Agents”, CEUR Workshop Proceedings (AI*IA Series) 1664, pages 106-111, 29-30 July 2016.
Corrado Santoro, Fabrizio Messina, Massimiliano De Benedetti (eds.), Sun SITE Central Europe, RWTH Aachen University
Proceedings of the 17th Workshop “From Objects to Agents“ co-located with 18th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS 2016)

@inproceedings{gamemas-woa2016,
	Author = {Mariani, Stefano and Omicini, Andrea},
	Booktitle = {WOA 2016 -- 17th Workshop ``From Objects to Agents''},
	Editor = {Santoro, Corrado and Messina, Fabrizio and De Benedetti, Massimiliano},
	Keywords = {game engines; MAS; agent societies; environment; Unity3D; Unreal Engine},
	Issn = {1613-0073},
	Location = {Catania, Italy},
	Month = {29--30~} # jul,
	Note = {Proceedings of the 17th Workshop ``From Objects to Agents'' co-located with 18th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS 2016)},
	Pages = {106--111},
	Publisher = {Sun SITE Central Europe, RWTH Aachen University},
	ScopusId = {2-s2.0-84985994367},
	Series = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings},
	Subseries = {AI*IA Series},
	Title = {Game Engines to Model {MAS}: A Research Roadmap},
	Url = {http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1664/w18.pdf},
	Volume = 1664,
	Year = 2016}