MLBrickBreaker

AI learns to play brick breaker

Building

Repo init

git clone [email protected]:hhyyrylainen/MLBrickBreaker.git
cd MLBrickBreaker
git submodule update --init --recursive

You need to run the last line above whenever you pull changes that change the submodule versions.

Build tools

pip install scons --user

And also install cmake. On Windows make sure it is added to PATH.

Compiler

On Linux, just install gcc or clang or whatever your systems default compiler is.

On Windows, probably use latest Visual Studio.

Godot

Install Godot 3.2.3 and create a symbolic link in your PATH to it named godot, so that running:

$ godot --version
3.2.3.stable.mono.official

gives output like that (here the mono version is used but that is not required for this project).

First time build commands

Commands for setting up remainder of things (replace ALL_CAPITAL with right values for your system, refer to: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.2/tutorials/plugins/gdnative/gdnative-cpp-example.html also replace the number after -j with your number of CPU threads):

mkdir build
# Use this if Godot tries to import .obj files from the build folder:
touch build/.gdignore
godot --gdnative-generate-json-api build/api.json
cd third_party/godot-cpp
scons platform=PLATFORM generate_bindings=yes -j20 use_custom_api_file=yes custom_api_file=../../build/api.json bits=64 target=release
# if don't want to build in debug mode this may not be needed:
scons platform=PLATFORM generate_bindings=yes -j20 use_custom_api_file=yes custom_api_file=../../build/api.json bits=64 target=debug
cd ../..

Compile

It's finally time to compile the game modules. Configure build:

cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo

For debug build set the type to Debug.

For Windows (if you use visual studio), you need to use this instead:

cmake .. -G "Visual Studio 16 2019" -A x64

These steps need to be repeated each time the C++ source code is modified (note that you need to run this in the build folder):

cmake --build . --config RelWithDebInfo

Alternatively use make or visual studio to compile.

Godot tab config

You need to change "Editor Settings>Text Editor>Indent>Type" to spaces.

Debugging

To run the debug build, add .debug suffixes in bin/mlbb.gdnlib. For example on Linux:

X11.64="res://bin/x11/libmlbb.debug.so"

Some random notes

GDNative tutorials:

reloadable=true needs to be in any GDNative modules to make recompiling them reload them in the editor, otherwise you will be closing and reopening the Godot editor a lot.

NEAT resources:

Starting networks

startgenes, commented (when copying to config remove from # to line ends):

genomestart 1
trait 1 0.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
node 1 0 1 1 # input (paddle x)
node 2 0 1 1 # input (ball x)
node 3 0 1 1 # input (ball y)
node 4 0 1 1 # input (lowest brick x)
node 5 0 1 1 # input (lowest brick y)
node 6 0 0 2 # output (left)
node 7 0 0 2 # output (right)
node 8 0 0 2 # output (special)
gene 1 1 6 0.0 0 1 0 1 # link 1->6
gene 1 2 6 0.0 0 1 0 1 # link 2->6
gene 1 3 7 0.0 0 1 0 1 # link 3->7
gene 1 4 6 0.0 0 1 0 1 # link 4->6
gene 1 5 7 0.0 0 1 0 1 # link 5->7
genomeend 1

The syntax is:

Trait (placeholder, always use this):

trait 1 0.1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Node:

node NodeID TraitNum (NodeType: 0 - neuron, 1 - sensor (can be used for input) (NodeLabel: 0 - hidden, 1 - input, 2 - output, 3 - bias)

Gene:

gene TraitNum InputNodeID OutputNodeID Weight IsRecurrent InnovationNumber MutationNumber Enabled

For InnovationNum just use incrementing numbers.