Competitive coevolution in Ms. Pac-Man

Andrew Borg Cardona, Julian Togelius, Mark J. Nelson

Abstract: In this paper we investigate the suitability of the arcade game Ms. Pac-Man, as implemented in the recent Pac-Man versus Ghost Teams Competition, as a testbed for competitive coevolution. To that end, we explore competitive co-evolution techniques to co-evolve Pac-Man and Ghosts team controllers. We analyze in some detail the dynamics of evolution between the two classes and compare them with single-objective evolution and static controllers. We note differences between evolutions of the two classes, having observed higher fitness transitivity in Pac-Man than in the Ghosts. The problem of finding a well-performing general purpose Pac-Man is far different than that of finding a good and general Ghosts controller.