Design and Development of Videogames @ the Politecnico di Milano

The Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione together with Centro
METID organized series of four meetings on the design and development of
videogames.
The brochure is available here
The meetings, hosted at the Educafe, will involve presenters from the
videogaming industry and the Center for Computer Games Research (CGR) of
the IT-University of Copenhagen.
Calendar

April 23 – 13:00 – Design, Progettazione e […]

The Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione together with Centro
METID organized series of four meetings on the design and development of
videogames.

The brochure is available here

The meetings, hosted at the Educafe, will involve presenters from the
videogaming industry and the Center for Computer Games Research (CGR) of
the IT-University of Copenhagen.

Calendar

  • April 23 – 13:00 – Design, Progettazione e Sviluppo di Videogiochi in
    Italia: l’esperienza di Milestone (in Italian)
  • May 14 – 13:00 – Games @ ITU: Study, Development, Research, Center for
    Computer Games Research, Copenhagen, Danimarca (in English)
  • June 25 – 13:00 – Videogiochi: dal linguaggio simbolico alla
    rappresentazione della realtà (in Italian)
  • July 9 – 13:00 – To be announced

Location

Educafe – Cloister North Building
Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 322

Organizers

Pier Luca Lanzi – lanzi@elet.polimi.it
Daniele Loiacono – loiacono@elet.polimi.it
Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione

Support

Augusto Buzzi & Damiano Zanzarelli
Centro METID

Evolution of Modularity, GP, and a new PLoS Computational Biology paper by Kashtan et al.

A new paper by Kashtan et al. in PLoS Computational Biology presents an interesting study of the evolution of modularity, extending their previous work showing “that modular structure can spontaneously emerge if goals (environments) change over time, such that each new goal shares the same set of sub-problems with previous goals.”
The evolution of modularity is a topic of longstanding interest in GP and evolutionary computation more generally, within which we often seek to evolve modular programs or structures. Many also seek to leverage the modularity of representations to accelerate evolution. A lot of the work on automatically defined functions, etc., has been concerned with these issues and I think that cross-fertilization with the new computational biology results could be fruitful.
The closest thing that I know of in the GP literature to the Kashtan et al. results is a paper by Terry Van Belle and David Ackley in GECCO 2002, in which they observed the “evolution of evolvability in experiments using genetic programming to solve a symbolic regression problem that varies in a partially unpredictable manner.” Alan Robinson and I were inspired by this to do a similar experiment in PushGP, which allows modularity to arise from scratch via code self-manipulation, and we wrote it up briefly in a GECCO 2002 Workshop paper (see section 3.2).
A new paper by Kashtan et al. in PLoS Computational Biology presents an interesting study of the evolution of modularity, extending their previous work showing “that modular structure can spontaneously emerge if goals (environments) change over time, such that each new goal shares the same set of sub-problems with previous goals.”
The evolution of modularity is a topic of longstanding interest in GP and evolutionary computation more generally, within which we often seek to evolve modular programs or structures. Many also seek to leverage the modularity of representations to accelerate evolution. A lot of the work on automatically defined functions, etc., has been concerned with these issues and I think that cross-fertilization with the new computational biology results could be fruitful.
The closest thing that I know of in the GP literature to the Kashtan et al. results is a paper by Terry Van Belle and David Ackley in GECCO 2002, in which they observed the “evolution of evolvability in experiments using genetic programming to solve a symbolic regression problem that varies in a partially unpredictable manner.” Alan Robinson and I were inspired by this to do a similar experiment in PushGP, which allows modularity to arise from scratch via code self-manipulation, and we wrote it up briefly in a GECCO 2002 Workshop paper (see section 3.2).

Another lecture at U. Nottingham: Playing Well with Others

Besides his talk Thursday, 16 April 2009 (here), David E. Goldberg, IlliGAL director, will give another talk in Nottingham on Friday, 17 April 2009 at noon, Playing Well with Others in a Creative Era (here).
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Besides his talk Thursday, 16 April 2009 (here), David E. Goldberg, IlliGAL director, will give another talk in Nottingham on Friday, 17 April 2009 at noon, Playing Well with Others in a Creative Era (here).

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    Lecture: Not your grandmother’s GA, Thursday, 16 April, U. Nottingham

    IlliGAL lab director, David E. Goldberg, will give a talk Not Your Grandmother’s Genetic Algorithm on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 from 12:00 to 13:00 in Lecture room C60, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham.
    Abstract: Genetic algorithms (GAs)–search procedures inspired by the mechanics of natural selection and genetics–have been increasingly applied across the spectrum of […]

    IlliGAL lab director, David E. Goldberg, will give a talk Not Your Grandmother’s Genetic Algorithm on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 from 12:00 to 13:00 in Lecture room C60, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham.

    Abstract: Genetic algorithms (GAs)–search procedures inspired by the mechanics of natural selection and genetics–have been increasingly applied across the spectrum of human endeavor, but some researchers mistakenly think of them as slow, unreliable, and without much theoretical support. This talk briefly introduces GAs, but quickly shifts to a line of work that has succeeded in supporting GA mechanics with design theory that has been used to demonstrate GA scalability, speed, and range of reliable applicability. Key elements of this theory are discussed to give insight into this accomplishment and to make the point that fast, scalable GAs may also be viewed as first-order models of human innovative or inventive processes. The talk highlights recent results in breaking the billion-variable optimization barrier for the first time, and points to a variety of opportunities for efficiency enhancement that should be useful in the application of genetic algorithms to a variety of software engineering problems.

    For more information about the talk contact Jaume Barcadit (jaume.bacardit@nottingham.ac.uk).

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      GPEM 10(2) now available online

      The second issue of volume 10 of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines is now available online, containing the following articles:

      Incorporating characteristics of human creativity into an evolutionary art algorithm
      by Steve DiPaola, Liane Gabora
      Using enhanced genetic programming techniques for evolving classifiers in the context of medical diagnosis
      by Stephan M. Winkler, Michael Affenzeller, Stefan Wagner
      Dynamic limits for bloat control in genetic programming and a review of past and current bloat theories
      by Sara Silva, Ernesto Costa
      A review of procedures to evolve quantum algorithms
      by Adrian Gepp, Phil Stocks
      Book Review: Riccardo Poli, William B. Langdon, Nicholas F. McPhee: A Field Guide to Genetic Programming
      by Michael O’Neill

      The second issue of volume 10 of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines is now available online, containing the following articles:

      Incorporating characteristics of human creativity into an evolutionary art algorithm
      by Steve DiPaola, Liane Gabora
      Using enhanced genetic programming techniques for evolving classifiers in the context of medical diagnosis
      by Stephan M. Winkler, Michael Affenzeller, Stefan Wagner
      Dynamic limits for bloat control in genetic programming and a review of past and current bloat theories
      by Sara Silva, Ernesto Costa
      A review of procedures to evolve quantum algorithms
      by Adrian Gepp, Phil Stocks
      Book Review: Riccardo Poli, William B. Langdon, Nicholas F. McPhee: A Field Guide to Genetic Programming
      by Michael O’Neill

      IlliGAL members on twitter

      IlliGAL lab director, David E. Goldberg, is on twitter @deg511 and lab member Xavier Llora is @xllora.  The Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education is @ifoundry.
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      IlliGAL lab director, David E. Goldberg, is on twitter @deg511 and lab member Xavier Llora is @xllora.  The Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education is @ifoundry.

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