Wild-Scav: 3D Open World FPS Game AI Challenge

April 15th - August 14th, 2022

Overview

AI-powered next-gen gaming experiences for open-world games have attracted increasing attention after the success of AI in StarCraft and DOTA as the next big challenge. However, the lack of satisfactory testing environments remains an obstacle to research in this area. In this context, the goal of this competition is to promote research on intelligent agent learning for 3D open-world FPS games. In 3D open-world environments, an agent perceives its environment in a human-like manner, using visual scenes as input. Intelligent agents are expected to integrate visual perception and game contextual features, process incomplete information, deal with the dynamic variation of environments and multiplayer enemies, and then perform long-term planning. In addition, to maximize scores on the tasks set, agents must generalize their learned skills to unknown test environments. For the competition, we provide an FPS game environment similar to popular Battle Royale games (e.g., PUBG) where multiple players compete against each other for limited supply resources. To make the competition more manageable, we simplify the goal of the game and focus only on collecting as many supplies as possible and divide the competition into 3 tasks (in the form of 2 tracks), including navigation, supply gathering, and supply battle. You can see a simple illustration of our environment in the video below. We will evaluate each submitted agent on several randomly generated battlegrounds and use the average score as a benchmark for ranking and final selection of the winner.

Tracks

Track 1-1: Navigation (Singleplayer)

The challenge for the agent is to navigate as quickly as possible from a starting location to a destination (both randomly selected) in a randomly generated open world. The world consists of various structures such as buildings, trees, rocks, and lakes. Ideally, an efficient and general navigation strategy must be able to skillfully use these elements and flexibly adapt to new worlds that have not yet been seen.

Track 1-2: Supply Gathering (Singleplayer)

The challenge for the agent is to collect as many supplies (by opening the blue supply boxes) as possible in a randomly generated open world with unknown supply distribution. Supply boxes may appear at any accessible locations in the open world, for example, sitting on outdoor grounds or a certain floor of a house, hiding behind a tree or a stone. To make the challenge even more interesting, we have designed a special mechanism to determine the number of supplies stored in each supply box. In general, a supply box inside a building contains a significantly higher number of supplies than an outdoor box, while the number of supply boxes inside buildings could be relatively small. So agents are encouraged to explore both outdoor areas and indoor spaces to maximize their collection of supplies. Also, the actual supply quantity in each box has some randomness but is constrained within given ranges.

Track 2: Supply Battle (Multiplayer)

Based on Track 1-2, multiple agents are dropped into a large, randomly generated world (terrain, buildings, plants, supplies) and compete for supplies. The agents can fight with weapons and respawn when killed. During combat, agents are encouraged to take cover to ensure their safety. When an agent dies, some of his supplies drop and can be collected by other agents. Since the total number of supplies in the game is limited, agents should learn to optimize their search strategy to collect supplies faster. With the introduction of the combat system, agents can also use their combat advantage to snatch supplies from other agents to speed up the accumulation of supplies.

Timeline

  • April 15th, 2022 - The preparatory phase begins. The conditions of participation and the infrastructure of the competition are published.

  • April 29th, 2022 - Starter examples and baseline codes for the three tracks released.

  • June 1st, 2022 - Submission for Track 1 and Tack 2 Stage 1 opens. Submissions will be evaluated as they are received.

  • July 15th, 2022 - Submission deadline for Track 2 Stage 1.

  • July 18th, 2022 - Shortlist for Track 2 Stage 2 is announced. Submission for Track 2 Stage 2 opens.

  • August 7th, 2022 - Submission deadline for all tracks. Valid submissions for Track 2 Stage 2 are scored.

  • August 14th, 2022 - The rankings of all participants are announced. The winner of each track will receive the corresponding prize.

Note: all opening and closing times are set at 9:00 AM (China Standard Time, UTC+8) on that day.

Prizes

In short, we will set prizes for the winner (top 1 team) of each track. For Track 2, since the scenario is much more difficult, we will also set prizes for the 2nd and 3rd place participants. In general, we recommend that participants use Track 1 as a warm-up exercise and focus on a single task (not required). Then participants can gradually expand their methods to tackle the more advanced Track 2.

Track 1

  • Winner (by task): $500

  • Top 10 (by task): Certification

Track 2

  • Winner: $6000

  • 2nd place: $3000

  • 3rd place: $1500

  • 4-7th place: $500/team

  • 8-10th place: $300/team

  • Top 20 in Stage 1: Certification

Technology Breakthrough Award

  • The team that proposes the most creative method may receive this special prize.

  • The winner will receive a specially designed certificate and a reward of $5000.

  • The winner is determined by a comprehensive evaluation of the competition performance, the reproducibility of the source code and the formal description of the work.