#Cat quest speedrun code

We show that the proposed architecture substantially outperforms built-in AI agents of the game as well as average humans in deathmatch scenarios. Our architecture is also modularized to allow different models to be independently trained for different phases of the game. Our model is trained to simultaneously learn these features along with minimizing a Q-learning objective, which is shown to dramatically improve the training speed and performance of our agent. We present a method to augment these models to exploit game feature information such as the presence of enemies or items, during the training phase.

Typically, deep reinforcement learning methods only utilize visual input for training. In this paper, we present the first architecture to tackle 3D environments in first-person shooter games, that involve partially observable states. However, most of these games take place in 2D environments that are fully observable to the agent. These three components form the ethos that structures speedrunning as a metagame, expressing what speedrunners take to be its central aim.Īdvances in deep reinforcement learning have allowed autonomous agents to perform well on Atari games, often outperforming humans, using only raw pixels to make their decisions. Each of these components limits and structures the earlier ones: collective knowledge takes priority over constitutive skills, and subversion takes priority over both.

#Cat quest speedrun code

I argue that by understanding the code of the game not as rules but as physics, and by examining what actions are deemed impermissible by the speedrunning community – such as hardware modification and hacking – we can see that the ethos of speedrunning has three components: constitutive skills (including dexterity, memorisation and mental fortitude) a collective, fine-grained knowledge of the game and the desire to subvert the intentions of the programmers. By examining the distinction between the use of glitches and cheating in speedrunning, we can gain a greater understanding of the unique ethos of this activity that is, we can make sense of what fundamentally constitutes speedrunning as a metagame. Because of this, however, speedrunning frequently involves sidestepping what are typically taken to be the core challenges of the game. For speedrunners, however, glitches are entirely within the bounds of acceptability. For many outside the speedrunning community, the use of glitches appears to be cheating. To the casual player or viewer, speedrunning appears to be a highly irreverent, even pointless, way of playing games, particularly due to the incorporation of “glitches”. Aside from audience numbers, however, from the perspective of the philosophy of sport and games, speedrunning is particularly interesting.

Though it does not yet have the kind of profile of multiplayer e-sports, speedrunning is fast approaching e-sports in popularity. Speedrunning is a kind of ‘metagame’ involving video games. To theorize a posthumanistic theory of the practice, this article takes as its focus the speedrunning community of the video game Super Mario Odyssey and suggests that speedrunning may ultimately be considered a mode of (post)human performance art. Rather, (post)humans and technologies interact in a transformational manner through intra-active assemblages, broadening the condition of embodiment. However, within the field of game studies, the literature published on speedrunning to date is almost unilaterally anthropocentric, and focuses on the transgressive nature of the practice, ignoring the intricacies of its technological fundament. By choosing to speedrun, players actively impose a discrete temporal limit on the inhuman algorithms of video games, and so attempt to conquer and thereby curtail their technological novelty. Speedrunning is a form of (post)human expression that is manifested not only through the programming of a video game, but also through players’ approach to gameplay. I argue that this progressive ethos, coupled with the performative nature of modern speedrunning, lends a distinctly artistic character to the practice. Over time, speedrunning communities work collaboratively to optimize, reconfigure, and improve upon the quickest possible completion times of video game titles.