Augmentation of AI in Games: Dynamic Adaptation to
Game Changes during Gameplay through Neural Networks
John Karlo B. Maninang
College of Computer and Information Sciences
Polytechnic University of the Philippines
Sta. Mesa, Manila, Philippines
+639368881966
karlomaninang@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Usually with first person shooting games, we select the difficulty
of the opponents before the game starts. Moreover, when the
players play a difficulty that is ridiculously hard or way too easy,
they would probably quit the game because it is moderately
frustrating or boring. The purpose of this research is to create a bot
which is implemented with a neural network to create a dynamical
difficulty adjusting AI depending on the player’s performance to
maintain the balance between the challenge and the player’s
performance. The output would be a game implemented with
Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) and Neural Networks
(NN), and their comparison of the players’ performance in each
algorithm.
General Terms
Algorithms, Experimentation
Keywords
Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Neural Network, Bot, Dynamic
Difficulty Adjustment, Finite State Machine.
1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, most of the computer games today have what we call
AI (Artificial Intelligence) or sometimes we call them as bots.
Programmers and game developers created the AI to make them
more challenging and intelligent in some ways. Artificial
Intelligence can be the bots in Counter Strike, the mobs in the game
God of war, the ghosts roaming in the Pac-Man game. Almost all
of the games which is made since this time incorporate artificial
intelligence.
2. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Bots in a computer game plays in the part of the game as if it is
controlled by a human. They sometimes can be a part of the team
and have the same objectives as human. Game bots imitate the
human player, and it gives the illusion that is being controlled by a
real person. Today, bots in the famous MOBA (Multiplayer Online
Battle Arena) game DOTA 2 are programmed to attack opposing
players, run away if heavily attacked and when low in hit points,
build in-game items depending on their abilities and type. Thus,
this behavior makes them look intelligent.
The main goal of a game is to give entertainment and satisfaction
to its player. Developing realistic games helps the improvement of
players immersion which increases their satisfaction [Bowman and
McMahan 2007]. Although it is not the only way to make games
more exciting and attractive. The player’s psychological factor is
also an influence in attraction to video games which requires the
Steven Joshua A. Soriano
College of Computer and Information Sciences
Polytechnic University of the Philippines
Sta. Mesa, Manila, Philippines
+639984773775
svensori@gmail.com
player to keep interested on it. [6] Game should give the needs of
the player. Most of the time, the game's difficulty is the reason why
players lose their interests in playing such game. As stated in Bellen
and San Juan’s research [2015], most of the players just
memorizing the pattern to beat the game by analyzing their
previous records for self-satisfaction while others after finishing a
game they will just leave it or uninstall it because they knew how
to repeat the ways on how to end that game. Because of this, game
developers are making ways to solve this problem by augmenting
the AI in game to adapt itself in player’s capabilities and to make a
more balanced difficulty.
Neural Network is one of the algorithms that offers a possibility
that an AI can have the ability to change its behaviour in the game
in real time. There was a book that tackled about using the Neural
Network to train the AI in adapting to the game world. In a book
[5], it is written there that Neural Network can be used to
manipulate and enhance the knowledge of an AI. They use Neural
Network as a brain for the AI, so that it can move accordingly to
the situation. If in Sutoyo and San Juan’s study they used DDA to
adjust the difficulty of the AI in a TD game, in this research it will
used Neural Networks to solve the problem in manual adjusting.
This study will test the capability of the ANN in analysing the
player’s performance and adjusting to it. To make the system more
accurately in getting the performance of the player, this
experimentation will also get the player’s accuracy and the time
consume/spent by player in killing the enemy besides from the
player’s life.
This study will be tested in a FPS game. FPS game or First-Person
Shooting game like Counter Strike, Overwatch, Battlefield and Call
of Duty is one of the famous types of game in the gaming world.
The objective of this study is to implement Neural Networks to
achieve a dynamically adjusting difficulty of the game AI and
compare it with DDA to know which algorithm will perform better
in terms of dynamism of the AI’s difficulty.
3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Figure 1. Conceptual Framework
This conceptual framework describes on how the system will work.
Firstly, having all the necessary inputs needed. The instance will
undergo through calculations of the variables to gather necessary
data to get the players performance to achieve an adaptive AI. After
getting all the necessary variables and multipliers, the system will
calculate all the formulas for each variables needed to make the
game difficulty dynamic. Finally, the output is the newly adjusted
difficulty of the AI.
4. FINDINGS AND RESULTS
Figure 2. Overall Performance per Player
To determine the difference between the performance of the players
in DDA vs NN, a statistical method was used, namely the t-test of
independent samples. The table and graphs below show the
comparison between the performance of the player in DDA and
their performance in Neural Network overall.
Figure 2 shows the graph of overall performance of all the player
per level all throughout the game. As the game advancing, the
performance of the players becoming lower and lower because of
the changing in the performance of the AI. Obviously, the level 1
got the highest performance on both DDA, and Neural Network and
level 10 got the worst performance. In this graph, the respondent’s
performance in DDA from level 1 up to level 7 is higher than
Neural Network. In level 8, Neural Network tied to DDA. Level 9
and 10 was leaded by Neural Network.
Figure 3. Systems Performance: DDA vs. NN
This is the system’s performance comparison per player. Based on
the graph, only 9 systems entered the Excellent rating in NN
compared to 12 systems that entered Excellent rating in DDA. But
there are 8 NN systems that qualified in Satisfactory rating
comparing it to the only 3 systems from DDA. It means to say that
7 systems in DDA was outplayed by the player and in NN there are
only 3 systems that was poor in rating. This graph showing that
even though DDA was admirable in terms of number of systems
that are qualified in Excellent rating, the other system of DDA were
crashed by the player. This graph concluded that, most of the
system in Neural Network works smoothly in terms of adaptation
compared to the DDA.
Figure 4. System’s Performance Each Level
This graph shows the comparison of DDA and Neural Networks
performance, the graph shows that the game difficulty changes
dynamically along the course of the game. It says that both
algorithms achieved the dynamicity but from the results of the data
in chapter 4, DDA has slightly better performance compared to
neural network. In conclusion, both algorithms achieved their goal
which is to be dynamically difficult, but DDA is still better in terms
of systems performance compared to Neural Networks.
4.1 What is the player’s performance when using
Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in terms of:
a) lives left b) accuracy c) time spent
Even though the performance in the DDA is higher, the Standard
Deviation per level is higher, this means that the values are
scattered. Having a scattered value, especially in performance
signifies those values are varying and unsteady. The standard
deviation happened due to the increasing stats of the enemy starting
from level 5 resulting them for having much more immunity which
hobbled down the players to progress in the game thus, making the
average performance in the following levels lower. Lastly, the
number of players who finished the game is lesser compared to the
players who didn’t manage to complete the entire game.
In terms of the performance of the system using DDA, more than
half of the system participated in this research were enabled in
Excellent rating but the other system got a poor rating. This
concluded that DDA is just ranging from excellent to poor.
4.2. What is the player’s performance when using
Neural Networks in terms of:
a) lives left b) accuracy c) time spent
The mean of the player’s performance in NN is a little bit lower
compared to the DDA because of the much more diverse difficulty
every round. The scatterings of the value happened because of the
implementation of NN because time to time, difficulty varies to
adjust to the player’s performance. In conclusion, we achieve much
better dynamicity in NN compared to DDA but slightly lower score
in players’ performance. This is due to the real time adjustment of
the AI difficulty compared to the DDA which adjust every round
or level.
In terms of the performance of the system using NN, this research
shown that most of the system participated in this research are
ranging from excellent to satisfactory which is a better performance
that DDA.
4.3 Is there any significant difference between the
performance of the player in AI using Neural
Network and the performance of the player in AI
using Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment?
Based on the result of T test in performance all the player all
throughout the game, the findings suggest that there is no
significant difference between the performance of the player in AI
using Neural Network and the performance of the player in AI
using Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment. But on comparison of the
player’s performance per category shows that there is small
difference between them.
different types of games including 2D and 2.5D games,
VR games, Tower Defense, Touch games, ESports and
many more.
5. Trying other programming languages such as Java,
Javascript or Python in developing the AI might affect
the flow of the Neural Network.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We want to give our gratitude to the people who helped us to make
this research possible. First, our family, the reason why we need to
achieve this goal. Second, our special someones that motivated us
to continue. Our beloved thesis adviser Prof. Michael dela Fuente,
who immediately responded to our calls, and gave his time and
effort for consultations and advice that we used to achieve our
objectives. The respondents who helped us in gathering our data.
And for the panels who crushed us to make our thesis better.

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