Publication

Abstract : Recently, games like Pac-Man have been hotbeds for neuroevolution research and NEAT has emerged as one of the leading techniques in the game playing domain [14] . In the context of the snake game, the goal of this paper is to enhance neuroevolution strategies with better fitness functions for effective goal finding. We develop greedy and non-greedy fitness functions, and demonstrate the effectiveness of these functions in both environments with and without dynamic obstacles. We then present an alternate implementation using the NEAT algorithm combined with Novelty Search to increase the genetic diversity of the agent population and explore the problem space without specifying direct objectives. These conclusions suggest that even with a low number of simple inputs, and simple fitness functions, agents are quickly able to achieve a novice amount of expertise in the Snake game using NEAT.