Card Fu
Card Fu
Overview
Card Fu is a capstone project I made. Card Fu is a turn based strategy fighting game, that incorporates machine learning and artificial intelligence. This capstone project was an oppurtunity for me to try out new technologies, and step outside my comfort zone. I decided to explore artifical intelligence, and thought it would fit in well with an idea I had, Card Fu.
The concept of Card Fu is similar to rock, paper, scissors. Where one type of move is more effective than another type, so on and so forth. The player would play the game facing others online or computers offline. That is where AI makes a great component to this game. Having an opponent that learns your play style, really helps scale the difficulty of the game as you progress and earn new moves.
The big challenges I faced with this project are, that it was my first time attempting game development and working with AI. Already the project seemed daunting and I hadn't even started yet. Thankfully through the ideation of the project, I was able to make the problem at hand manageable. I decided to only focus on the AI component of the game, which resulted in me creating a playable demo of the game. That is what this capstone project is.
Technologies used:
Key Components
This project was possible thanks to Unity and their ML-Agents Toolkit. As someone with no prior experience in game development or AI tech, having these tools available made dealing with those technologies much easier.
Unity is a popular choice for game development, which means there are tons of tutorials about it out there. On top of that they also have alot of documentation and guides that you can follow to learn. This made programming in C# more approachable, and increasing the possibility of completing my project.
Unity's ML-Agnets Toolkit was the key to incorporating machine learning and aritficial intelligence to my project. With it I was able to create my very first AI neural network. I taught the AI how to play my game and then trained it to play the game effectively.
Final Thoughts
Card Fu is more than just a demo for an idea. Card Fu is a representation of my ability to learn new technologies. It is the result of me seeing an opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and taking it. Although just being a small piece of a larger idea, Card Fu is a project that is special to me.
