using Minetest as a research tool

[laurentperrinet]

Hi

thanks to the community for providing minetest, it's great fun !

... and I was thinking it could be also used for research in artificial intelligence... indeed, similarly to https://gym.openai.com/ (which provides "a toolkit for developing and comparing reinforcement learning algorithms."), Minetest could provide a near-realistic world for simulating the behavior of agents.

this would involve the capacity to interact with the game engine and to retrieve a current view of the world (grab screenshots), and possibly interact as a first step...

does it sound reasonable? perhaps it already exists and some people in, the community would have pointers?

cheers,
Laurent - https://laurentperrinet.github.io/

[bebebeko]

Hey laurentperrinet! Welcome to minetest community

Minetest very well suited to the research purposes! For an example, take a look at my topic viewtopic.php?f=3&t=25040

[laurentperrinet]

Hi bebebeko

Thanks a lot for your answer. Really impressive topic!

I'm a quite new to LuA and minetest-dev'ing - but it seems fairly possible to generate an control the world using the lua script. could you point to resources for controlling the agent (the player) such that it could move by it's own, using an automated program?

thanks, Laurent

[bebebeko]

Hi bebebeko

Thanks a lot for your answer. Really impressive topic!

I'm a quite new to LuA and minetest-dev'ing - but it seems fairly possible to generate an control the world using the lua script. could you point to resources for controlling the agent (the player) such that it could move by it's own, using an automated program?

thanks, Laurent

Yep, i think it is possible with CSM (Client side mod),
As far as I know CSM is under active development.
I want to advise you to connect to the minetest "unofficial" discord server https://discord.gg/XayGymq2, probably, this will be the best way to answer your questions.