=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3017/demos105
|storemode=property
|title=VISAB - a Visualization Tool for CBR Agent Behavior in Games
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3017/105.pdf
|volume=Vol-3017
|authors=Moritz Frölich,Leon Römer,Vanessa Schriefer,Tim Kunold,Marcel Gaal,Pascal Reuss,Klaus-Dieter Althoff
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iccbr/FrolichRSKGRA21
}}
==VISAB - a Visualization Tool for CBR Agent Behavior in Games==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3017/105.pdf
VISAB - a visualization tool for CBR agent
behavior in games
Moritz Fröhlich2 , Leon Römer2 , Vanessa Schriefer2 , Tim Kunold2 , Marcel
Gaal2 , Pascal Reuss12 , and Klaus-Dieter Althoff12
1
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence
Kaiserslautern, Germany
http://www.dfki.de
2
Institute of Computer Science, Intelligent Information Systems Lab
University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany
http://www.uni-hildesheim.de
Keywords: Case-based Reasoning, Software Agents, Computer Games, Vi-
sualization
1 The VISAB tool
VISAB (VISualizing Agent Behavior) is an open-source program that is capable
of receiving, analyzing and visualizing game and agent specific data of video
games.12 The first version was developed last year [1]. The new version of VISAB
provides a generalized communication interface in form of a HTTP-Protocol
based Web API. This API acts as a server, to which games communicate their
data. To achieve scalability, incoming data is delegated in an event-based manner
to the processing modules. Unity games [5] may use the VISABConnector library
which provides a C# interface to the API.
VISABs HTTP-API is theoretically capable of receiving requests from K dif-
ferent machines each running mkn instances of one of the N games supported by
VISAB. For each of these visualizer instances views may be opened concurrently.
To provide a meaningful overview of the transmission sessions handled by
the HTTP-API, a session overview displays general as well as session-specific
information in separated UI elements. Each of these session elements provides
the functionality to cancel it directly from VISAB side or to open the visualizers
that are dynamically filled with live data from the active session.
VISABs core feature is directly accessible from the home view through a
file-explorer-style control which lists the available game data files. Upon button
click, the game-specific visualizer views of the selected file are loaded. VISAB
currently supports ”CBRShooter” [4][3] which is a real-time game and ”Settlers
of Catan” [2] as a round-based game..
Despite their different categories regarding their previously elaborated nature
of communication frequency, both games feature the same set of visualizers to
provide information to the user. We believe that the views for these games may
1
Source code: https://github.com/VISAB-ORG/VISAB
2
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znG2ZtcAfqA
Copyright © 2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under
Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
serve as an extendable blueprint for other games as well. Each of the game-
specific views relies on the same data source, either from a saved file or from an
active transmission session.
Having multiple views on the same data ensures sophisticated interpretation,
each of which can highlight information differently. To achieve a highly useful
illustration of the underlying data, VISAB currently contains three different
visualizers with their respective that are adapted for both games: a metadata
view, a statistics view, and a replay view. The first view type shows overall
metadata related to the currently processed file or transmission session such as
a list of players or the available items. The second view type displays important
information both aggregated over the entire file as well as for game-specific logical
steps. And the last view makes use of real asset visuals of the respective games
and allows the user to re-watch the game flow and help to understand decisions
made by the participating agents.
A dedicated workspace serves as the central point of persistence for data
that is used and produced by VISAB. This includes the game data files that
are generated by the transmission sessions of games sending their information
to VISAB, a settings file as well as the applications log files.
Furthermore, VISAB also allows users to define their own settings. These
settings determine the UI theme or modify allowed games for initiating trans-
mission sessions with the HTTP-API. VISAB is designed to be easily extensible
for new games according to a developer’s needs. By making use of a reflection-
based approach that creates instances of game-specific implementations for the
relevant types at runtime based on a JSON config file. This assures that existing
code does not need to be modified when the necessity of another visualizer arises.
After the implementation of a new visualizer is accomplished, it only has to be
added to the above-mentioned config file to be integrated for visualization.
References
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Wissen, Daten, Analysen” (LWDA-2020), September 9-11, Online. pp. 130–141.
CEUR (2020)
2. CatanGmbH: Settlers of catan overview (2021), https://www.catan.com/game/
catan
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shop Proceedings. GI-Workshop-Tage ”Lernen, Wissen, Daten, Analysen” (LWDA-
2018), August 22-24, Mannheim, Germany. Universität Mannheim (8 2018)
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