Project Malmö – A platform for AI experimentation and research in Minecraft | Hacker News Reader

Project Malmö – A platform for AI experimentation and research in Minecraft

github.com

72 pointssixhobbits14 comments

I wonder how this compares to BurlapCraft[1], which is a mod of Minecraft integrated with BURLAP- a reinforcement learning and planning library.

[1] http://h2r.cs.brown.edu/announcing-burlapcraft/

Pretty cool, they seem to have made an XML interface for parsing minecraft commands, allowing various programming languages to be used to compose "missions" which can then be outputted as XML and read by the mod to be run in the game. I think this is crucial because (IMO) Java is not a good language for beginners because it is such a "large" language.

Pretty much. The XML is mainly used to specify the 'mission' that you want your agent to perform. You write your agent in Python (or a few other languages), and it can be as simple as this: https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo/blob/master/Malmo/samples...

We talk to the Minecraft Mod over TCP.

I used to live in the city of Malmö, Sweden. Now I live in Lund, 20 minutes away from bus.

It is amazing that Malmö was chosen as a name, I wonder how the reasoning went?

Me too, so I actually asked them and apparently it's because it's approximately in the middle between Cambridge (where the team is located) and Stockholm (where Minecraft was made).

Malmö is one of my favorite cities in the world. I try to visit there every year from Australia, ever since 2013 when it hosted the Eurovision Song Contest. Loved the train stations there, especially Triangeln:

http://pfnphoto.com/new/malmo-triangeln/

Emporia is an amazingly beautiful shopping mall too:

http://architecturelinked.com/profiles/blogs/emporia

I didn't know Lund was so close by bus. I have friends who live there; next time I'll have to try visiting them.

Stunning pictures!

Here is one of the busier regions of Malmö Centrum[1].

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/eTfDuMRVDP52

Anyone got some background information on the choice of project name? Malmö is the name of Sweden's third largest city (where I grew up).

Apparently it's because it's approximately in the middle between Cambridge (where the team is located) and Stockholm (where Minecraft was made).

It was originally called "Project AIX" but IBM didn't find it agreeable.

I talked to someone who had worked at Microsoft Research, who mentioned that it is actually policy to name projects after cities. Apparently it's not possible to trademark a name of a city, so this protects against being sued for trademark infringement. Since Microsoft has lots of money, they are a tempting target for lawsuits.

I read through the tutorial and one thing that stood out was the sections that required changing an xml file by hand. I don't thing that you should have to manually modify xml for common use cases when it would be simple enough to build a tool to do that.

They do accept PRs, it would seem. Or you can file an issue and see if someone else would be interested in submitting such a tool. :)

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