HTN fighter: Planning in a highly-dynamic game

This paper proposes a plan creation and execution system used by the agent HTN Fighter in the Fighting ICE game framework. The underlying approach implements a Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planner and a simple planning domain that focuses on sequences of close-range attacks. The execution process is tightly interleaved with the planning process compensating for the uncertainty caused by the delay of 15 frames which the information about the game world state is provided with. Using an HTN and the proposed execution system, the agent is able to follow high-level strategies staying reactive to changes in the environment. Experiments show that HTN Fighter outperforms the sample MCTS controller and the top three controllers submitted to the 2016 Fighting Game AI Competition.