CowHerd - machine trained cows by oddstack

made by oddstack for LD 42 (JAM)

CowHerd

You play as a dog that has to help the cows get to grass, so they can eat. If they don't eat, they'll starve. The cows run away from you or to the nearest grass patch. And since there is limited amount of grass, you run out of food. (connection to the theme, but with a big emphasis on -running- due to the running technique the cows use. The computer taught them the best way to run forward using machine learning)

The idea of this game was to play around with unity's machine learning capabilities. We started with a simple rigidbody - joint character and trained multiple using tensorflow. During the training, Martin modeled the map and the cow model.

Special thanks to Renke Müller for creating these amazing sounds for this jam!

Below are some gifs of the progress.

https://twitter.com/oddstack/status/1028232777618137088 https://twitter.com/oddstack/status/1028241360124567552 https://twitter.com/oddstack/status/1028304204010610688

Windows	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S_d2rpw5CMVlVJhuP_6rwpuzdduFG3VQ/view?usp=sharing
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/cowherd-intelligent-cows-trained-with-machine-learning

Ratings

Overall	507^th	3.462⭐	28🧑‍⚖️
Fun	537^th	3.288⭐	28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	231^th	3.593⭐	29🧑‍⚖️
Theme	1139^th	2.596⭐	28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	164^th	4.135⭐	28🧑‍⚖️
Audio	330^th	3.36⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Humor	57^th	3.94⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Mood	743^th	2.957⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Given		29🗳️	14🗨️

Feedback

Alpagakira

12. Aug 2018 · 17:21 UTC

I tested your game and the graphism are awsomes, the gameplay is really funny and the principe is original. Good job!

cenullum

13. Aug 2018 · 13:55 UTC

Wtf there isnt many comments ? This is good game

Michael Feldman

13. Aug 2018 · 19:17 UTC

Are those the spider sound fx from minecraft? Anyway nice work with the low poly look and feel. I appreciate the ambition of creating AI agents for the cows :) gj

🎤 oddstack

13. Aug 2018 · 19:24 UTC

@michael-feldman thanks for the feedback! I can assure you that the sounds were all created during the jam by our flat mate with a washing machine running in the background :P. I'm also not sure if he even knows Minecraft.

LukeL

13. Aug 2018 · 19:57 UTC

Very fun physics style game! Can get into some awkward positions with cows. Lol.

There is no indication of if you have got a cow to a grass patch correctly. Or End game/highscore

Great job!

squaredev

13. Aug 2018 · 20:15 UTC

Holy cow (pun intended) this game is hilarious. Incredible how just making everything into a ragdoll can improve the game so much. Had a blast with it, except when I threw myself down a cliff, because I expected the game to restart on its own.

MadreDeDios

14. Aug 2018 · 10:46 UTC

The gameplay is a bit weird obviously but this physics is SO MUCH fun it is enough reason to play the game

ThatRumme

14. Aug 2018 · 11:14 UTC

I loved the physics a lot. The gameplay was good too, even though I used more time on trying to push the cows out off the cliff, than trying to get them to eat grass :D

anstabo

14. Aug 2018 · 20:14 UTC

I get that Machine learning is beginning to be the trend etc... but in this case i really don't see the point, since you only show us the end point of this technique and not the process which is far more process intensive. If you had made some funky move based on sin wave or other mathematical formula you would have far more control over their behavior and you would have invested more time on mood, Endgoal, Core mechanics.

But, the result is rather comical and i did look at your twitter and it's really funny. So from a technical point of view i really like your experiences and the result you got. Good job guys !

realmar

14. Aug 2018 · 20:29 UTC

I like the graphics and the fact that it is using ML, very innovative! Also I like how you can just walk into the valley :D

r3nrohan

14. Aug 2018 · 20:38 UTC

So basically we had similar theme on our mind expect our was 2d and turn based while yours was 3d and real time. pretty cool

DaniilGaponov

14. Aug 2018 · 20:46 UTC

The game is incredibly fun. I choked on laughter when I saw the physics of moving cows. Then I almost fell off the chair with laughter when I saw how a brilliant artificial intelligence threw a cow into a canyon. The graphics and sounds are excellent, the only problem is that the concept of the game is too simple and the game can not drag the player for a long time, but this is fully justified by the fact that the game was made in the course of several days. Thank you for positive emotions!

Red Pill

14. Aug 2018 · 20:47 UTC

Fun game. Obviously hilarious how machines think cows should walk, makes for a good laugh :D
Would be nice to get some form of feedback when cows are on a grass patch.
There is something about low-poly 3D-graphics that's really sweet, and you guys nailed that, so good job on that.

manusaiz

14. Aug 2018 · 20:55 UTC

Ok my dog got trapped bellow the legs of a cow and mayhem was unleashed!!

Some constructive feedback: Though it was fun for a couple dozen of seconds I missed some kind of win condition, just a pplausible goal, feeding the cows before night time (maybe just a timer), or satisfied cows that can be stabulated so I can sit happyly and bark to the cactili.

Nice mood tho :yum:

Azo

14. Aug 2018 · 22:13 UTC

Lovely graphics, ragdolls and machine learning all coupled with a basic mechanic that is hard to master? Yes please. Interesting project to play and read about. Great Job.

Star Garden

15. Aug 2018 · 02:04 UTC

The visuals are wonderful, and I love the machine learning aspect to this game. It was fun to watch the ragdoll physics and look at the beautiful environments. But (and this may be very intentional) I wished there was more of a structure or clear goal/win condition. I know the goal is to get the cows to grass, but there isn't much feedback on progress. However, an interesting and fun playground!

tcmxx

15. Aug 2018 · 07:30 UTC

Funny movements and graphics. It is a little hard to control the cows. But the machine learning is insteresting. Just let you know that I am making an in editor- Unity ML-agent based ML using Tesorflowsharp and other libs. Using this you can train it in editor or even in games directly without python.

https://github.com/tcmxx/UnityTensorflowKeras

Here isi the link

mrsylar59

17. Aug 2018 · 11:32 UTC

Hey, for some reason I can't play your game :(

I tried to download it multiple times but after the Unity spash screen, the game shuts down on me. That's too bad because it looked really nice.

🎤 oddstack

17. Aug 2018 · 20:41 UTC

@mrsylar59 dammit. We had problems with an old laptop not running the model but you are the first one it crashes on. Atm I cannot say why it crashes but the plugin Unity uses is still experimental thus having a crash isn't unlikely. I'll definetly look into it (especially if more people have this problem) but I'm not sure I can do something about it. Thanks for trying and your feedback tho :).
@tcmxx nice! Already bookmarked the repo and I'll have a look later.
Thank you guys for the feedback!

GreenAndSubmarine

22. Aug 2018 · 21:52 UTC

Holy chaos... This made me smile! The cows preferred to pile up in nice heaps rather than eat anything, but I had fun pushing them around .)
Nice job!