i have this simple game where there is a ball bouncing on the screen and the player can move left and right of the screen and shoot an arrow up to pop the ball, every time the player hits a ball, the ball bursts and splits into two smaller balls until they reach a minimum size and disappear. I am trying to solve this game with a genetic algorithm based on the python neat library and on this tutorial on flappy bird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMxFDaIOHsE&list=PLzMcBGfZo4-lwGZWXz5Qgta_YNX3_vLS2, so I have a configuration file in which I have to specify how many input nodes must be in the network, I had thought to give as input the player's x coordinate, the distance between the player's x-coordinate and the ball's x-coordinate and the distance between the player's y-coordinate and the ball's y-coordinate.
My problem is that at the beginning of the game I have only one ball but after a few moves I could have more balls in the screen so I should have a greater number of input nodes,the more balls there are on the screen the more input coordinates I have to provide to the network.
So how to set the number of input nodes in a variable way?
config-feedforward.txt file
"""
# network parameters
num_hidden = 0
num_inputs = 3 #this needs to be variable
num_outputs = 3
"""
python file
for index,player in enumerate(game.players):
balls_array_x = []
balls_array_y = []
for ball in game.balls:
balls_array_x.append(ball.x)
balls_array_x.append(ball.y)
output = np.argmax(nets[index].activate(("there may be a number of variable arguments here")))
#other...
final code
for index,player in enumerate(game.players):
balls_array_x = []
balls_array_y = []
for ball in game.balls:
balls_array_x.append(ball.x)
balls_array_y.append(ball.y)
distance_list = []
player_x = player.x
player_y = player.y
i = 0
while i < len(balls_array_x):
dist = math.sqrt((balls_array_x[i] - player_x) ** 2 + (balls_array_y[i] - player_y) ** 2)
distance_list.append(dist)
i+=1
i = 0
if len(distance_list) > 0:
nearest_ball = min(distance_list)
output = np.argmax(nets[index].activate((player.x,player.y,nearest_ball)))
