**A Comparison of Evolutionary and Tree-Based Approaches for Game Feature Validation in Real-Time Strategy Games with a Novel Metric**

#### **Damijan Novak \*, Domen Verber, Jani Dugonik and Iztok Fister, Jr.**

 April 2020; Published: 1 May 2020

Institute of Informatics, University of Maribor, Koroška Cesta 46, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia; domen.verber@um.si (D.V.); jani.dugonik@um.si (J.D.); iztok.fister1@um.si (I.F.J.) **\***Tel.:+386-2-220-7431

 Correspondence: damijan.novak@um.si; 29

**Abstract:** When it comes to game playing, evolutionary and tree-based approaches are the most popular approximate methods for decision making in the artificial intelligence field of game research. The evolutionary domain therefore draws its inspiration for the design of approximate methods from nature, while the tree-based domain builds an approximate representation of the world in a tree-like structure, and then a search is conducted to find the optimal path inside that tree. In this paper, we propose a novel metric for game feature validation in Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games. Firstly, the identification and grouping of Real-Time Strategy game features is carried out, and, secondly, groups are included into weighted classes with regard to their correlation and importance. A novel metric is based on the groups, weighted classes, and how many times the playtesting agen<sup>t</sup> invalidated the game feature in a given game feature scenario. The metric is used in a series of experiments involving recent state-of-the-art evolutionary and tree-based playtesting agents. The experiments revealed that there was no major di fference between evolutionary-based and tree-based playtesting agents.

**Keywords:** evolutionary computation; playtesting; game feature; game simulation; game trees; playtesting metric; validation
