Monte Carlo Tree Search for Collaboration Control of Ghosts in Ms

Abstract—In this paper, we present an application of Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) to control ghosts in the game calledMs. Pac-Man. Our proposed ghost team consists of a ghost controlled by rules and three ghosts controlled individually by different MCTS. Given a limited time response, in order to increase the reliability of MCTS results, we introduce a mechanism for pre-dicting Ms. Pac-Man’s future movements and use this mechanism for simulating Ms. Pac-Man during Monte Carlo simulations. Our ghost team won the first Ms. Pac-Man Versus Ghost Team Com-petition at the 2011 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC). Its performances for a variety of design choices are also shown and discussed