Amorphous Fortress: Observing Emergent Behavior in Multi-Agent FSMs

Abstract

We introduce a system called Amorphous Fortress -- an abstract, yet spatial, open-ended artificial life simulation. In this environment, the agents are represented as finite-state machines (FSMs) which allow for multi-agent interaction within a constrained space. These agents are created by randomly generating and evolving the FSMs; sampling from pre-defined states and transitions. This environment was designed to explore the emergent AI behaviors found implicitly in simulation games such as Dwarf Fortress or The Sims. We apply the hill-climber evolutionary search algorithm to this environment to explore the various levels of depth and interaction from the generated FSMs.