Apple By Ryan Whitwam Jan. 18, 2014 11:02 am
Clash of Clans is not popular because it has deep gameplay and thought-provoking story lines. It’s really pretty straightforward — you build a city, generate resources, and attack other cities. It’s so easy a robot could do it… and now there’s one that does. A Lego Mindstorms EV3 bot has been programmed to keep the game chugging along with no human involvement whatsoever.
The system was developed by Mark Petzold, an electrical engineering professor at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota. The robot doesn’t really play the entire game — it’s set up to make a pass across the screen every 20 minutes with its stylus and tap on the mines to collect gold. In between the collection runs, the robot taps on the screen to keep the game awake so the mines don’t get full and the player makes more money.
This isn’t all about getting an unfair advantage, though. The robot is programmed to close the game every few hours to give other players an opportunity to attack the fortress. The stylus actually slides over to the home button on the iPad to exit, then double-taps to pull up the multitasking UI. It actually swipes Clash of Clans away to close it before relaunching.
Petzold’s next step is to teach the robot to launch attacks and donate troops to allies. The entire thing is just a series of taps, but it’s more complicated than collecting gold. It’s not clear if this kind of automated play is against the developer’s rules, though. Being a free-to-play game, the dev is probably happy to have as many people as possible playing, even if some of them are not so much people as they are robots built by people.
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The system was developed by Mark Petzold, an electrical engineering professor at St. Cloud State University in central Minnesota. The robot doesn’t really play the entire game — it’s set up to make a pass across the screen every 20 minutes with its stylus and tap on the mines to collect gold. In between the collection runs, the robot taps on the screen to keep the game awake so the mines don’t get full and the player makes more money.
This isn’t all about getting an unfair advantage, though. The robot is programmed to close the game every few hours to give other players an opportunity to attack the fortress. The stylus actually slides over to the home button on the iPad to exit, then double-taps to pull up the multitasking UI. It actually swipes Clash of Clans away to close it before relaunching.
Petzold’s next step is to teach the robot to launch attacks and donate troops to allies. The entire thing is just a series of taps, but it’s more complicated than collecting gold. It’s not clear if this kind of automated play is against the developer’s rules, though. Being a free-to-play game, the dev is probably happy to have as many people as possible playing, even if some of them are not so much people as they are robots built by people.
More...
