
Project Malmö – A platform for AI experimentation and research in Minecraft - sixhobbits
https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo
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fohara
I wonder how this compares to BurlapCraft[1], which is a mod of Minecraft
integrated with BURLAP- a reinforcement learning and planning library.

[1] [http://h2r.cs.brown.edu/announcing-
burlapcraft/](http://h2r.cs.brown.edu/announcing-burlapcraft/)

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ben_jones
Pretty cool, they seem to have made an XML interface for parsing minecraft
commands, allowing various programming languages to be used to compose
"missions" which can then be outputted as XML and read by the mod to be run in
the game. I think this is crucial because (IMO) Java is not a good language
for beginners because it is such a "large" language.

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tim_hutton
Pretty much. The XML is mainly used to specify the 'mission' that you want
your agent to perform. You write your agent in Python (or a few other
languages), and it can be as simple as this:
[https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo/blob/master/Malmo/samples...](https://github.com/Microsoft/malmo/blob/master/Malmo/samples/Python_examples/run_mission.py)

We talk to the Minecraft Mod over TCP.

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Zolomon
I used to live in the city of Malmö, Sweden. Now I live in Lund, 20 minutes
away from bus.

It is amazing that Malmö was chosen as a name, I wonder how the reasoning
went?

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SyneRyder
Malmö is one of my favorite cities in the world. I try to visit there every
year from Australia, ever since 2013 when it hosted the Eurovision Song
Contest. Loved the train stations there, especially Triangeln:

[http://pfnphoto.com/new/malmo-triangeln/](http://pfnphoto.com/new/malmo-
triangeln/)

Emporia is an amazingly beautiful shopping mall too:

[http://architecturelinked.com/profiles/blogs/emporia](http://architecturelinked.com/profiles/blogs/emporia)

I didn't know Lund was so close by bus. I have friends who live there; next
time I'll have to try visiting them.

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long
Stunning pictures!

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Zolomon
Here is one of the busier regions of Malmö Centrum[1].

[1] [https://goo.gl/maps/eTfDuMRVDP52](https://goo.gl/maps/eTfDuMRVDP52)

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Qerub
Anyone got some background information on the choice of project name? Malmö is
the name of Sweden's third largest city (where I grew up).

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flaviuspopan
It was originally called "Project AIX" but IBM didn't find it agreeable.

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vilhelm_s
I talked to someone who had worked at Microsoft Research, who mentioned that
it is actually policy to name projects after cities. Apparently it's not
possible to trademark a name of a city, so this protects against being sued
for trademark infringement. Since Microsoft has lots of money, they are a
tempting target for lawsuits.

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fhood
I read through the tutorial and one thing that stood out was the sections that
required changing an xml file by hand. I don't thing that you should have to
manually modify xml for common use cases when it would be simple enough to
build a tool to do that.

~~~
spdustin
They do accept PRs, it would seem. Or you can file an issue and see if someone
else would be interested in submitting such a tool. :)

