This repository contains the artificial intelligence source code driving the Aerythen interactive demo.
Aerythen is a Dark Aero Command Line Punk universe created by David Benoy. The overarching project bridges together art, software development, an upcoming card game, and a developing series of companion novels.
- 🎮 Experience the code in action: Play the Aerythen Demo
- 📖 Dive into the lore: Read Utala - An Aerythen Novel
This project was about:
- understanding algorithms by building them
- seeing how different approaches think
- learning by stripping problems down to their nuts and bolts
Everything is text-based, inspectable, and hackable.
Utala: KAOS 9 was the working title for the game during development.
A competitive 2-player tactical duel playable with any standard 52-card deck.
Read or Print the Game Rules (PDF) | View the Game Folder
Deployed automatically via GitHub Pages on pushes to main.
cd utala/kaos9
./setup.sh # Python 3.11 venv + dependencies
./run.sh # Play as human vs AI
make test # Run testsCanonical Python engine, deterministic replay, evaluation harness. Baseline agents: random legal, heuristic, Monte Carlo rollout.
Checkpoint: Is the game worth studying? PASS — Heuristic 65% vs Random, Monte Carlo 79% vs Random. Clear skill gradient with meaningful variance.
Hand-built TD-linear value agent with manual gradient updates. Fixed state encoding, fixed action space, illegal actions masked by engine. Plateau ~47% vs Heuristic.
DQN with bluffing-aware 80-dim state features (39K params). Imitation learning to distill search/DQN into tiny production models.
Variant A (v1.9): choosable dogfight order — winner picks the next contested square. Action space grows from 86 to 95. All agents retrained and validated on new rules.
Checkpoint: Is the game rich enough to require deep learning? PASS — DQN reaches 53% vs Heuristic (peak), linear models plateau at 38%.
Improved DQN to consistent >50% vs Heuristic. Distilled into tiny production model. Variant A rules and distilled agent ported to the Flutter game app.
This Source code is licensed under the MIT License.
Aerythen, the associated artwork, the game name "utala: kaos 9", rulebook text, and branding are © 2026 David Benoy. All rights reserved.