Cave Game

Distributed Systems project that simulates concurrent cave exploration with autonomous drones and rovers.

Overview

Cave Game demonstrates multi-agent coordination in a procedurally generated environment. Agents explore a cave map concurrently, share mission-relevant information, and progressively build global situational awareness.

Main building blocks:

• Threaded mission orchestration for multiple agents
• Procedural cave generation
• Vision-based local exploration
• Frontier/path-driven movement behaviors

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+
• Windows, Linux, or macOS
• pip available in your Python installation

Quick Start

Create and activate a virtual environment (recommended):

python -m venv .venv

Windows PowerShell:

.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Windows CMD:

.venv\Scripts\activate.bat

Install dependencies:

python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install pygame numpy opencv-python

Run the game:

python main.py

Controls

In menus:

• Up / Down: move selection
• Left / Right: change selector or slider values
• Enter: confirm / open submenu / start mission
• Number keys 0-9: edit seed field
• Backspace: delete seed digits

Simulation settings available in-game:

• Objective: Exploration or Search and Rescue
• Cave size: Small, Medium, Big
• Seed: custom numeric seed or default per cave size
• Drones: from 3 to 8
• Demo Cave: Yes/No

Configuration

Persistent settings are stored in:

• GameConfig/options.ini: audio volume, music toggle, button sound toggle
• GameConfig/symSettings.ini: last selected mission parameters

Project Status

Feature	Status	Notes
Terrain roughness map	Implemented	Available in current simulation flow
Known map visualization	Implemented	Available in current simulation flow
Distributed data sharing (terrain, POI, paths)	In progress	Core sharing exists, integration is ongoing
Waypoints for optimal path segmentation	Planned	Not yet implemented
Battery management	Planned	Not yet implemented
Non-random exploration logic	Planned	Current behavior includes random exploration components
Search & Rescue mission logic	Planned	Objective exists in UI; full mission logic is pending
Drift modeling	Planned	Not yet implemented

Documentation

Additional documentation is available in the docs folder:

• docs/DISTRIBUTED_MAPPING.md
• docs/IMPLEMENTATION_SUMMARY.md
• docs/INTEGRATION_GUIDE.md
• docs/MapGenerator.md

Troubleshooting

• If dependencies fail to install, upgrade pip first and retry.
• If pygame audio initialization fails, check that your system audio device is available and not locked by another app.
• If cv2 import fails, reinstall OpenCV:

python -m pip install --force-reinstall opencv-python

Notes

• This repository is under active development.
• Some modules contain extension points for future mission logic.