This week is a rather quiet on the game AI front in the build-up to GDC in San Francisco. However, by digging a little deeper we’ve found a bunch of smart links for you. This roundup is brought to you by Alex Champandard and Novack. If you have any news or tips for next week, be sure to email them in to: editors at AiGameDev.com.
Remember there’s a mini-blog over at news.AiGameDev.com (RSS) with game AI news from the web as it happens.
Turok Interview: Re-inventing the Wheel
Here’s another interview about Turok’s and its acclaimed AI, already featured in video 1 and video 2 a few weeks ago.
“We knew that we wanted to create the impression of a realistic ecosystem. At the same time we couldn?t model true dinosaur behavior because it’s an action game and it could be boring. We went through a few phases in our research and development of the creatures.
In our first phase we learned as much as we could about dinosaurs, the historical facts of their time on the planet and theories on their behaviors and interactions. In the second phase we looked at popular culture. We looked at Jurassic Park, and other various films and books to see the different influences that people would have that would live up to expectations.”
Anyone played the game care to post a short review?
Re-inventing the Wheel, canada.com
Prototype AI for Green Vegetables
Dan Cook over at LostGarden.com is providing a full design for a game: Play With Your Peas, along with fancy graphics for programmers who want to prototype a simulation game. The design has many challenges when it comes to the AI, and Dan has the following advice:
One problem that is common to AI-driven systems is that most of the behaviors go on underneath the cover, away from the player’s eyes. It is very easy to fall into the trap of creating an intricate AI that ‘plays itself’ but is completely incomprehensible to the player. Instead of asking how you might make the most realistic AI system, I prefer to steal a page from Nintendo’s playbook. Instead ask ‘What is the simplest system that drives forward the player experience?’
Soren Johnson at GDC: A Farewell to Civ
Civilization 4’s lead designer and AI programmer Soren Johnson wrote a blog post about his upcoming talk at GDC next week:
“Essentially, I will be talking about the difference between thinking of the AI as the player’s opponent and thinking of it as simply an extension of the core game design (what one might call the difference between ‘good’ AI and ‘fun’ AI). There will also be a long section on AI cheating - the bane of my existence for many years - concerning which type of cheats are acceptable to players and which type are not, using Civ as an extensive case study. Further, I hope to prove that, for Civ at least, there is no such thing as - and never could be - a ‘fair’ difficulty level where the AI is playing the same game as the human. Your mileage , of course, might vary.”
The talk is inspired in part by his AIIDE ‘07 “Work in Progress” slides.
Computer AI: Playing Tetris
“This article describes how a computer can play the classic video game Tetris by getting information about the board, determining good actions, and performing those actions. […] An ordinary USB web camera was used to enable the computer to “see” the screen of the other computer. A relay board was controlled via an RS-232 interface to enable the computer to “press keys” on the keyboard of the other computer. Thus, the first computer has a relationship to the second computer that is similar to a typical human player’s relationship to a computer when playing Tetris; the game state is only known by looking at the screen, and player actions can only be initiated through a keyboard.”
Fregl: An Introduction to FRP
Luke Palmer introduces a new version of his Fregl library for Functional Reactive Programming. This kind of stuff is ideal for game logic, combining events and signals into elegant programs in the same way a behavior tree builds up control from modular logic. Here’s an example:
-- wait for a given amount of time
waitTime time = do {
if time <= 0 then
return ()
else do {
dt <- waitTimestep;
waitTime (time - dt);
}
}
-- if there's a mouse click in the next 10 seconds
-- return its position, otherwise return (0,0)
clickInTenSeconds = eitherEvent waitTenSeconds mouseClick
where
waitTenSeconds = waitTime 10 >> return (0,0)European GDC(s) Call for Papers
With the American Game Developer’s conference just underway, both conferences in Europe scheduled for the next 6 months are calling for papers. It’s not directly AI related, but it can be if you submit a proposal! Also, be sure to post below if you’re planning on going.
The Soul of The Sims, by Will Wright
This is part of a roundup for news that’s almost exactly 10 years old! Don Hopkins posts about the AI for The Sims:
“This is the prototype for the soul of The Sims, which Will Wright wrote on January 23, 1997. I had just started working at the Maxis Core Technology Group on Project X aka Dollhouse , and Will Wright brought this code in one morning, to demonstrate his design for the motives, feedback loop and failure conditions of the simulated people. While going through old papers, I ran across this print-out that I had saved, so I scanned it and cleaned the images up, and got permission from Will to publish it.”
2K Boston Hiring Senior AI Programmer
Chris Kline sent word that his studio is hiring. In fact, 2K Boston will be sponsoring next Tuesday’s discussion with a signed copy of BioShock.
“2K Boston (formerly Irrational Games) is looking for a Senior Level AI Programmer to help ensure the success of our next AAA title.”
NaturalMotion and Unreal Engine 3 Sitting in a Tree…
NaturalMotion, which provides behavioral animation based on physically accurate simulations, is joining the integrated partners program for the Unreal Engine. Here’s the blurb:
“morpheme builds on the existing UE3 character system by offering unique features for constructing very complex animation setups. Its external tool, morpheme: connect, enables developers to preview and modify elements in real time through the strategic application of state machines and blend trees. Like other components of UE3, morpheme’s existing animation nodes can be extended to provide game-specific functions. Future feature sets developed by NaturalMotion will be incorporated into UE3 per the partnership.”
Neversoft Seeking Senior AI Programmer
“Neversoft Entertainment is looking for a Senior AI Programmer who will work on core AI system functionality (navigation, pathfinding, FSM, optimization and upgrading our existing AI system.”
Stay tuned next week for more smart links from around the web!
0 Comments ↓
Leave a Comment
You can also reply to this thread in the forums.