What do you want to know about game AI? In particular, which topics or examples would you like me to explain with a whiteboard? Here’s your chance to influence the future direction of this new… erm, “show” I guess!
Last year, I hinted at my debut into the world of video blogging, and now I’ve finally managed to get everything together. Camera, check! Whiteboard, check! Color coordinated pens, check! Shamelessness, hmmm… Anyway, this introductory video weighs in at 5.4 Mb and lasts exactly 1:19 minutes.
Once you’ve got over your initial reaction “Oh my god! I can’t believe XYZ,” I’d appreciate suggestions and recommendations on the following:
- Topics or examples to discuss during the show.
- Feedback whether this is something you’d find useful!
- A name for the show; any smart ideas? :-)
- Technical & video production tips… Does it work O.K.?
Anyway, this was fun to make, so I’m looking forward to read your suggestions. Until the next episode!
Music from longueur d’onde by SOULDAYS, under Creative Commons license.
11 Comments ↓
I presume you have a pretty standard camcorder? I can’t help out much more then these suggestions without knowing the kit;
Technical wise; the sound is likely one of the hardest things to get right with a static mic (rather then a lapel mic) so make sure to always speak into the camera - and if you draw and write, it’s better to draw something then speak about it, facing the camera. Talking to the audience is likely the most important thing if you’re alone (with interviews, then you *always* talk to the interviewee, as a counterexample)
The automatic whitebalance and focus might need to be sorted if you have no cameraman. If you can set it to manual, try and alter these yourself so at least they are consistent for the wide shots. Having it go blurry at the start of this video for example. Whitebalance will be insanely important if you’ve got a lot of white since it is very noticeable. Better lighting is always a big plus, and helps automatic whitebalance too.
Closeups should be a tad longer really - if you’re planning on doing it throughout rather then drawing larger or proving a larger video resolution/zooming in then be careful to have it on there for a good amount of time.
Name; Are you planning on just videos of whiteboard explanations/tutorials or would this perhaps be expanded into, for instance, videos of AI game demos, interviews, or travelogue stuff from conferences? For a choice in name, what you decide to cover might be more important - since changing it later is a big pain. If it is only whiteboard stuff, then something with “AI” and “Whiteboard” in it might be good. Perhaps “Whiteboard AI” ;) - you can tell I’m rubbish at names however… :(
Topics; I’m afraid I myself am learning more C++ (I’m annoyingly slow at doing this…) and coding my own little things (or at least kidding myself I am while slowly doing it between my start of revision), so I don’t know any good theory to whiteboard. Perhaps you could go more into the design of AI, rather then the technical side. Explain things like you would to (or as) the game designer, such as how to best go about making a world tick, and in what way (how sensors work ala Thief? AI feedback for the player? the behaviour design?). Explaining some clever tricks for “smoke and mirrors” stuff would be cool too.
Useful; And I’m sure I’d at least enjoy seeing these pop up, I am not sure what you’ll cover and I’m not the target for many of the more advanced topics.
Takes a lot to even speak in front of people, good you have the guts Alex.
Finally; If you’re wary about providing a higher quality (for bandwidth reasons) but can make one, I am sure the Internet Archive could be a resource for you to put videos up at, email me if you want to sort account access. Flash video is notoriously poor quality in some cases, you’ll have to see if your first video is any better in a downloadable format. Helps to allow people to view it offline too - youtube may be lorded for very short, low quality videos but is poor for many technical things, and anything longer then 5 minutes you might refer back to later.
And you could provide a high quality camera picture of the stages of drawing (especially if you need to rub stuff off part of the board), and provide images for people to inspect in greater detail the whiteboard images in their own time, or keep for later.
Hope this helps.
Yeah, that helps a lot Andrew. Many thanks. I’ll probably pick your brain by email!
For the topics, I think design is definitely the way to go. In-depth technical articles are better as HTML tutorials with code and figures I think…
As for names, I’m toying with a play on words of “Smoke and Mirrors.” Any ideas? (Maybe something a little more intelligent and less fake though :-)
Alex
Have you tried screen capture when using a drawing tablet?
Then we shouldn’t have as much trouble discerning things with the low [and uneven] contrast of the whiteboard…
I’d suggest adobe illustrator or inkscape or something so you don’t have to worry about the drawing size…. Unfortunately, panning could be horrible to compress, then you’d essentially be annotating photos, screenshots, diagrams or slides…
something like:
[16 meg, 10 minutes, on the set of pixel perfect]
http://media.libsyn.com/media/gearmediatech/gmt_018.mov
I mean the “annotation” going on there, not the technical things described… I think seeing you at a $2500 tablet in front of a green screen shot by a $25000 camera is a bit much…
a wacom “bamboo fun” tablet [4″ by 6″] runs about $100
Hi,
I would be great to see more examples of behavior trees in action, particularly with planning…
I like your idea in doing videos to explain concepts and techniques. I do however agree with the others about not being able to see the white board in all shots though.
I would like to see videos about navigation or even AI team work and communication.
Ok, thanks all for your feedback!
I will probably do a few things to fix this:
More light if it doesn’t reflect too much…
Better manual white balance of the video.
Taking still shots of the board with a normal camera.
Put a high-resolution version in the forums for download.
Alex
Awesome Alex!
I would love to see something about implementation in code, and the advantages of using certain design patterns and languages (especially how Lisp or something similar is advantageous over C like language - C++, C#, ect..) over others for implementing AI.
Coordinate squad tactics
Hi,
IMO, a very good way to integrate video as a media for tutorials and presentations is to integrate 2 canevas on a page one with the video of the speaker, the other with a live presentation (the numerical of your blackboard:) .
To get an idea of what I’m trying to picture here, take a look at the presentations on www.infoq.com .
The major issue with the whiteboard is that you cannot face while drawing (or at least , it’s a bit difficult). The problem if you don’t speak while drawing is that your audience might get bored of watching you draw circles and square everywhere ;)
Also, as Andrew said, if you try to speak while drawing the audience might not hear you very well (this will distract them from the speech).
Last, it may be a bit tricky to zoom and show everything using a good “old” whiteboard :)
We had a very good user feedback at my school when we introduced the video & slide duo on our intranet.
You can use a different variety of tools to create animated slides (we used a tool to record drawing on paint & powerpoint slides) and still give the presentation a bit of “humanity” with your video ;)
You will also be able to run various demos & show the results.
I believe it’s a common format for lots of presentations nowadays.
HTH.
At our company we use an electronical whiteboard. That’s basically a projector and a pen-tracking board - You can run applications and draw at the same time on-top of them. Or just draw on white backgrounds and save it later to PDFs. You can also drag-in from a library photos, drawings etc.
Writing on it in a read-able way takes some training though ;)
Of course it does cost a bit more. If you want more details, let me know.
You can do it for a lot less money using a wii-mote. Take a look at this site (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/) and check out the second project ‘Low-Cost Multi-point Interactive Whiteboards Using the Wiimote’.
Also while you are at that site, check out the third project ‘Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the Wii Remote’. It is seriously impressive, and would be incredibly simple to implement into a game.
Leave a Comment
You can also reply to this thread in the forums.