6 ms·

Ubisoft is using AI to catch bugs in games before devs make them

40 points by helloworld 9y ago

nailer 9y ago
> When a player encounters a non-player character in Far Cry 5, two systems are at work: trust and morale. If you raise your weapon at someone you've never met before, they will react with distrust or fear, warning you to lower your gun. If the NPC recognises a lingering threat from you, it will launch an attack of its own, fearing for its own 'life'. When facing a group of enemies, as you pick off members of a gang, individual foes may realise they're outclassed and lose their thirst for combat, and attempt to flee as they sees their 'friends' taken out. Elsewhere, animal companions will respond to player activity, cowing close to the ground unprompted when you crouch into stealth, for instance. It's the sort of work that adds depth and realism to the world. Fascinating. Meanwhile, watch Fred (a friendly AI in Far Cry 5) fly the player directly over a known enemy outpost, crash the helicopter, then later crouch immediately in front of the player when the player is trying to stalk the outpost - to the point where the weakness of the AI becomes the talking main point of the video: https://youtu.be/iauG9h6N-PQ?t=377 https://youtu.be/iauG9h6N-PQ?t=377 Totally agreed one day this will make a difference, but in the meantime: game AI is still game AI.
- nikanj 9y ago
  Programmed at 5am by some poor soul on crunch mode, after an 80-hour work week and 3 hours of sleep. Whenever a game has an absolutely heinous component to it, it’s clear that that particular bit was not playtested.
  - nailer 9y ago
    It seems to contrast the messaging from Ubisoft though. Why doesn't the NPC fear the cult symbol all over the outpost? Why don't they fear the line of sight from the player's weapon?
- Merad 9y ago
  TBH the behavior described in the quote has been around in various forms since at least Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (2006). It's interesting and (arguably) immersive, but almost always has unintended and sometimes hilarious side effects. For example, Kingdom Come Deliverance (released last month) received much praise much praise for letting the player start out as an average unknown guy... but after a while in game you build up reputation with some towns to the point where stepping foot in a town leads to everyone in sight yelling greetings at the player. It also interacts in interesting ways with cutscenes [1] and the "respond to an armed player" behavior [2]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF_KxC_cOUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF_KxC_cOUU [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuY2x_Dxr7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuY2x_Dxr7Y
adamnemecek 9y ago
If only there was some sort of way to statically encode and check your logic...oh wait.
iMart1n_FR 9y ago
The title is missleading! The code is checked when it is pushed to the main repository... The code and the bug already exists, the developer is responsible for that. Also, if you look at the video from Youtube, you can see that 60% + 30% = 100% : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5C4FUvDyCc&t=50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5C4FUvDyCc&t=50s I was hoping for some kind of godlike AI to help catching bugs before I write my code, now I'm disappointed...
- racl101 9y ago
  > I was hoping for some kind of godlike AI to help catching bugs before I write my code, now I'm disappointed... Maybe it's not such a bad thing if AI is not godlike.
- paxy 9y ago
  If the "godlike AI" could find bugs before you wrote the code, it may as well just write the code instead of you.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    It might be interesting to apply machine learning to already written code, correlating common mistakes to specific developers so that the IDE might warn the developer that they're entering some area or process where they tend to make mistakes.
    - gruez 9y ago
      the problem with that is you get an opaque metric that's not very helpful, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569767
  - lou1306 9y ago
    I mean, probably many elementary code smells (e.g. those related to null references) just pop up over and over again in a sufficiently large code base, so an AI could reasonably be trained detect them and thus prevent some of the bugs that arise from them. But for application-level bugs, we're SOL... And luckily so, otherwise we would be jobless in a few years or so.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> "The fact that when you show a programmer statistics that say 'hey, apparently you're making a bug!', you want him or her [to realise] that it's a tool to help and go faster. To be fair, if I get a message along the lines of "There's a 0.345 chance that this line will cause a bug", I'll want to know why the line will lead to a bug- which is going to be a lot harder to do than just throw up a statisic.

40 points by helloworld 9y ago

> When a player encounters a non-player character in Far Cry 5, two systems are at work: trust and morale. If you raise your weapon at someone you've never met before, they will react with distrust or fear, warning you to lower your gun. If the NPC recognises a lingering threat from you, it will launch an attack of its own, fearing for its own 'life'. When facing a group of enemies, as you pick off members of a gang, individual foes may realise they're outclassed and lose their thirst for combat, and attempt to flee as they sees their 'friends' taken out. Elsewhere, animal companions will respond to player activity, cowing close to the ground unprompted when you crouch into stealth, for instance. It's the sort of work that adds depth and realism to the world. Fascinating. Meanwhile, watch Fred (a friendly AI in Far Cry 5) fly the player directly over a known enemy outpost, crash the helicopter, then later crouch immediately in front of the player when the player is trying to stalk the outpost - to the point where the weakness of the AI becomes the talking main point of the video: https://youtu.be/iauG9h6N-PQ?t=377 https://youtu.be/iauG9h6N-PQ?t=377 Totally agreed one day this will make a difference, but in the meantime: game AI is still game AI.

nikanj 9y ago
Programmed at 5am by some poor soul on crunch mode, after an 80-hour work week and 3 hours of sleep. Whenever a game has an absolutely heinous component to it, it’s clear that that particular bit was not playtested.
- nailer 9y ago
  It seems to contrast the messaging from Ubisoft though. Why doesn't the NPC fear the cult symbol all over the outpost? Why don't they fear the line of sight from the player's weapon?
Merad 9y ago
TBH the behavior described in the quote has been around in various forms since at least Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (2006). It's interesting and (arguably) immersive, but almost always has unintended and sometimes hilarious side effects. For example, Kingdom Come Deliverance (released last month) received much praise much praise for letting the player start out as an average unknown guy... but after a while in game you build up reputation with some towns to the point where stepping foot in a town leads to everyone in sight yelling greetings at the player. It also interacts in interesting ways with cutscenes [1] and the "respond to an armed player" behavior [2]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF_KxC_cOUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vF_KxC_cOUU [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuY2x_Dxr7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuY2x_Dxr7Y

adamnemecek 9y ago

If only there was some sort of way to statically encode and check your logic...oh wait.

iMart1n_FR 9y ago

The title is missleading! The code is checked when it is pushed to the main repository... The code and the bug already exists, the developer is responsible for that. Also, if you look at the video from Youtube, you can see that 60% + 30% = 100% : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5C4FUvDyCc&t=50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5C4FUvDyCc&t=50s I was hoping for some kind of godlike AI to help catching bugs before I write my code, now I'm disappointed...

racl101 9y ago
> I was hoping for some kind of godlike AI to help catching bugs before I write my code, now I'm disappointed... Maybe it's not such a bad thing if AI is not godlike.
paxy 9y ago
If the "godlike AI" could find bugs before you wrote the code, it may as well just write the code instead of you.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  It might be interesting to apply machine learning to already written code, correlating common mistakes to specific developers so that the IDE might warn the developer that they're entering some area or process where they tend to make mistakes.
  - gruez 9y ago
    the problem with that is you get an opaque metric that's not very helpful, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569767
- lou1306 9y ago
  I mean, probably many elementary code smells (e.g. those related to null references) just pop up over and over again in a sufficiently large code base, so an AI could reasonably be trained detect them and thus prevent some of the bugs that arise from them. But for application-level bugs, we're SOL... And luckily so, otherwise we would be jobless in a few years or so.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

>> "The fact that when you show a programmer statistics that say 'hey, apparently you're making a bug!', you want him or her [to realise] that it's a tool to help and go faster. To be fair, if I get a message along the lines of "There's a 0.345 chance that this line will cause a bug", I'll want to know why the line will lead to a bug- which is going to be a lot harder to do than just throw up a statisic.