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The Total Beginner's Guide to Game AI
- aigamerr 8y agoTest your skills at https://playground.riddles.io/competitions/game-of-life-and-death https://playground.riddles.io/competitions/game-of-life-and-...
- 60654 8y agoNice intro! Some of the more advanced techniques (MCTS, GOAP/planning and so on) get the short shrift, but it's totally expectable for an intro article. And the early section on constraints is especially great. Game AI has to worry about enjoyable performance and variety of challenges given almost no CPU time, which makes all the difference...
- arkitaip 8y agoVery cool. I would love it if there was a computer game where you basically created different AIs for different scenarios that you played out.
- formalsystem 8y agoHere's a game you may like then https://store.steampowered.com/app/98200/Frozen_Synapse/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/98200/Frozen_Synapse/
- reificator 8y agoThe soundtrack is also excellent, I have it in my instrumental playlist for when I'm working. The only problem is that sometimes it's too good and I want to pay more attention to it than the work. https://nervoustestpilot.co.uk/album/frozen-synapse-original-soundtrack https://nervoustestpilot.co.uk/album/frozen-synapse-original...
- wlll 8y agoI played Frozen Synapse ages ago and didn't link what I was doing in any way with trying out an AI. Maybe the game has changed in recent years. or maybe I'm overestimating game AI.
- mpax 8y agoThere is this top down space rts game which does just that. Browser based, had electron port. I can't for the life of me remember it's name. The AI construction was very limited/simplistic though, still a good deal of fun.
- dropit_sphere 8y agoObligatory mention of Screeps: https://screeps.com/ https://screeps.com/
- insomniacity 8y agoYeah, I bookmarked this to see if it would help with my code!
- zrobotics 8y agoEarly access, but gladiabots[0] may be up your alley. Giving intents to robots using a visual programming language, then testing them against another team (human or AI). Ive been enjoying it anyway, decent balance of puzzle game that isn't too complex as to seem like a job. [0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/871930/Gladiabots/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/871930/Gladiabots/
- ArtWomb 8y agoGood intro. There is a lot of history covered here. And of course, the art is in the implementation ;) Currently, an interesting new (neuro-)evolution is happening in Game AI. With the OpenAI 5 and it's "180 years of training per day". We begin to see the feedback loop of game design being influenced by AI. Detroit: Become Human is one recent example of how AI is used to manage the enormous complexity in game narrative. And some hotly anticipated titles for the fall including Last of Us 2 and Death Stranding will demonstrate the state-of-the-art. And I don't think it's just for open world environments. Or a new generation of cloud-enabled VR / AR experiences. AI will also be used to re-design "flaws" in arcade classics. And render them infinitely playable into the future.
- 60654 8y agoDo you have any links on the Detroit AI you mention? All I see on the GDC vault are talks about lighting and engine tech, can't seem to find any game AI info.
- lfowles 8y agoDo you have links to any information on the use of AI in Detroit's narrative? Searching for "Detroit AI narrative" isn't working well for obvious reasons!
- ArtWomb 8y agoDetroit engine is 100% proprietary. Hopefully, Quantic Dreams and David Cage will share more in time. But there are still several generations of DLC to be released ;)
- gambler 8y ago>Detroit: Become Human is one recent example of how AI is used to manage the enormous complexity in game narrative. What does it do? From walkthroughs I've seen, it looks extremely scripted.
- reificator 8y agoIf there's anything that Detroit: Become Human does well, it's branching narrative. Does it approach true freedom? Not at all. But compared to, say, Telltale games or something like Until Dawn, it's pretty impressively open ended[0]. Now, do I recommend it? Absolutely not. It starts off really good, especially if you're already expecting another Heavy Rain or Beyond Two Souls. But after a few hours (maybe just one?) it gets heavier and heavier handed. It's impressive how quickly it turns from an interesting story about both intolerance and what it means to be human, and just becomes a series of scenes that practically scream "DO YOU GET IT YET? DO YOU?". Probably still the best David Cage game I've seen, mostly for the strong intro and branching narrative, but that's like picking your favorite Uwe Boll movie. If you want to play one of these style of games and can handle horror, I'd point you toward Until Dawn instead, as I think that's probably the best example of the genre. [0]: [Spoilers] Here's a graph of the choices available in one mission. Some are significantly more linear, some are even more complex. Note that other missions may include two or more (Up to 5 I think?) starting points. https://d1lss44hh2trtw.cloudfront.net/assets/editorial/2018/05/fugitives-82-percent-flowchart-detroit-become-human.jpg https://d1lss44hh2trtw.cloudfront.net/assets/editorial/2018/...
- otras 8y agoJust posted this in another thread, but it’s especially relevant here: I work at a small AI startup, and our CEO worked on the AI for the NPCs in F.E.A.R. [0]. He has written about developing the goal-oriented action planning [1] approach in the game (and is linked to in this article). Great to see how it was done! [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.E.A.R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.E.A.R. [1]: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear.pdf http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear....
- madeuptempacct 8y agoAt the end of the day, FEAR felt very much short of the expectations, just like the "smart gunships in Half Life that learned to shoot down incoming RPGs on their own" and the supposedly goal driven AI in STALKER which was never really implemented.
- lawlessone 8y ago>smart gunships in Half Life that learned to shoot down RPGs on their own I want to know more about this. was it just preprogrammed ability/method that was unlocked after a time or was there some sort of machine learning?
- mepian 8y agoI suspect that the gunship was simply programmed to shoot the closest hostile entity, which happened to be the player's rockets. This kind of emergent behavior is actually quite common in gameplay programming. In any case, machine learning was not involved in the development of Half-Life.
- gambler 8y agoI didn't have any expectations, but FEAR AI was one of the best I've seen in games. I could replay the same battle over an over again, and the enemies did different, convincingly intelligent things, based on my own actions.
- ionised 8y ago
- Someguywhatever 8y agoI thought HALO had good AI, and there was a writeup somewhere (IDK where) by Bungie devs about how they implemented complex seeming behaviour with some relatively simple/dumb rules.
- ryneandal 8y agoI dunno about dumb, the morale break functionality was pretty brilliant.
- Someguywhatever 8y agoDumb was really a poor choice of words, I basically wanted to say that the rules were incredibly simple and even so you get this complex behavior that comes out of it. I remember the first time I played HALO and the guys talked to each other, and it wasn't just random sound effects they actually did the thing they were talking about. If the Elite guy said to "flank him" they would try to flank you or whatever, it was very cool.
- Steve44 8y agoWithin the context of a game it [generally] doesn't need to be a full blown AI solution. Combining route finding, goals & priorities, situational awareness, and also adding in some flakiness so it's not perfect can give a really good and usable approximation to AI from the human players perspective. The computer player needs to have rules and knowledge in place about the game such as how to get around the maps and how to shoot / evade the enemy all without being too good.
- jamcohen 8y agoIs this what you’re looking for? https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130663/gdc_2005_proceeding_handling_.php https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130663/gdc_2005_proce...
- Someguywhatever 8y agoI think so, I haven't read through it but it looks like the one, thanks for finding it!
- jlebrech 8y agoIs it possible to use machine learning to have the AI improve itself?
- mbel 8y agoApart from potential performance issues I can't think of any other reason why not. Keep in mind however that games are made to be fun and sometimes ability to predict actions of not-so-smart AI opponent might be better that facing unpredictable and too intelligent AI.
- grumpopotamus 8y agoYes! This is the domain of Reinforcement Learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning
- jlebrech 8y agoI was thinking you could have an AI character play the level and that would reinforce that character's moveset.
- depressedpanda 8y agoThat's pretty much how OpenAI for DotA 2 is being developed. It's learnt the game from scratch by self play and can best professional players in some game modes.
- xedarius 8y agoI worked as an AI engineer on a few Playstation titles, by far the most important part of AI is messaging whats happening to the player. Usually a well scripted animation or voice cue will beat and cleverly written reasoning engine. We always had loads of cool ideas, like enemies running out of ammo and throwing clips to each other. But the reality is, the player will never see it. Uncharted does a great job of messaging the AI's intent to the player. The AI itself is fairly decent, but the messaging of intent is excellent.
- Pulcinella 8y agoYeah its kind of funny that AI that plays smart and doesnt announce intentions to the player can be viewed as bad, dumb, or unfair, but when the AI enemies basicslly tell the player exactly what they are doing it is viewed as intelligent.
- lainga 8y agoWell, on the contrary, I loved the AI in Halo 2/3, and half the time you'd be alerted to new developments by the AI on your side (Marines saying "aw f$%$ here comes $unit!").
- chii 8y agoAn intelligent ai may not be fun to play with. An "ai" that signals to the player its intentions means the player can adjust and learn (and learning is the fun in a game).
- khalilravanna 8y agoThis was a lesson I learned while working on my own game which was a Dwarf Fortress type game (lot of interwoven systems, a lot of complexity). The biggest problem was while I had all these systems sometimes I, the developer who wrote all of it, had no freaking idea why something would occur. As with everything I've learned from a career in software engineering, complexity is always bottlenecked by UX and UI. Without good design and feedback for a user, complexity is either obfuscated to the point of being perceived as worthless or to the point of actually being worthless.
- erdosnew 8y agomy favorite game of all time is Activision's Battlezone. everything was near perfection, just wish to see a better AI
- lenocinor 8y agoI used to teach game AI. Most of the articles I read are badly researched, incomplete, and full of opinions of the author based on whatever they noticed trying things randomly in their game. This article, on the other hand, is comprehensive and very well-written. Anyone interested in this topic should give it a read.
- danbolt 8y agoThis might be because games are a young medium, but I find a lot of “primers” on game design to feel like subjective reflections of the author’s ludography. The sort of fundamentals a level designer for a 90s first-person shooter would give seem very different from a 2010’s indie platformer dev or a big-budget JRPG producer. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of insight that’s indifferent to genre or team size yet.