Slashdot Mirror
A Borg-like Artificial Intelligence For Lionhead's New Game
cybaea writes: "The creator of Black & White is experimenting with new work on group minds - but unlike the Borg, the characters in the new game are already descending into bar brawls,
reports ZDNet UK, quoting Richard Evans (famous for the AI engine in Black & White). My favourite quote: '[AI] Characters [in the game] even have the ability to dynamically create their own language, constructing simple sentences on a word by word basis.'"
Of course it's been my experiance that revolutionary features like this in games is either bogged down by the standard nature of the rest of the game, or it is somehow less impressive than it sounds, without it being false advertising. Disregarding that, imagine the possabilities of a true group of AIs that can interact with one another like this. It sounds like cheap sci-fi, but one could probably make a decend simulation of the rise of humanity from caveman to scholar with a program just a couple generations ahead of what is described here. Who knows, maybe there will be a legitimate AI culture that'll have to be reckoned with someday. Imagine if they started making art... music... OK I'll stop with the Trek caliber speculation :)
Yup...
That's nice and all, but I'd be happy if they made a game that didn't suck ass. I know lots of people loved B&W, but I found the game unplayable. I have a kid, a dog, and a cat. One throws random stuff, one eats various turds, and one (or more) is virtually untrainable, with or without a leash.
Why did I pay $50 for more of the same?
Here's another hint: SimCity and the Sims can get along just fine without having goals. It's simple to set your own goals in these games. In a game with so many goals as Black and White, don't pretend that they don't exist or that you have an open-ended game.
I remember the original articles about the creature in B&W. Wasn't supposed to be the whole game. They spent so damned much time futzing with them that there was nothing else left. If the same thing happens here, we'll see add-on packs like "Take your people to Middlebury to learn ANOTHER language." Internet play will consist of seeing whose player can develop Esperanto first.
Call me cynical, but this game better be more than the one trick pony that was B&W.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The description has Markov Matrix written all over it. They are good at learning a language overtime and one of their characteristics is to to "make up" words of subsets of the stuff that it learns.
since it learns contextual probability, the words look like they should fit, even though they aren't real words.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
You get out of B & W what you want. As a "god game" It took the genre to new heights and it did it quite well. I prefer RTS games and it would be great to have your units have a similair intelligence as your creature in B & W; ie, units which learn and follow the example you set. What about a FPS where the baddies learn your attack strageties and teach the other baddies if you let them get away.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
Well, if you do it right, your villagers should be able to take care of their own micro-management. If you do everything for them, they get lazy. If you let them suffer a little bit, they'll go "hey, we're hungry. Let's go find some food." If you bring food to them all the time, they won't even bother trying to go out and farm/hunt.