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The State of AI In Games
CowboyRobot writes "Carnegie Mellon researcher Alexander Nareyek has an article at ACM Queue describing how the role of graphics as the leading technology in gaming is being replaced by advancements in artificial intelligence. The author targets some game AI: 'Early milestone demonstrations for the publisher, press presentations, and other hype-generating events do not promote inclusion of a globally/consistently good AI, but instead focus on one or two 'absolutely unexpected but genius outcomes of revolutionary new and complex AI procedures' (did you spot the ironic tone?) that provide the necessary 'wows'.' He concludes by suggesting: 'we need to see more effort to make AI functionality available for the designers/artists.'"
David Wong's main point was that the video game industry thrives on novelty, and that said novelty doesn't exist anymore now that we have fairly realistic real-time 3D capabilities. He forgot about the fact that graphics aren't the only novelty that gets gamers' attention. AI is arguably the weakest obvious element of gaming today, so near-future advancements in it would probably be as impressive as advancements in graphics were decades ago.
Rob
Having read the article, I think that the author seems to forget that though we know have pretty much reached the summit of the quality of graphics, AI is not the only direction that future games will have to be aiming for; I believe physics engines are taking a pogressingly important role in video games, and this is an area which I think developers will concentrate on, as it is showing more and more importance for gamers.
The problem is that now, AI is as "basic" as physics engines are. If you look at the best selling games, they probably have bad AI (XIII comes to mind, that game's AI is hideous) -- and an average physics engine. If you ask me, developers will have to find the balance between developing both, because these elements are becoming big enjoyment factors in player experience, as the players realise that good AI makes for a more realistic experience, and allows the player to progress in several ways instead of having to follow the same, linear route (a feeling which decreases replayability a lot). As for the physics engines, it's just something else which more and more players see as important; just imagine the possibility of great puzzles with a great physics engine.
A game with both great AI and a realistic physics engine ([cough]Half-Life 2[/cough]) just needs some good level design for these to come through, and that is how you will create the ultimate player experience.
The author of the article says the AI is more than just how the NPCs react, but nowadays I think the emphasis has to be put on this type of AI anyway, as it is still kind of apalling in most games. If a game has good AI, it can allow more freedom of choice to the player as the NPCs will know how to react accordingly to the player's actions and decisions. If NPCs are ready to act in "real time" to any situation, it is less a case of the player having to adapt to a game, following a linear route and ending up against a horde of enemies and some prescripted event, but more a case of the game "adapting" to what the player chooses to do, hence giving the player greater freedom and a better experience.
As for the evolution of physics engines, one has to see how important this is becoming; there are so much more progression possibilities for a game with a good physics engine. This allows the player to interact with his/her environment in a much richer way, and use it much more as he/she would like to have it exploited. Coupled with a good AI, this can make for an amazingly realistic game and a much better playing experience, and in my opinion, these are the departments which developers have to aim expanding on.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
One would think that games' AI would be improved as more and more CPU power is made available to developers, but instead it seems stagnant. Of course, this is almost certainly due to the fact that while some features (especially graphics) are easy to display on retail packaging, it's hard to evaluate the strength of a game's AI without actually playing for a while. Thus, Marketing pushes aside development of a good AI for shinier graphics, and gamers buy into the myth that graphics are king.
I understand that programming a good enemy AI is difficult, and I don't expect to have every enemy equipped with a full neural net in order to learn my tactics. Still, is it too much to ask for enemies to attempt to flank my last known position when I duck behind cover? To me, a good enemy AI is what can make all the difference between a mediocre game and a truely memorable one. While other considerations - graphics, physics, gameplay, level design and stability - are important, it seems that game AI always gets left by the wayside in order to make things shinier and provide nice box shots.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
it may not be possible to adapt it to a real-time system.
If there's a single shortest path from A to B, then determining it is a graph theory problem. There is nothing AI-related about it.
How NPCs use the possible paths is where game AI applies. The article mentions steering, which is in the ballpark here.
The reason graphics can continually improve, while AI is very iffy, is that we know what it is game graphics should be approximating. There is no similar target for AI, as there is very little knowledge of how intelligence actually works.