Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
was reading about the AI that was used for LoTR battle scenes. this would be a helpful tool to get a mm online game going. the startup of one of those huge massively multiplayer games makes it difficult for companys to get a foothold. the ai of the mm game worlds inhabitants has been very poor imo. much worse than a non mm game. I have yet to find AI in any game that did not just make me laugh at some point in time. halo was not half bad but still way off sometimes.
this is not a Sig.
David Wong does say that graphics advancements have leveled off in recent years, but he's not making this point at the expense of ignoring advancements in game AI or physics engines. His point is that pitching the same old rehashes of rigid game genres with some incremental technological advancement to give it novelty value is leading the industry nowhere. Besides, whereas graphics are (by definition) a fundamental element of video games, AI (especially the pathfinding sort mentioned in this article) and physics play only marginal roles in just a few existing popular genres, and are by no means present in all video games. How is better AI going to matter in multiplayer games where there's more than enough REAL AI (human players) available? Or how is a new physics engine going to significantly alter the way we play, say, strategy games that don't depend on realistic physics for their essential gameplay? Looking to AI or physics as the technology that will solve the video game industry's many problems isn't the answer.
There's different types of AI depending on the genre.
There's strategy games. Just because it's a game with very little chance (i.e chess) doesn't mean that writing the AI is easy. Though the Civ3 AI is really good, I don't consider it by any means infallible. Perhaps the best example for AI in strategy is Magic: The Gathering. Years ago, they came out with a PC version with AI. The problem was that the AI could never understand the strategies behind different deck and thus couldn't play them effectively. I think designing a good MTG AI would be much tougher than a good GO AI.
There's also reaction-based games (FPS, 3rd person, etc). In this case, the goal is not for the AI to be better than the player, but to emulate the behavior of a human player. UT had much better AI than Quake, simply because the bots weren't omniscient.
Lastly, there's RTS AI, which is a mixture between the two mentioned above. Like the MTG problem, RTS AI generally uses the same generic strategy regardless of opponent, but has lightning reflexes.
Depending on the game genre, different approaches to AI are necessary. In strategy games, simply winning is a good objective. In reactionary games, since computer reaction time is better than human reaction time, creating a good AI player is almost trivial, but creating a realistic and fun opponent is a challenge.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.