The Hard Science of Making Videogames

twoblackeyes writes "PopSci delves into the 10 greatest technical challenges faced by game developers today, and the technology that will hopefully make them a thing of the past. At the top of every dev's wish list is increased realism: realisitic fire, water, enemy AI, material physics, etc. Here directly from the developers where the tech stands today, and where it will likely be tomorrow. '4. Artificial Intelligence - Problem: Once upon a time, the bad guys in videogames wandered around mindlessly, shooting at you while they waited to die. That doesn't cut it anymore. Players demand sophisticated enemies to fight and reliable in-game allies with which to fight them. Thing is, it's freaking complicated, and it eats up processor speed. "We're faking just enough smarts to make it work," says Mathieu Mazerole, lead engineer on Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed. Status: Imbuing characters in a game with lifelike decision-making ability involves employing the kind of high-level logic theories--learning decision trees, mobile navigation, finite-state machine models--used by top robotics engineers.'"

Comments

Re:It's not that this list sucks..

[Blakey Rat]

I don't get people like you. If you think the most fun games were all text-based, Infocom adventures or MUDs, then you're in luck: That technology is already about as advanced as it's going to get! If you don't care about graphics in games, then you're done. Go play your text games and don't bother commenting on stories like this so us people who do appreciate good graphics in games can have a nice civil conversation without you.