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A Look At Modern Game AI

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-let-major-get-the-railgun dept.

IEEE Spectrum is running a feature about the progress of game AI, and how it's helping to drive AI development in general. They explore several of the current avenues of research and look at potential solutions to some of the common problems. "The trade-off between blind searching and employing specialized knowledge is a central topic in AI research. In video games, searching can be problematic because there are often vast sets of possible game states to consider and not much time and memory available to make the required calculations. One way to get around these hurdles is to work not on the actual game at hand but on a much-simplified version. Abstractions of this kind often make it practical to search far ahead through the many possible game states while assessing each of them according to some straightforward formula. If that can be done, a computer-operated character will appear as intelligent as a chess-playing program--although the bot's seemingly deft actions will, in fact, be guided by simple brute-force calculations."

6 of 87 comments (clear)

  1. Holy Acronym Overload by cjfs · · Score: 3, Funny

    F.E.A.R. , short for First Encounter Assault Recon .... University of Alberta GAMES (Game-playing, Analytical methods, Minimax search and Empirical Studies) .... called STRIPS (for STanford Research Institute Problem Solver)

    Combine that with such gems as:

    players view the virtual world from the perspective of the characters they manipulate, making Counter-Strike an example of what's known as a first-person-shooter game.

    and I'm not sure that belongs here.

    Then again, maybe I'm just bitter that I still can't beat GNU chess.

  2. AI? In video games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    If modern games are an indication of AI, then they're obviously smarter then we can hope.

    Just today, the AI in Far Cry 2 spotted me at long range after 1 shot with a sniper rifle, proceeded directly to me, despite heavy foliage for cover.

    Color me impressed. Even Sherlock Holmes would be proud of how quickly they deduced where I was.

    1. Re:AI? In video games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Everyone of my gaming friends agree that QW has the best AI we've ever seen. I've spent some games just following AI snipers to see where the best spots are.

      Sometime it is hard to tell the difference between the bots and real players. It's only the absence of bad squeaky singing, incessant excuses about lag, and numerous opinions about my mother's sexual preferences that gives the game away.

    2. Re:AI? In video games? by VeNoM0619 · · Score: 2, Funny

      So, we only want a smart-enough AI, not a god AI.

      So the problem becomes: we don't want it to beat us all the time, but if we make it smart, it will beat us, but we want it to be smart!

      So the solution is: make it capable of beating us all the time. Then flip a coin to determine if it will choose the winning strategy, or sit like a lame duck so it won't win all the time.

      --
      Disclaimer: I am not god.
      We may not be created equal
      But we can be treated equal.
  3. Bungie's Awesome Halo AI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=F7pjw8vs6Ug

    I guess I would spend my time babbling about AI at conferences instead of actually getting my shit working if I had Microsoft spending ten million bucks buying reviews and saturating the press with marketing.

  4. Re:College AI Project by timbalara · · Score: 2, Funny

    You bastard, now I'm working in the auto industry thanks to your lack of coding! - Jeff (I kid, I kid!)