Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#21

Post by clebio » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:08 PM UTC

teamonkey wrote: post #19

1. Grab Unreal Engine[1]. It's $20 per month, but you can cancel after the 1st month if you don't want to receive updates. 2. Download the Unreal Tournament project[2] 3. Examine the bot code and start tweaking [1] https://www.unrealengine.com/ [2] http://www.unrealtournament.com/ Unreal is an industry-grade game engine that is also quite accessible. AI can be scripted in Blueprint (a visual dataflow scripting langua…

Well, I like the idea, but why do all their documentation pages link to a Github 404: https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealTournament ?

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#22

Post by teamonkey » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

clebio wrote: post #21

teamonkey wrote: post #19

1. Grab Unreal Engine[1]. It's $20 per month, but you can cancel after the 1st month if you don't want to receive updates. 2. Download the Unreal Tournament project[2] 3. Examine the bot code and start tweaking [1] https://www.unrealengine.com/ [2] http://www.unrealtournament.com/ Unreal is an industry-grade game engine that is also quite accessible. AI can be scripted in Blueprint (a visual dataflow scripting langua…

Well, I like the idea, but why do all their documentation pages link to a Github 404: https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealTournament ?

Private repos. You need to link your GitHub account to your Unreal account. See here https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Getting_Started_With_Unreal_To...

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#23

Post by duckworthd » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:13 PM UTC

The best start I ever had to Artificial Intelligence was via UC Berkeley's CS188 course[1]. This course takes you through the very foundations of AI, from search to planning to basic probability theory. It's been imitated at universities around the world with its open lectures, slides, homework assignments and project code.

The projects are the very best part of this course. You start with a blank slate PacMan agent trying to pick up dots to something able to track & dodge ghosts without even seeing them (!). It's what inspired me to continue AI research 7 years down the road!

[1]: http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs188/fa11/lectures.html

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#24

Post by dyeje » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:15 PM UTC

I took a course on AI at University. The course had a lot of projects around video games. I liked the book we used:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Example-Wordware-Developer...

Our final project was super cool. We got into groups. Then each group modified the AI of the soccer team in the book. Then we had a tournament to see who's team was the best. Winning the tournament was one of my prouder moments at school.

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#25

Post by Ethan_Mick » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:15 PM UTC

Google Ants[0] is an AI challenge that is over now, unfortunately, but you can still run through it.

"The AI Challenge is all about creating artificial intelligence, whether you are a beginning programmer or an expert. Using one of the easy-to-use starter kits, you will create a computer program (in any language) that controls a colony of ants which fight against other colonies for domination."

[0] http://ants.aichallenge.org/

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#26

Post by DaFranker » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:32 PM UTC

johnymontana wrote: post #4

Learning the A* pathfinding algorithm is a good starting point as this is common in simple tile games. These two links should get you started: [1]: http://www.raywenderlich.com/4946/introduction-to-a-pathfind... [2]: http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/

Caveat/warning: Oftentimes, learning how to translate your game data into an A* -traversable graph is harder than implementing the A* algorithm itself.

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#27

Post by chatwinra » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:35 PM UTC

wsloth514 wrote: post #13

There are plenty of books online. I would recommend creating your own project and finding something specifically you would want to do with that topic. For a class project my group and I did something simple, like a minesweeper bot. It also included a screen scrapper to scrap from windows and created our own minesweeper game including the AI part. It had about a 30% failure rate because it would get stuck on the 50-50…

I second the Behavioural Mathematics book. Really good introduction to AI and how to think about programming it.

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#28

Post by NicoJuicy » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 3:47 PM UTC

If i'd be on the same quest, i'd first read a lot of articles on gamesutra concerning AI. Here's a quick google search - http://goo.gl/aHZrXj

There are a lot of "handson" examples there from real existing games (with code) and interviews with game developers.

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#29

Post by lsjroberts » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

I really recommend this article on behaviour trees, it gave me a good intro on how to start with the basic structure of AI - obviam.net/index.php/game-ai-an-introduction-to-behavior-trees/

Re: Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?

#30

Post by kephra » Thu, Dec 11, 2014, 5:04 PM UTC

Take a look at wildfiregames 0ad, if you like RTS. 0ad is an open source RTS, where its easy to write your own AI in JavaScript.

A much bigger challenge would be an AI that is able to walk an avatar in Secondlife. First perhaps easy walk on the roads in mainland, later walk on arbitrary land, and the real challenge is walk inside buildings. A cat bot that does not fall into the lake, might even be a good seller.