Game AI vs Traditional AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#21

Post by KVFinn » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 6:32 PM UTC

rm999 wrote: post #2

I have an academic and professional background in traditional AI, and I've programmed an AI for a 3D video game I made in college. My traditional AI background is mostly in applying a wide variety of mainstream machine learning algorithms, including neural networks, SVMs, and regression, to real world problems like fraud and image detection. I was somewhat frustrated when building the game AI because the best solutio…

One approach that has been more successful and easier to integrate than machine learning is Monte Carlo based systems. That's what the latest Go AIs use and they are making big strides.

It's powers various card game AIs, here's the developer talking about it: http://hfog.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html

Though this absolutely brutal Race for the Galaxy AI was generated using machine learning: http://www.keldon.net/rftg/

He talks about it in this thread: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/438698/race-for-the-gala...

[quote]Some of the AI neural nets for the Brink of War are only partially-trained; the AI performance in big games is way too slow and takes weeks to train. I'll need to fix that both so that players won't have to wait and to improve training speed.[/quote]

For "true" AI in games, check out Steve Grand's work:

http://grandroids.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XLJuDV03Mw&feature=youtu...

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#22

Post by pmelendez » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

rm999 wrote: post #2

I have an academic and professional background in traditional AI, and I've programmed an AI for a 3D video game I made in college. My traditional AI background is mostly in applying a wide variety of mainstream machine learning algorithms, including neural networks, SVMs, and regression, to real world problems like fraud and image detection. I was somewhat frustrated when building the game AI because the best solutio…

I know the video is confusing since it was intended to be a material support rather than a self explanatory material. But I still think it shows potential in the sense of how we could develop self adapting game characters using machine learning techniques.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh_DvxRvGYo

Please be nice with me... it was just a thesis after all :)

Edit: In case someone is curious about this, here is the document: http://pedromelendez.com/dissertation.pdf

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#23

Post by KVFinn » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 6:45 PM UTC

pmelendez wrote: post #10

rm999 wrote: post #2

I have an academic and professional background in traditional AI, and I've programmed an AI for a 3D video game I made in college. My traditional AI background is mostly in applying a wide variety of mainstream machine learning algorithms, including neural networks, SVMs, and regression, to real world problems like fraud and image detection. I was somewhat frustrated when building the game AI because the best solutio…

I hear you. I have a similar background like yours and I had a huge disappointment when I broke into the game industry 2 years ago. But I am not agree with you in the sense that an statistic approach is not possible. There are so many opportunities but the reality is that game designers don't want that to happen. The main problem I have found in this regard is the fact that designers love to have control over the beh…

>I even discussed my master thesis (an SVM based controller for enemies) with a veteran RTS game designer and his response was very heart breaking, he just told me that Game AI was good enough and that "people" wouldn't care about a better AI (after that he just turned out and walked away)

The game industry is broader than ever. Supreme Commander uses neural nets for its RTS AI:

http://soriandev.blogspot.com/2012/03/gdc-2012.html

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#24

Post by mark_l_watson » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 6:57 PM UTC

The last in the office job I had (12+ years ago in San Diego, before my wife and I moved to the mountains in Central Arizona) was doing game AI for Nintendo and Disney.

I loved it! The only reason I left was that we bought a house and had been planning to move.

I only work remotely now but if anyone ever wants a technical partner for doing a small Indy game, contact me. I have no skills as an artist. I write code.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#25

Post by mattmanser » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #16

pmelendez wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you. I have a similar background like yours and I had a huge disappointment when I broke into the game industry 2 years ago. But I am not agree with you in the sense that an statistic approach is not possible. There are so many opportunities but the reality is that game designers don't want that to happen. The main problem I have found in this regard is the fact that designers love to have control over the beh…

a veteran RTS game designer and his response was very heart breaking, he just told me that Game AI was good enough and that "people" wouldn't care about a better AI This makes me sad.. most RTS games have such terrible AI it often pains me to play them (and I love RTS games). Yeah yeah everything is moving towards online multiplayer, but I can't be the only person who would pay extra for a good single player experien…

I love playing humans but same as you sometimes I want to take things my pace and it's a very different game from the kind of AI I want to be playing. And some of my friends hate playing humans, the games are too fast paced and they hate the shit-talk you sometimes get.

I remember reading THQ lamenting the decline in RTSes, as I watched RTSes from the two remaining greats move from base building to quick mini-troop production games. The trouble that people like THQ and Blizzard don't seem to realise is that though the sales of this game do great and people are playing lots of online matches, it's the next one that'll suffer the decline in sales as casuals abandon the increasingly online optimized experience.

I want hordes that aren't totally retarded so that each game is different. They need to start making horde modes that are actually varied and interesting, unlike the predictable drivel that DoW2 and SC2 were. The AI in those games was stupid, predictable and broken. It started fun as you raced to build your base in time, but after a few games it wasn't fun at all. You could set a stopwatch by when the computer would try and rush you.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#26

Post by therealbatman » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 7:26 PM UTC

Soren Johnson gave a similar talk on AI Playing to Lose: AI and "Civilization"[0]. Here he split AI into two groups, Good AI(Chess) and Fun AI(Tower Defense), While the good AI plays the same game as you with the same rules and tries to beat you,Fun AI is asymmetrical, playing a different game whose objective is not to beat you, but you might still be defeated.

[0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#27

Post by hythloday » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 7:36 PM UTC

The single biggest (and maybe the only) difference between Game AI and Traditional AI is the optimisation function. TAI optimises for correctness, followed by efficiency, and GAI optimises for efficiency, followed by fun. The inapplicability of TAI solutions to GAI problems is because we (the games industry) don't have any kind of theoretical framework for even measuring fun, let alone optimising for it.

The state of the art is essentially a handful of ad-hoc models of how people experience games, how they improve and how they have fun (and why they stop having fun). Coupled with that, you have an enormous range of player skill - the lead designer of World of Warcraft estimated that the capability of player groups varied over several orders of magnitude (and he's a former academic professor, so probably speaking literally).

Someone in another reply stated that GAI was roughly passing a restricted Turing Test. That seems like a reasonable suggestion to make, but if it's true, then applying TAI frameworks to solve GAI issues is roughly the same difficulty as trying to create a non-Turing-test passing AI that can write a Turing-test-passing AI. It seems intractably difficult with the tools that we have available to us right now.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#28

Post by pkaler » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #25

dkersten wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a veteran RTS game designer and his response was very heart breaking, he just told me that Game AI was good enough and that "people" wouldn't care about a better AI This makes me sad.. most RTS games have such terrible AI it often pains me to play them (and I love RTS games). Yeah yeah everything is moving towards online multiplayer, but I can't be the only person who would pay extra for a good single player experien…

I love playing humans but same as you sometimes I want to take things my pace and it's a very different game from the kind of AI I want to be playing. And some of my friends hate playing humans, the games are too fast paced and they hate the shit-talk you sometimes get. I remember reading THQ lamenting the decline in RTSes, as I watched RTSes from the two remaining greats move from base building to quick mini-troop p…

I didn't work on DoW2 but I worked on CoH. The core AI engine was similar. CoH added features to improve group pathfinding and pathfinding for when terrain changed, etc. I don't remember all of the details since this was 5 or 6 years ago.

But the fundamental problem with AI is not building the AI. The problem is tuning the AI. You end up with a terribly tuned game if you give designers too many knobs or if your knobs look like a helicopter cockpit.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#29

Post by pmelendez » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 8:04 PM UTC

hythloday wrote: post #27

The single biggest (and maybe the only) difference between Game AI and Traditional AI is the optimisation function. TAI optimises for correctness, followed by efficiency, and GAI optimises for efficiency, followed by fun. The inapplicability of TAI solutions to GAI problems is because we (the games industry) don't have any kind of theoretical framework for even measuring fun, let alone optimising for it. The state of…

"It seems intractably difficult with the tools that we have available to us right now."

I think that's actually the problem rather than the optimization function. There is an vicious circle where lack of tools implies less interest that implies less research than implies lack of tools.

I am very reluctant to think that TAI's optimization function would make a difference in terms of techniques usability in GAI problems. I agree that fun factor is not quantifiable under current knowledge. But that doesn't mean that there is not common ground between them. For example, it is not the first time that path finding is being approached using ML:

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?reload=tru...

On the other hand, most games use finite state machines for decision making which could be approached in many different ways:

http://ccrg.cs.memphis.edu/assets/papers/NNApaper12.pdf

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#30

Post by scrumper » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 8:10 PM UTC

Good article.

Voltaire wrote something about this: "The perfect is the enemy of the good." It's hard to keep in mind, especially when inexperienced.