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Game AI vs Traditional AI

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Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#31

Post by Splines »

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…

You may want to check out AI War[1]. The designer sounds like he is well-versed in AI and made it one of the game's selling points.

It's also an extremely DRM-friendly game too!

[1] http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2009/06/designing-emerg...

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#32

Post by pnathan »

superjesuspants wrote: post #17

In single player games you have NPCs (non-player characters) and in multiplayer games you have bots (again, computer controlled characters). For instance, Team Fortress 2 has bots and Half-Life 2 has NPCs. The difference is, bots behave and mimic actual human beings. They are bound by the same rules, and have the same controls and range of motion as human players. It's hard to distinguish the difference at times, gra…

Agreed. After years of WoW, I'd like to see a world where the world is 'alive'.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#33

Post by sigkill »

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…

>...which is basically applied statistics.

Well, one could also say that human intelligence is applied statistics, subject to biases. When you look at how we make decisions you'll see that we either refer to past data on the subject, or on a subject related to the issue at hand. Our past data can contain incorrect information and we'd still use it, since we don't know it's incorrect. Right up until someone comes up to us and says, "It's common sense silly, you don't adjust the side mirrors to view the back of your car but instead to view a continuous image of your back and sides along with your rear-view mirror. It's common sense".

Humans are a very good example of machine learning and "AI". What we learn in our school syllabus would probably have been University level a few hundred years ago. That is to say, if you consider the human as a single state machine, it(we?) is/are getting more intelligent with the passage of time.

Pardon my cynicism on humanity but I generally think that our intelligence is merely logical inference of past empirical data mixed with some healthy dose of confirmation bias. You could also add a bit of True Randomness to account for irrational behaviour along with a bunch of other biases.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#34

Post by dkersten »

Splines wrote: post #31
mattmanser wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You may want to check out AI War[1]. The designer sounds like he is well-versed in AI and made it one of the game's selling points. It's also an extremely DRM-friendly game too! [1] http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2009/06/designing-emerg...

AI War is an excellent game and the AI does some surprisingly smart things sometimes (not to mention that you can have tens of thousands of units in a game).

But AI War is also a very different gameplay experience to most other RTS games, so while its a good game in its own right and does have good AI, it may leave you disappointed if you're looking for a more traditional experience.

Not to mention that its an insanely hard game but I guess that's the price you pay for "good" AI!

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#35

Post by dkersten »

KVFinn wrote: post #23
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…

>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/…

Last time I played Supreme Commander 2 (about a year ago), had the most braindead AI I've seen in an RTS in a while. The single player skirmish (and I normally prefer skirmishes to campaigns) was therefore unsatisfying and frustratingly annoying to play due to shockingly bad AI.

Maybe they've updated and improved it?

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#36

Post by saraid216 »

dkersten wrote: post #35
KVFinn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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/…

Last time I played Supreme Commander 2 (about a year ago), had the most braindead AI I've seen in an RTS in a while. The single player skirmish (and I normally prefer skirmishes to campaigns) was therefore unsatisfying and frustratingly annoying to play due to shockingly bad AI. Maybe they've updated and improved it?

Sorian is a mod that specifically improves the AI.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#37

Post by dkersten »

saraid216 wrote: post #36
dkersten wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I played Supreme Commander 2 (about a year ago), had the most braindead AI I've seen in an RTS in a while. The single player skirmish (and I normally prefer skirmishes to campaigns) was therefore unsatisfying and frustratingly annoying to play due to shockingly bad AI. Maybe they've updated and improved it?

Sorian is a mod that specifically improves the AI.

Oh! That's good to know. Looks like I'll be giving the game another chance then.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#38

Post by KVFinn »

dkersten wrote: post #35
KVFinn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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/…

Last time I played Supreme Commander 2 (about a year ago), had the most braindead AI I've seen in an RTS in a while. The single player skirmish (and I normally prefer skirmishes to campaigns) was therefore unsatisfying and frustratingly annoying to play due to shockingly bad AI. Maybe they've updated and improved it?

>Last time I played Supreme Commander 2 (about a year ago), had the most braindead AI I've seen in an RTS in a while. The single player skirmish (and I normally prefer skirmishes to campaigns) was therefore unsatisfying and frustratingly annoying to play due to shockingly bad AI. >Maybe they've updated and improved it?

Not an expert, but I believe it started off as a mod, and eventually the modder worked with the devs to integrate it into later patches in the game.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#39

Post by yk »

A nice article, but I believe it should be mentioned that the main difference of game AIs vs traditional ones is, that the game mechanics are known. This means for machine learning algorithms there are a lot of low hanging fruits like perfect shooting (or more generally exploiting that a AI can usually control the game better than a human since it does not need to use a interface device). And because of this, it is actually necessary to tweak the AI such that the player does not feel cheated himself.

Re: Game AI vs Traditional AI

#40

Post by derleth »

yk wrote: post #39

A nice article, but I believe it should be mentioned that the main difference of game AIs vs traditional ones is, that the game mechanics are known. This means for machine learning algorithms there are a lot of low hanging fruits like perfect shooting (or more generally exploiting that a AI can usually control the game better than a human since it does not need to use a interface device). And because of this, it is a…

> And because of this, it is actually necessary to tweak the AI such that the player does not feel cheated himself.

Unless you don't, in which case you end up with a Perfect Play AI, as happened in Mortal Kombat:

> Mortal Kombat is famous for this, this is why the trope used to be called MK Walker; an AI opponent on this mode would simply block or dodge any attack thrown by the player with inhumane frame precision and beat the player mercilessly, giving the impression that the AI was walking over the player.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PerfectPlayAI?fro...

Or the AI could just actually cheat:

> "Cheat wherever you can. A.I.s are handicapped. They need to cheat from time to time if they're going to close the gap... Never get caught cheating. Nothing ruins the illusion of a good A.I. like seeing how they're cheating."

-- Jonny Ebert, lead designer of Dawn of War 2 on video game A.I. http://kotaku.com/5271733/the-three-or-more-or-less-laws-of-...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsAChe...

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