Comments on: Do You Like Coding AI?

By: Juuso

Juuso — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 08:50:01 +0000

@hermitC % Wyatt: yeh, it’s like fun to find new surprises around the corner when AI does something unexpected :)

@merc: respect

@Sargon: uh, you are so right. fixed! ;)

@Tobias: what you mean by “code simulations”?

@Lumooja: :)

By: Lumooja

Lumooja — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 23:33:50 +0000

I don’t find coding AI very interesting, because usually AI in games is based on human AI, which is very boring.

You could say that humans are not intelligent at all, they just have a database which they use to combine questions and answers, and are able to add new questions and answers to it.

I would rather code somekind of alien AI, which has a dedicated purpose and is very optimized to reach its goals. If it would work without a database, it would be even more interesting, because then it could adapt to any environemnt itself.

By: Tobias Scheuer

Tobias Scheuer — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:57:57 +0000

I like coding AI, but even more I like to code simulations, not only NPC but also systems.

By: Sargon

Sargon — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 16:40:01 +0000

I don’t understand the question. Is it suppose to be ‘What’? not ‘How’?

By: merc-ai

merc-ai — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:18:24 +0000

I liked AI enough to get Masters degree on that stuff earlier.
But actually coding it turned out not as cool as planning, because debug phase takes a lot of time (with the usual AI I need being a really complex system).

Luckily, I didn’t have to code AI much to this point. And for next game (which is UDK-based) there will be a good AI base to reuse.

By: hermitC

hermitC — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:39:58 +0000

It’s fun.

It is great fun when breathing life into rather abstract objects, e.g. bosses in a sci-fi shmup. There are only a few constraints to follow and much freedom for experiments.

IMO the hardest part is to know what your agents should do. My first AI drafts always were very complex and finally did not fit into the game. I found this article inspiring: http://bit.ly/fOGW9x It encourages you to start off simple and “dumb”. The rest is extension, tweak and polish. Like the overall game dev process.

By: Wyatt

Wyatt — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:34:23 +0000

It’s the sort of challenge that’s interesting, has different approaches depending on the problems space, is limitlessly complex, and lets you apply novel concepts from the leading edge of mathematical and topological theory if you’re so inclined. Very cool.