Tim Schreiner's essay, second place in the AI Article Writing Contest, has just been posted.

With important upcoming video games focusing on single player only, it can be surmised that game designers know the importance of AI. It's important roles in design are narrowed down to three, and analysed further.

http://ai-depot.com/GameAI/Design.html

The july iteration of the contest is also now underway! Make sure to join the fun...

Tim, that's an interesting analysis, although I feel that games already are closer to your objectives than you state it.

Which games & bots did you play / study / read about for writing this essay?

William

Quote: The third possibility for game AI is, as far as I know, as yet unimplemented in any current games.

Isn't it already implemented in one of the cs bot, called RealBot. It might not as advance as you mentioned but if Im not mistaken the bots can adjust their skill based on win/lose statistic.

What a fascinating evaluation…

Thanks for the article.

I think its important to point out that Intelligence in bots that utilises "cheats" (like the bot being able to see around corners) is definitely NOT FUN and its definitely not simulating humans (except those running wall hacks of course).

I found this essay really interesting. I would just like to add that I too have witnessed analytical AI at work in computer games. The scenario that it was used in was the final level of Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, in which the last boss will vary in difficulty depending on how well the player fares. This becomes extremely annoying, because if you are a good player, you will end up getting smashed as the final competitor gets "boosted". However, if you use the system and die a few times, the game is a piece of cake.

Analytical artificial intelligence can also be seen in NFS: Underground, when the player crashes/falls significantly behind, the competing cars will slow down until the player has caught up enough.

This just goes to show that the implementation of artificial intelligence is not always a good thing and can in fact often prove extremely annoying and unrealistic.

The Artificial Intelligence Depot has been fortunate enough to talk to Thomas Young, creator of the PathEngine library. He talks about his background in AI, the development of his path-finding library, and looks into middle-ware for computer games.

http://ai-depot.com/Interview/PathEngine.html

Comments welcome, as usual!

I think your idea on artificial intelligence is pretty cool. Can you tell me where to find some more information about this topic. I would really be happy. thanks