Beyond Behavior

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Next-Gen Content Creation for Next-Gen AI
Damián Isla, Naimad Games
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AI Content Creation

• Whats the best way to author AI content for
  games?
• (And who does the authoring?)
• (And what is AI Content in the first place?)

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Photoshop of AI Panel, GDC 09
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The Starting Point

• The central competency of Game AI is
• expressive power for the behavior author,
• not intelligence
• Intelligence is only useful insofar as
• It enables gameplay
• It supports the fiction
• It makes the game more fun

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The Problem

• AI is HARD
• Technically complex
• Highly interconnected
• Impossible to test
• Culturally awkward

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The Problem
Designer
Engineer
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2 Solutions

• Need a new breed of engineering-competent
  designers or design-sensitive engineers (Michael
  Mateas)
• Need better authoring paradigms, a Photoshop of
  AI (Chris Hecker)

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The Photoshop of AI

• Why has game AI not settled on
• Common control structures
• Common authoring paradigms
• Common metrics
• Common APIs
• Why are we so very, very far from WYSIWIG?
• What does WYSIWIG even mean?

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Wisdom from Douglas Adams

• AI is a 5-dimensional problem
• How do you
• Visualize
• Explore
• Specify
• that entire space?

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AI Content Creation

• How do we currently author AI content for games?

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AI Content Creation

• AI is HARD
• Technically complex
• Highly interconnected
• Impossible to test
• Culturally awkward

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AI Content Creation
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State of the Art
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Disclaimer(s)

• This is my own highly-biased point of view.
• Not going to talk about content creation for
• Strategic AI
• Living-world AI
• Procedural narrative
• Spatial Reasoning
• Etc.
• (Also not going to define AI)

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The State of the Art

• Reactive

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The State of the Art

• when A happens, do B
• x 10,000

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Managing Complexity in the Halo 2 AI (GDC 05)
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BT Editor Prototype, Alex Champandard,
AIGameDev.com
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misBeHavinG BT Editor, Michael Dawe, Big Huge
Games
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Situation Editor, NBA 09 The Inside, Brian
Schwab, SONY
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Zombie, Steve Mariotti, Nihilistic Software
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SPIROPS A.I.
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Final Fantasy 12 Gambit System, Square Enix
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The State of the Art

• Planning

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F.E.A.R., Jeff Orkin, Monolith Productions
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F.E.A.R., Jeff Orkin, Monolith Productions
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Planning

• Opportunity?
• A tool that allows designers to
• Influence
• Visualize
• Debug
• their plans

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The State of the Art

• Affordance-based

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The Sims, EA/Maxis
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Halo 3 Building a Better Battle (GDC 08)
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Halo 3 Building a Better Battle (GDC 08)
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Environment markup in Assassins Creed, Ubisoft
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The State of the Art

• Learning

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AC Game Recording Viewer, Artificial Contender,
TruSoft
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AC Knowledge Viewer, Artificial Contender, TruSoft
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The Restaurant Game, Jeff Orkin, MIT Media Lab
http//theRestaurantGame.net
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Behavior Capture

• Pros
• leverage the data-mining revolution
• Potentially no custom interface at all?
• Questions
• Iteration time
• Tweakability
• Transparency
• Are we learning the right things?
• Are we learning the deep structure?

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N-Grams
Troilus and Cressida

• They say all lovers swear more performance than
  they are wont to keep obliged faith unforfeited.
• - Shakespearean Quadrigram

Deep Structure Fail
Merchant of Venice
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The State of the Art

• The Periphery

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Kynapse UnrealEd Plugin, Autodesk
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Havok Behavior
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Endorphin, NaturalMotion
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The Future
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The Future

• Middleware continues to eat away at the periphery
  of the intelligence problem
• Intelligent animation
• Pathfinding
• Gesture recognition
• Vision
• Natural language
• Behavior Capture
• But what about the Photoshop of AI?

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The Photoshop of AI

• Warning Craziness ahead

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?
?
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MC Leon, Improv Technologies, Siggraph 99
Façade, Mateas Stern
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"If you know your character's thoughts, the
proper vocal and bodily expressions will
naturally follow."
"All action on the stage must have an inner
justification, be logical, coherent, and real."
Constantin Stanislavski (1863-1938)
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Method Acting

• Designer
• Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. You should have run away
  screaming right there.
• AI
• Really? What, because of the grenade?

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Method Acting

• Designer
• No, no, because of the kitten.
• AI
• Huh. So Im afraid of kittens?
• Designer
• Yes.

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Method Acting

• AI
• So would you say Im more afraid of kittens or of
  water?
• Designer
• Well, I hadnt thought of it, but yeah, I would
  say youre more afraid of kittens.
• AI
• Alright. Lets go again!

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Cooperative AI

• Medical Expert Systems
• Mycin
• CALO/IRIS
• GPS Navigation
• Clippy

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2 Solutions

• Need a new breed of engineering-competent
  designers or design-sensitive engineers (Michael
  Mateas)
• Need better authoring paradigms, a Photoshop of
  AI (Chris Hecker)

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2 Solutions

• Both
• Content creation for AI will continue to be
  extremely technical
• It will be a form of coding
• It will be done by designers
• where designer is defined as the person
  responsible for making the game fun.

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Thanks

• Alex Champandard, AiGameDev.com
• Petra Champandard-Pail, AiGameDev.com
• Michael Dawe, Big Huge Games
• Brett Laming, Rockstar Leeds
• Steve Mariotti, Nihilistic Software
• Jeff Orkin, MIT Media Lab / Monolith Productions
• Brian Schwab, SCEA
• Bungie Studios