Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

The game industry is beginning to flourish in our present time. With the completion and release of the next generation consoles (xbox 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii) game designer's knowledge of the technology present and future needs to be greater then ever, to please and satisfy their fans desires. A.I. is a very large portion of a games makeup, and is probably the most important feature in a game's realism. All most every genre in the industry now requires some kind of combat or fighting system. Within this system there needs to be information and techniques for the NPCs to follow to combat the player themselves. This portion of the game is called Combat A.I.

A very easy genre to show this portion of artificial intelligence in and probably the first that was really targeted is first person shooters (FPS). The gaming industry really lacked this concept for awhile in the FPS titles released. But as the market began to push the level of detail in games, Steam released a title named Half Life. Before this game was released combat AI for these games was bland and boring. NPC's didn't have different patterns, nor did they react to how the player was taking on the game. This game opened windows, doors, and even gates for designers. The enemy in this game was "smart" enough to take cover, not to expose themselves into enemies' fire, and even possibly flanking depending on the players actions. But no matter how far we advance AI itself there a certain aspects, mainly four that we will never be able to replace that a human player possesses. These four categories consist of the understanding and the exploitation of terrain and environments, efficient use and implementation of teamwork, the ability to hunt, and lastly the human instinct of survival.

Take a game where your in an outside environment, as a player you learn the terrain, soak up the knowledge of the most effective way to get somewhere, the best locations for certain tactics/situations. This is where the first category comes into play, you can't code this for NPCs in this day in age. Dynamically reacting with the environment is something that is in the back of designer's minds for upcoming releases.

The next subject is in short teamwork. It is extremely difficult to work as a team as human beings ourselves let alone trying to get created; computer ran NPC's