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Encyclopedia > Game artificial intelligence
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Game artificial intelligence refers to techniques used in computer and video games to produce the illusion of intelligence in the behavior of non-player characters (NPCs). The techniques used typically draw upon existing methods from the academic field of artificial intelligence (AI). However, the term game AI is often used to refer to a broad set of algorithms that also include techniques from control theory, robotics, computer graphics and computer science in general. Image File history File links Portal. ... “Computer and video games” redirects here. ... For other uses, see illusion (disambiguation). ... Intelligence is the mental capacity to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. ... An NPC from the video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. ... Bold text[[Link title]] “AI” redirects here. ... In mathematics, computing, linguistics, and related disciplines, an algorithm is a finite list of well-defined instructions for accomplishing some task that, given an initial state, will terminate in a defined end-state. ... For control theory in psychology and sociology, see control theory (sociology). ... Robotics is the science and technology of robots, their design, manufacture, and application. ... This article is about the scientific discipline of computer graphics. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ...


Since game AI is centered on appearance of intelligence and good gameplay, its approach is very different from that of traditional AI; hacks and cheats are acceptable and, in many cases, the computer abilities must be toned down to give human players a sense of fairness. This, for example, is true in first-person shooter games, where their perfect movement and aiming is beyond human skill. // This disambiguation page covers alternative uses of the terms Ai, AI, and A.I. Ai (as a word, proper noun and set of initials) can refer to many things. ... A hack in progress in Lobby 7 at MIT. Hack is a term in the slang of the technology culture which has come into existence over the past few decades. ... This article is about video games. ...

Contents

History

The first videogames developed in the 1960s and early 1970s, like Spacewar!, Pong and Gotcha (1973), were games implemented on discrete logic and strictly based on the competition of two players, without AI. The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ... Spacewar! is one of the earliest video games for a digital computer. ... For other uses, see Pong (disambiguation). ... See also: 1972 in video gaming, other events of 1973, 1974 in video gaming, history of video games Events Atari releases the GotCha arcade game Midway Home Entertainment Inc. ... A logic gate is an arrangement of electronically-controlled switches used to calculate operations in Boolean algebra. ...


Games that featured a single player mode with enemies started appearing in the 1970s. The first notable ones for the arcade included the 1974 Atari games Qwak (duck hunting) and Pursuit (dogfight simulator). Two text-based computer games from 1972, Hunt the Wumpus and Star Trek, also had enemies. Enemy movement was based on stored patterns. The incorporation of microprocessors would allow more computation and random elements overlaid into movement patterns. In computer games and video games, single-player refers to the variant of a particular game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, also called The Seventies. ... Centipede by Atari is a typical example of a 1980s era arcade game. ... 1974 1974 in games 1973 in video gaming 1975 in video gaming Notable events of 1974 in video gaming. ... This article is about a corporate game company. ... Qwak is a 2D platform/puzzle game developed by Jamie Woodhouse. ... See also: 1971 in video gaming, other events of 1972, 1973 in video gaming, history of video games Events May 24: Magnavox unveils the Odyssey at a Burlingame, California convention. ... Hunt the Wumpus was an early computer game. ... Star Trek was a text-based mainframe computer game written by Don Daglow on a PDP-10 timesharing computer at Pomona College in 1972, and upgraded periodically through 1974, including contributions by Jonathan Osser. ... Microprocessors, including an Intel 80486DX2 and an Intel 80386 A microprocessor (abbreviated as µP or uP) is an electronic computer central processing unit (CPU) made from miniaturized transistors and other circuit elements on a single semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) (aka microchip or just chip). ...

Light cycle characters compete to be the last one riding, in GLtron.

The idea was perfected with Space Invaders (1978), sporting an increasing difficulty level, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on hash functions based on the player's input. Galaxian (1979) added more complex and varied enemy movements. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1024x768, 65 KB) Screenshot from GNU GPL game, GLtron. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1024x768, 65 KB) Screenshot from GNU GPL game, GLtron. ... GLTron is an open source game based on the light-cycle portion of the movie Tron. ... Space Invaders is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado in 1978. ... See also: 1977 in video gaming, other events of 1978, 1979 in video gaming, history of video games Events Notable releases Cinematronics releases the Space Wars vector graphics arcade game Hudson releases Lode Runner for Nintendo home systems in Japan. ... A hash function is a reproducible method of turning some kind of data into a (relatively) small number that may serve as a digital fingerprint of the data. ... Galaxian is a 1979 fixed shooter arcade game by Namco. ... 1979 1979 in games 1978 in video gaming 1980 in video gaming Notable events of 1979 in video gaming. ...


Pac-Man (1980) applied these patterns to maze games, with the added quirk of different personalities for each enemy, and Karate Champ (1984) to fighting games, although the poor AI prompted the release of a second version. Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution by Midway Games in 1979. ... 1980 1980 in games 1979 in video gaming 1981 in video gaming Notable events of 1980 in computer and video games. ... Karate Champ (original title: 空手道 Karate Dô, The Way of Karate) is a 1984 arcade game developed by Technos Japan Corporation for Data East. ... 1984 1984 in games 1983 in video gaming 1985 in video gaming Notable events of 1984 in video gaming. ...


Games like Madden Football, Earl Weaver Baseball and Tony La Russa Baseball all based their AI on an attempt to duplicate on the computer the coaching or managerial style of the selected celebrity. Madden, Weaver and La Russa all did extensive work with these game development teams to maximize the accuracy of the games. Later sports titles allowed users to "tune" variables in the AI to produce a player-defined managerial or coaching strategy. Madden NFL is an American football video game series developed by Electronic Arts Tiburon for EA Sports. ... Earl Weaver Baseball is a baseball computer simulation game (1987), designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower and published by Electronic Arts. ... Tony La Russa Baseball is a baseball computer and video game console simulation game (1991-1997), designed by Don Daglow, Mark Buchignani, David Bunnett, Clay Dreslough and Hudson Piehl and developed by Stormfront Studios. ...


The emergence of new game genres in the 1990s prompted the use of formal AI tools like finite state machines. Real-Time Strategy games taxed the AI with many objects, incomplete information, pathfinding problems, real-time decisions and economic planning, among other things (Schwab, 2004, p.97-112). The first games of the genre had notorious problems. Herzog Zwei, for example, had almost broken pathfinding and very basic three-state state machines for unit control, and Dune II attacked the players' base in a beeline and used numerous cheats. (Schwab, 2004, p.107). Later games in the genre exhibited much better AI. For the band, see 1990s (band). ... In the theory of computation, a finite state machine (FSM) or finite state automaton (FSA) is an abstract machine that has only a finite, constant amount of memory. ... A real-time strategy (RTS) video game is one that is distinctly not turn-based. ... Herzog Zwei is a Mega Drive/Genesis game by Technosoft, published in 1989. ... To meet Wikipedias content policies, this article or section may require cleanup. ...


Later games have used nondeterministic AI methods, ranging from the first use of neural networks in a videogame in Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996), to the emergent behaviour and evaluation of player actions in games like Creatures or Black & White. In the theory of computation, a nondeterministic algorithm is a hypothetical algorithm where computation can branch, choosing among different execution paths in a way that does not depend only on the input and current execution state. ... A neural network is an interconnected group of neurons. ... The Gametek release of Battlecruiser 3000AD Battlecruiser 3000AD (aka [BC3K] in Usenet) is one of the most-hyped, most-panned, and longest-developed (at the time) games in computer game history. ... Emergence is the process of deriving some new and coherent structures, patterns and properties in a complex system. ... Screenshot of Creatures 3 Creatures is an artificial life (alife) computer program series, created in the mid-1990s by English computer scientist Steve Grand whilst working for the Cambridge computer games developer Millennium Interactive. ... Black & White is a computer game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts. ...


Goldeneye 007 (1997) was one of the first FPSs to use AI which would react to players movements and actions as well as taking cover, performing rolls to avoid being shot and throws grenades at the appropriate time.[citation needed] Its creators later expanded on this in the title Perfect Dark, with enemies running for dead team mates weapons if the player shot the weapon out of the hand.[citation needed] The only unfairness during the course of both games was that enemies knew where the player was, even if no one saw where the player hid. For the film, see GoldenEye. ... Perfect Dark is a 2000 first-person shooter video game for the Nintendo 64 game console. ...


Far Cry (2004) exhibited very advanced AI for its time, although this made minor glitches more apparent. The enemies would react to the player's playing style and try to surround him when possible. They would also use real life military tactics to try and beat the player. The enemies did not have "cheating" AI, in the sense that they did not always know exactly where the player is all the time. They would remember his last known position and work from there. This article is about the computer game. ...


Views

Some game programmers consider any technique that is used to help create the illusion of intelligence to be part of a game's AI. This view is controversial because it includes techniques that are also widely used outside of a game's AI engine. For example, information about potential future collisions is an important input to algorithms that help create characters that are clever enough to avoid bumping into things. But the same collision detection techniques are also commonly needed to implement a game's physics. Similarly, line of sight test results are usually important inputs to AI targeting decisions, but are also widely used inside the rendering engine. A final example is scripting, which can be a convenient tool for all aspects of game development, but is often closely associated with controlling NPCs' behavior. A game programmer is a software engineer who primarily develops computer or video games or related software (such as game development tools). ... In physical simulations, video games and computational geometry, collision detection includes algorithms from checking for intersection between two given solids, to calculating trajectories, impact times and impact points in a physical simulation. ... When viewing a scene, as in optics, photography, or even hunting, the line of sight is the straight line between the observer and the target. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Scripting programming languages (commonly called scripting languages or script languages) are computer programming languages designed for scripting the operation of a computer. ...


Purists complain that the "AI" in the term "game AI" overstates its worth, as game AI is not about intelligence, and shares few of the objectives of the academic field of AI. Whereas "real" AI addresses fields of machine learning, decision making based on arbitrary data input, and even the ultimate goal of strong AI that can reason, "game AI" often consists of a half-dozen rules of thumb, or heuristics, that are just enough to give a good gameplay experience. Intelligence is the mental capacity to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. ... In the philosophy of artificial intelligence, strong AI is the supposition that some forms of artificial intelligence can truly reason and solve problems; strong AI supposes that it is possible for machines to become sapient, or self-aware, but may or may not exhibit human-like thought processes. ... In computer science, besides the common use as rule of thumb (see heuristic), the term heuristic has two well-defined technical meanings. ...


Game developers' increasing awareness of academic AI and a growing interest in computer games by the academic community is causing the definition of what counts as AI in a game to become less idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, significant differences between different application domains of AI mean that game AI can still be viewed as a distinct subfield of AI. In particular, the ability to legitimately solve some AI problems in games by cheating creates an important distinction. For example, inferring the position of an unseen object from past observations can be a difficult problem when AI is applied to robotics, but in a computer game an NPC can simply look up the position in the game's scene graph. Such cheating can lead to unrealistic behavior and so is not always desirable. But its possibility serves to distinguish game AI and leads to new problems to solve, such as when and how to use cheating. “Cheat” redirects here. ... A scene-graph is a general data structure commonly used by vector-based graphics editing applications and modern computer games. ...


Usage

Game AI/heuristic algorithms are used in a wide variety of quite disparate fields inside a game. The most obvious is in the control of any NPCs in the game, although scripting is currently the most common means of control. Pathfinding is another common use for AI, widely seen in real-time strategy games. Pathfinding is the method for determining how to get an NPC from one point on a map to another, taking into consideration the terrain, obstacles and possibly "fog of war". An NPC from the video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. ... This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. ... A real-time strategy (RTS) video game is one that is distinctly not turn-based. ... The fog of war is a term used to describe the level of ambiguity in situational awareness experienced by participants in military operations. ...


The concept of emergent AI has recently been explored in games such as Black & White and Nintendogs and toys such as Tamagotchi. The "pets" in these games are able to "learn" from actions taken by the player and their behavior is modified accordingly. While these choices are taken from a limited pool, it does often give the desired illusion of an intelligence on the other side of the screen. Black & White redirects here. ... Nintendogs is a pet simulation video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...


Cheating AI

Cheating AI is a term used to describe the situation where the AI has bonuses over the players, e.g. giving more damage, having more hit-points, driving faster etc. It is usually used in games to artificially increase the difficulty of the game because game AI lacks the learning and reasoning abilities of human players and would be easily defeated after a minimum of trial and error if it were not for the bonuses. Look up damage in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... This article is about modern humans. ...


A common example of this is found in many racing games. If an AI opponent falls far enough behind the rest of the drivers it suddenly receives an enormous boost in speed enabling it to catch up and again become competitive. This technique is known as "rubber banding". This rubber banding in racing games sometimes also works the other way however, enabling players to catch up if they fall too far behind. A racing game is any game that involves competing in races through a surrogate playing piece or vehicle, either getting it from one point to another or completing a number of circuits in the shortest time. ...


This method is also used in sports games such as EA's Madden series. The technique is similar to "rubber banding" in that the computer-controlled opponent is given an artificial boost if its team falls behind. When AI is programmed in this manner, it is referred to by both programmers and players as "cheat code" or "catch-up" code. A sports game is a computer or video game that simulates the playing of traditional sports. ... Madden NFL is an American football video game series developed by Electronic Arts Tiburon for EA Sports. ...


See also

General Game Playing refers to the design of artificial Intelligence programs to be able to play more than one game successfully. ... 1990s Pressure-sensory Chess Computer with LCD screen The idea of creating a chess-playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century. ... Computer go is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to creating a computer program that plays go, an ancient board game. ... Action selection is a way of characterizing the most basic problem of intelligent systems: what to do next. ... A bot, most prominently in the first person shooter PC game types (FPS), is a robotic computer controlled entity that simulates an online or LAN multiplayer human deathmatch opponent, team deathmatch opponent or a cooperative human player. ... Simulated reality is the idea that reality could be simulated — often computer-simulated — to a degree indistinguishable from true reality. ...

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