NextGen Content Creation for NextGen AI Damin Isla

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

AI Content Creation What’s the best way to author AI content for games? (And who does the authoring? ) (And what is “AI Content” in the first place? )

“Photoshop of AI” Panel, GDC 09

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

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

The Problem Designer Engineer Fundamentally not in a position to fully specify all funrelevant behavior Fundamentally not responsible for fun

2 Solutions 1. Need a new breed of engineering-competent designers or design-sensitive engineers (Michael Mateas) 2. Need better authoring paradigms, a “Photoshop of AI” (Chris Hecker)

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?

Wisdom from Douglas Adams AI is a 5 -dimensional problem How do you Visualize Explore Specify that entire space?

AI Content Creation How do we currently author AI content for games?

AI Content Creation AI is HARD Technically complex Highly interconnected Impossible to test Culturally awkward The path of least resistance: “do it in code”

AI Content Creation Engineer Designer Everything in code - All procedure in code Exposed parameters Framework in code Visual construction / managed coding Harness Everything in script

STATE OF THE ART

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”)

The State of the Art Reactive

The State of the Art when A happens, do B x 10, 000

hide cover grenade fight melee shoot root search idle uncover pursue sleep Managing Complexity in the Halo 2 AI (GDC 05)

BT Editor Prototype, Alex Champandard, AIGame. Dev. com

mis. Be. Havin. G BT Editor, Michael Dawe, Big Huge Games

Situation Editor, NBA 09: The Inside, Brian Schwab, SONY

Zombie, Steve Mariotti, Nihilistic Software

SPIROPS A. I.

Final Fantasy 12 Gambit System, Square Enix

The State of the Art Planning

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

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

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

The State of the Art Affordance-based

The Sims, EA/Maxis

Halo 3: Building a Better Battle (GDC 08)

Halo 3: Building a Better Battle (GDC 08)

Environment markup in Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft

The State of the Art Learning

AC Game Recording Viewer, Artificial Contender, Tru. Soft

AC Knowledge Viewer, Artificial Contender, Tru. Soft

The Restaurant Game, Jeff Orkin, MIT Media Lab http: //the. Restaurant. Game. net

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?

l i a F “They say all lovers swear e r u more performance than t c u they are wont to keep r t S obliged faith unforfeited. ” p e e D N-Grams Troilus and Cressida Merchant of Venice - Shakespearean Quadrigram

The State of the Art The Periphery

Kynapse Unreal. Ed Plugin, Autodesk

Havok Behavior

Endorphin, Natural. Motion

THE FUTURE

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?

The Photoshop of AI Warning: Craziness ahead

Façade, Mateas & Stern MC Leon, Improv Technologies, Siggraph ‘ 99

"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)

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

Method Acting Designer No, no, because of the kitten. AI Huh. So I’m afraid of kittens? Designer Yes.

Method Acting AI So would you say I’m more afraid of kittens or of water? Designer Well, I hadn’t thought of it, but … yeah, I would say you’re more afraid of kittens. AI Alright. Let’s go again!

Cooperative AI Medical Expert Systems Mycin CALO/IRIS GPS Navigation Clippy

2 Solutions 1. Need a new breed of engineering-competent designers or design-sensitive engineers (Michael Mateas) 2. Need better authoring paradigms, a “Photoshop of AI” (Chris Hecker)

2 Solutions 3. 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.

Thanks Alex Champandard, Ai. Game. Dev. com Petra Champandard-Pail, Ai. Game. Dev. 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