Dave Mark in new Kill Screen Magazine

Last summer, Dave was interviewed by Matt Shaer for the debut issue of a new game magazine, Kill Screen. The magazine bills itself as a "game magazine for grown ups" rather than the more juvenile fare that one finds in other game industry mags.

Issue #0 is going to be shipping in the next few weeks complete with a major feature story about the state of game AI and how it leads to deeper games. The primary focus of the conversation (and what brought Matt to Dave in the first place), is extensive discussion of the ongoing development work on Airline Traffic Manager as an example of an AI-based game.

It's unfortunate that the story took so long to run (the interview was conducted in Father's Day, 2009). Some of the information is a little out of date. For example, Matt talks about the lecture Dave did at "this year's AI Summit" with Richard Evans and Phil Carlisle. That lecture, of course, was from last year's 2009 AI Summit. By the time many people read this article, we will already be rolling out the 2010 AI Summit at GDC.

Regardless, some things are accurate... such as the fact that development work on Airline Traffic Manager is still stalled. We are now grumbling about this internally and are looking at restarting things - even if only on a part-time basis. More on that later.

Anyway, Dave was honored that Matt wanted to include him in the interview. We have see the full text of the article and it is well-written. Now we are just looking forward to seeing it in print for the first time!

Labels: Airline Traffic Manager, ATM, Kill Screen Magazine

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Back from GDC -- Possible New News

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Post-GDC coma is lifting

I'm gradually getting caught up with all my GDC-related stuff. I have a stack of business cards that almost didn't fit under the seat in front of me on the plane, tons of notes to sift through, etc. Oh yeah... AND I had to get back in sync with the real world such as it is in the Central time zone.

For those that haven't glanced at IA on AI lately, the AI-related posts about GDC are going there. One is Soren Johnson's lecture on his Civ 4 AI. The other is my (audio) interview with John Abercrombie of 2K Boston about the AI he did for Bioshock. There will be more as I wade through all my notes and memories of the last week. Specifically, I need to touch on Ray Kurzweil's keynote, Damian Isla's lecture on the Halo 3 AI, my brief interview with the guys from Kynogon about Kynapse 5, and my recap of the annual AI programmers' dinner. (I will probably put non-AI related stuff in this blog.)

A lot of my info can be seen on the constantly updating GDC page I put up. Remember, you can see my GDC pictures here. Some of them suck because I had to go without flash which left the shutter open longer... thus the blur. Many of those were strictly for my notes, anyway.

Now that I have seen Soren's lecture and had my interview with John, I will be updating Post-Play'em with my observations from their respective games. I also need to get into Halo 3 (if I have time) now that my step-daughter is distracted with the new Wii. I want to plow through that while Damian's lecture is still in my head. I just don't know if I can commit to it yet.

On a business note, we had some interest in the funding for Airline Traffic Manager that I need to pursue - so those of you who are fans, that's good news. Remember, however, the process is often long. I know you have been waiting for the development to move forward in earnest - but it is not something that will happen next week.

Labels: ATM, GDC, GDC 2008, IA on AI, photos

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There should be a game...

Well, our GDC 2008 trip is getting off to a stuttering start. We were less than a mile from the house at the horrific hour of 7AM for our 8:55 flight when my cell phone rings. It was United's nifty automated message system calling to tell me that our itinerary had been changed. Our new flight is departing at almost noon.

We turned around and went back to the house so I could investigate. It turns out our original flight from OMA to DEN (UAL 731) got delayed somehow - likely due to weather. There were two results of this. 1) it was now an hour behind. 2) They swapped the 757 for a 737. That meant they lost quite a few available seats. So, we got bumped to a later flight (UAL 859) and automatically rebooked on our 2nd leg from DEN to SFO (UAL 77). I haven't been able to determine what caused the original flight to be delayed that set all this in motion - but it sure is interesting to see the ripple effect throughout the system and how passengers get rebooked.

It sure would be neat if there was an airline simulation that took into account such things. What would that look like? Wow... it would have to have hundreds of aircraft doing thousands of flights to move... well... millions of passengers around. With all those flights, it would have to take into account things like weather delays, because what would happen if an aircraft got delayed on its daily schedule? You would have to swap aircraft for whatever is available, even if it means a different type of aircraft and having to bump and rebook passengers. Which means passengers would actually have to have a real itinerary to mess up! If it happened at a crowded airport, things like that could even mess up an airline's nationwide route structure!

That sure does make for some great problem solving and could be a lot of fun!

Hmmm...

Labels: ATM, GDC 2008

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