The group wants games to be more engaging by having emotional, not just coolly calculating, computer players. Instead of just challenging your rational planning and decision skills, you'll have use your emotional intelligence too.
I am also very interested in the inclusion of psychology into the AI of computer games and simulations. I am very well versed in psychology and emotional response. However, I'm not entirely sure whether they proved any point here. They could claim that it was their model, which simulated "the big five" emotional dimensions to personality recognised by psychologists. On the other hand, it could very well be game design decisions or poor AI.
"Age of Mythology" was the follow up to the "Age of Empires" series. Those games were not well known for their AI prowess. (In fact, when lead designer Rick Goodman left to found Stainless Steel Studio, the bloodline was improved significantly with Empire Earth which was known for its AI. I'd love to see their neurotic bots take on that game.) Additionally, there are so many combinations of how the bot AI designed by the researchers could match up with the AI for AoM, that simply balancing those two alone would be daunting. Some very simple arbitrary choices about coefficients used in decision making could have skewed any other data one way or the other. I'm not discounting their research, but as a simulation modeller, I know the challenges involved in creating a multi-variate system such as this.
On the other hand, I think it just says more about what Ensemble did - or did not do - with the game design and AI of "Age of Mythology".
I noticed this post at the site Coding Horror. It's mostly a site for programmers griping about each other, but this one may be of general interest as well as something for the AI community.
If you have been on the web at all, you have probably had to type in some variant of a Captcha security code developed by the whizzes at Carnegie Mellon. (Make a comment on this post if you want to see one in action.) The whole point of it is to defeat programs that will read a security code in the actual html and enter it automatically. Also, they are designed to defeat programs that would take an image of the page (or the Captcha sequence itself) and use OCR (optical character recognition) techniques to detect what characters are being used.
The post at Coding Horror refers to an article from the Wall Street Journal about how Ticketmasteris having problems with bots and scalpers. The problem seems to be that the variant of Captcha that Ticketmaster is using is just not good enough. The solutions for theirs, and many others', is being sold by companies. However, Captcha algorithms such as those used by Google, Hotmail and Yahoo are "unbreakable". (Notice that no financial sites are listed?!?)
Anyway, interesting read on how humans can still defeat computers at some tasks. I suppose Alan Turing would be smirking at the attempts.
Movement in a dynamic world - especially with hostile entities and constantly changing safe and danger zones - is a dicey issue in game AI. AIGameDev.com has posted a great article about some work by Leslie Ikemoto from the University of Berkeley that I believe has some great future relevance to the game industry.
Although it is 153 MB, make sure you download the video file that shows the agents in motion. Great stuff!
Once again, Alex Champandard at AIGameDev.com has posted another entry in his Reviews section. This review is on the very novel and groundbreaking AI of the FPS game, F.E.A.R.
As he typically does in his technical reviews, he specifically identifies 29 tricks to use in games. As with "The Sims", a major component is that of "smart objects". Also, how the AI agents in the game use those objects is very impressive. I've only played the downloadable demo of F.E.A.R. but I was impressed quickly by how the agents appeared to work together and with their environment. I would like to play the game further and then re-read this technical review.
As always, make a point of looking at the references section of his post. That is where the meat is.
Alex Champandard over at AIGameDev.com has posted a technical review of the AI for "The Sims". This is a fantastic article listing 21 tricks that can be used, at least in theory, in game AI development.
Please notice that Alex has put references at the end that point you to the source material - which is always good reading.
I happened upon this article about how LA is using a serious game to train firefighters on how to handle fires without getting into unnecessary danger.
The Serious Games movement is a very valuable addition to the possibilities of game development... especially in the AI realm since much of it involves realistic simulation of behavior and environment. This is definately a direction that IA would like to go in at some point. (not into a fire... that would be silly!)
According to this article from PC Perspective, graphics hardware (and software) may rapidly be coming to the point where we can see real-time raytracing. The result of that is that we can say goodbye to the antiquated method of rasterization of scenes in computer games.
This is a major coup for not only game graphics but all real-time graphics display in general. Light effects, including reflection and refraction, will no longer have to be "cheated" in order to look pseudo-real. We will now be able to have all the nifty effects that are actually "easier" to program. What an exciting development to watch happen of the next 2 or 3 years!
Technology developers are poised in the next month to debut new "brain-computer interfaces," which will allow video game players to control their PlayStations and Xboxes with their thoughts, not their fingers.
The devices are powered by neurosensors, attached to points on the scalps of players, where the "Alpha," "Theta" and "Beta" brain waves can be detected, according to researchers.
These sensors are connected to the game controls, which move the on-screen characters left or right, up or down, faster or slower, depending upon the thoughts of the players. "Frontlines," "Doom" and "Tetris" may never be the same again.
I think we are a ways off from doing nifty things with this. After all, even just getting "left/right/up/down" will be hard enough. "Click and drag" is something else entirely!
Although it is 153 MB, make sure you download the video file that shows the agents in motion. Great stuff!
