Five effective attempts at AI technology in game development

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AI, or Artificial Intelligence, is currently the most popular AI, AlphaGO launched by Google. In fact, as the most common opponent in the game, AI exists in almost every game. Through the analysis of many games, overseas game developers have summarized the following five new attempts in game AI design and development. I hope that by translating this article, I can provide developers with more ideas for game AI development. The following is the full text of the translation:

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1. The Division & Ghost Recon: Immersing Players in Core Gameplay

In The Division, enemies' activities are random. Sometimes they stand in the open without any protection; sometimes they sneak around behind the player to give the player a "surprise". In the past decade, the FEAR series (a horror shooting game) has been hailed as the benchmark of horror shooting games. The Division has not been able to surpass the FEAR series in terms of shooting experience. What makes The Division more fun is the AI ​​design of finding cover.

In Ghost Recon, also developed by Ubisoft, players can find suitable cover in the shooting scene and press a button to make the game character automatically find suitable cover. This means that the player's movement between covers is automatic, and the movement between two covers can be estimated (a light white line will appear on the moving line), so players can spend more time focusing on strategic thinking and shooting accuracy.

Summary: AI can help players understand the scenes in the game better and faster, allowing them to have more energy to "deal with" the core gameplay of the game, such as who to shoot.

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2. Forza: Making your competitors more human

Since its launch in 2005, Forza Motorsport has been constantly improving its AI by collecting driving habits and driving paths from different players in the game. In the latest Forza Motorsport 6, if players turn on Microsoft's cloud service in the game, the game will download new data after a lot of calculations, and the AI ​​in the game will imitate the running methods of other players from all over the world, even including some stupid mistakes and so on.

The good thing is that this AI can bring more freshness to players and appear more humane. But there is also a bad side, that is, even if the difficulty is adjusted to the highest, some "high-level players" can still pass the level very easily, because there are not many truly professional racing drivers who can play games, and the AI ​​through integrated calculations is not difficult for these "high-level players".

Summary: Learning AI will give players more freshness and humanized experience, but not too many professionals will enter your game, which also causes these AIs to behave less like professionals.

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3. Alien: Quarantine: Random settings enhance the excitement of the game

In ordinary FPS games, the enemy AI is shown by its dodging movements when the player is shooting around. In these games, the player is like a hunter, and the enemy is like prey that is similar to each other. But in Alien: Quarantine, this concept is completely subverted. The strength of the aliens in the game is exactly the same as that of the player. And they will not play by the rules. Their actions and movements are all random, which means that the player must remain highly nervous. The player needs to check the biological detector in his hand at all times and have a good sense of foresight.

Summary: The completely unpredictable AI setting greatly increases the excitement of the game and the player's sense of immersion.

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4. "City Conquest": Using AI to help developers develop and improve games

In the game "City Conquest", the biggest role of AI is not in the content of the game, but in the design of the game itself. During the development and iteration of the game, the game developers used AI to continuously test the balance of each building. And through the algorithm to simulate the battle between masters, a large amount of data was obtained to help developers adjust the parameters of the game to modify every detail in each game.

Summary: AI can help developers better improve the details of the game and conduct more comprehensive testing.

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5. Left 4 Dead: Changing the difficulty for each player in a multiplayer game

In the online mode of the well-known game "Left 4 Dead", players have to cooperate with three other real players to fight the infected along the way and escape from the virus-infected area. The game AI is also deeply applied in this game. In addition to controlling the actions of zombies, it also controls the type, attack speed, number, etc. of zombies according to the operating characteristics, level, remaining ammunition and other aspects of the four players.

Summary: In multiplayer online games, every player is different, and AI changes the difficulty and intensity of the game for each player to adapt to them, ensuring that everyone gets a satisfying, challenging experience.

Conclusion:

As mentioned above, AI can be used in a variety of ways in games. It can be a testing tool to make your game more perfect, or it can be a smarter NPC to make your game more interesting. AI is just an algorithm, but it is more than just an algorithm.