Hi, Has anyone got any good links on the technical details of the AI in 'The Sims'? I know some of the details such as that objects broadcast desires that they satisfy and that the sims themselves have differing levels of desires. But I don't know what kind of desires they are etc..

Have you played it?
If you have talent for AI you could find these answers extremely easily.

This thread should help.

Quote: Original post by Raghar
Have you played it?
If you have talent for AI you could find these answers extremely easily.

Yeah, I mean just look at HL2:EP1, they clearly used concurrent artificial networks for the AI, cooperating with baysian networks. He asked for technical details, not a discouraging commnent. In case you actually know, then why don't you tell us? Of course you might know of hundreds of technques giving you results close the The Sims', but do you actually know what they use? And can you prove that your methods is as good or better than theirs?

Totally agree with you... I have the Sims and I have playing guides just for the express purpose of working out the mechanisms but they only take you so far (and tbh I am not a fan of the sims - I just like the AI from the technical standpoint)

Doggan - excellent stuff!

Quote: Original post by CTar

Quote: Original post by Raghar
Have you played it?
If you have talent for AI you could find these answers extremely easily.

Yeah, I mean just look at HL2:EP1, they clearly used concurrent artificial networks for the AI, cooperating with baysian networks. He asked for technical details, not a discouraging commnent. In case you actually know, then why don't you tell us? Of course you might know of hundreds of technques giving you results close the The Sims', but do you actually know what they use? And can you prove that your methods is as good or better than theirs?

To Raghar's defense, he asked what kind of desires, which you can know by playing the game, not what technology is used to compute them.

Quote: Original post by XiotexStudios
Totally agree with you... I have the Sims and I have playing guides just for the express purpose of working out the mechanisms but they only take you so far (and tbh I am not a fan of the sims - I just like the AI from the technical standpoint)

Fine then you can answer your own question.

Quote: But I don't know what kind of desires they are

If you wanted to ask about AI, you should say what you already know, and show your guesses. Or you might ask where you'd find some resources for learning. The most enjoyable way, how to learn what you asked about, is game play analysis.
Not only by trying to guess how they did it, but also by trying to estimate how would be best way to DO it. If you'd create small programs for testing your theories even better.

Or you might look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion#Radiant_A.I.

This talks about problem someone that don't have experience with AI, and don't know what to expect from a little working AI, could get when he is using AI middleware.

You might also learn some psychology, to be able to model them properly. The characters from the game you asked about behaved as people with high level of pathological type of neurosis. While neurosis in AI characters might be nice they overdid it a "little".

You might also google for "behavioral AI". It would show some interesting resources.

Thanks - some good pointers there.

So, the Sims AI worked fundamentally like so.

Each avatar has a set of needs/desires. These are of course directly visible to the player, along with an intensity. Objects in the game world -- like refrigerators -- radiate that they can reduce the intensity of certain needs, like food. The avatar can do some pathfinding, obviously. So basically the character wanders around until it decides to satisfy some desire, probably based on the intensity of the desire and the intensity of the radiated desire-providers around it. (Just a guess, my knowledge gets hazy here.)

The cool thing about this system was that you could drop completely new objects into the game world without having to make any particular revisions to the game. If you added a robot with a bucket that radiated that it could reduce the need to go to the bathroom and added it to the world, the avatar was smart enough to go to it without needing any AI changes at all.