i''m planning to do a strategy game, so... can I do the pathfinding and unit behaviour but without using AI? actually, what is the meaning of game AI? i''m pretty confused!!! do you think the ghosts in pacman are intelligent?? are they AI??

I''m pretty sure you need AI, unless you''re willing to hire a staff that plays against your players 24/7

Sure, ghosts in pac man can be considered AI. Just simple AI. I''d suggest you go read up more about AI. Just search through the articles and forums here.

well, if you cant figure out how to do the AI, you can spend hours and hours coding all of the movment information that calculates for every variable in the map files

pathfinding and unit behavior is game AI... not matter how simple it is. while they do nifty things with AI these days (neural nets, genetic algorithms, et cetera), game AI is not as complicated.
for a game, whatever controls the stuff other than the player''s character is considered AI. so, if you have a unit that wanders randomly and fires a gun at anyone who gets too close, you have a unit with a really simple AI.
don''t let the complexity of AI daunt you; you don''t need that level of detail to make a game work nicely.
i could have sworn there was a forum about this already (AI vs Game AI), but i don''t see it anywhere...

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

I partially agree on this. But if you call *every* algorithm in games AI, how do you seperate plain game algorithms from real intelligence?

In my opinion there is a difference between backtracking something and solving it with GA''s. I think real AI distinguishes itself by being unpredictable and not transparent.

Edo

Some like to make the academic distinction between synthetic and artificial intelligence (LaMothe was one of those), synthetic intelligence (SI) being deterministic algorithms that simulated intelligent response within the specific context of the game situation (which covers most if not all of today''s game AI); and artificial intelligence (AI) being software which conforms to classical definitions of intelligence - capable of learning, unpredictable, arriving at independent and possibly unique solutions to problems.

As we all know, in games whatever works is often "good enough." Interesting debate.

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Thanks to Kylotan for the idea!

Yeah, you can get away with murder in game AI. Very simple underlying code can generate seemingly intelligent behaviour, which will work in most of the game's situations, and give the illusion of 'intelligence'.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter how you do it! The trouble is, hardcoded AI will not cope with very flexible scenarios, not being able to learn.



Artificial Intelligence Depot - Maybe it's not all about graphics...


Edited by - alexjc on December 11, 2001 5:57:33 AM

Real AI makes the replay value much higher cuz the more you play the better the computer plays. But it can be a pain.

Game AI isn''t that complicated... the ghost in pacman just looked for the shortest route to pacman and walked it. It wasn''t very intellegent because they should have tried to corner you and probably worked as a team. But hey its pacman .

Actually, the ghosts in pacman were one of, if not the first examples of game AI. Each had a different strategy for chasing the player and the strategies were designed so as to interact and drive the player to the slaughter so to speak.

Timkin

Edotorpedo, i think wether or not somthing is AI depends on wether or now we treat the object using it as being alive. In truth, the little brown guys in Mario have the same movement patern as a big rock rolling forward. The both look pretty much like this...

if(Alive)
X++;

but we say the Monster has AI (however bad) because it is a living thing, it has a will (walking left). A rock on the other hand is just physicis, the rock doesn''t Want to roll, it just does cause it''s a rock. At least thats my oppion.