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Next-Gen Content Creation for
Next-Gen AI
Damián Isla, Naimad Games
AI Content Creation
What’s the best way to author AI content
for games?
(And who does the authoring?)
(And what is “AI Content” in the first place?)
“Photoshop of AI” Panel, GDC 09
The Starting Point
The central competency of Game AI is
expressive power for the behavior author,
not “intelligence”
“Intelligence” is only useful insofar as
 It enables gameplay
 It supports the fiction
 It makes the game more fun
The Problem
AI is HARD
 Technically complex
 Highly interconnected
 Impossible to test
 Culturally awkward
The Problem
Designer
Engineer
Fundamentally not
in a position to fully
specify all funrelevant behavior
Fundamentally not
responsible for fun
2 Solutions
1. Need a new breed of engineering-competent
designers or design-sensitive engineers
(Michael Mateas)
2. Need better authoring paradigms, a
“Photoshop of AI”
(Chris Hecker)
The Photoshop of AI
Why has game AI not settled on
 Common control structures
 Common authoring paradigms
 Common metrics
 Common APIs
Why are we so very, very far from WYSIWIG?
What does WYSIWIG even mean?
Wisdom from Douglas Adams
AI is a 5-dimensional
problem
How do you
 Visualize
 Explore
 Specify
that entire space?
AI Content Creation
How do we currently author AI content for
games?
AI Content Creation
AI is HARD
 Technically complex
 Highly interconnected
 Impossible to test
 Culturally awkward
The path of least
resistance:
“do it in code”
AI Content Creation
Engineer
Designer
Everything in code
-
All procedure in code
Exposed parameters
Framework in code
Visual construction /
managed coding
Harness
Everything in script
STATE OF THE ART
Disclaimer(s)
This is my own highly-biased point of view.
Not going to talk about content creation for





Strategic AI
Living-world AI
Procedural narrative
Spatial Reasoning
Etc.
(Also not going to define “AI”)
The State of the Art
Reactive
The State of the Art
when A happens, do B
x 10,000
hide
cover
grenade
fight
melee
shoot
root
uncover
search
pursue
idle
sleep
Managing Complexity in the Halo 2 AI (GDC 05)
BT Editor Prototype, Alex Champandard, AIGameDev.com
misBeHavinG BT Editor, Michael Dawe, Big Huge Games
Situation Editor, NBA 09: The Inside, Brian Schwab, SONY
Zombie, Steve Mariotti, Nihilistic Software
SPIROPS A.I.
Final Fantasy 12 Gambit System, Square Enix
The State of the Art
Planning
F.E.A.R., Jeff Orkin, Monolith Productions
F.E.A.R., Jeff Orkin, Monolith Productions
Planning
Opportunity?
A tool that allows designers to
 Influence
 Visualize
 Debug
their plans
The State of the Art
Affordance-based
The Sims, EA/Maxis
Halo 3: Building a Better Battle (GDC 08)
Halo 3: Building a Better Battle (GDC 08)
Environment markup in Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft
The State of the Art
Learning
AC Game Recording Viewer, Artificial Contender, TruSoft
AC Knowledge Viewer, Artificial Contender, TruSoft
The Restaurant Game, Jeff Orkin, MIT Media Lab
http://theRestaurantGame.net
Behavior Capture
Pros:
 leverage the data-mining revolution
 Potentially no custom interface at all?
Questions:
 Iteration time
 Tweakability
 Transparency
 Are we learning the right things?
 Are we learning the deep structure?
N-Grams
Troilus and Cressida
“They say all lovers swear more
performance than they are wont to keep
obliged faith unforfeited.”
Merchant of
Venice
- Shakespearean Quadrigram
The State of the Art
The Periphery
Kynapse UnrealEd Plugin, Autodesk
Havok Behavior
Endorphin, NaturalMotion
THE FUTURE
The Future
Middleware continues to eat away at the
periphery of the intelligence problem






Intelligent animation
Pathfinding
Gesture recognition
Vision
Natural language
Behavior Capture
But what about the Photoshop of AI?
The Photoshop of AI
Warning: Craziness ahead
?
?
Façade, Mateas & Stern
MC Leon,
Improv Technologies,
Siggraph ‘99
"If you know your
character's
thoughts, the
proper vocal and
bodily expressions
will naturally
follow."
"All action on
the stage must
have an inner
justification, be
logical,
coherent, and
real."
Constantin Stanislavski
(1863-1938)
Method Acting
Designer
Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. You should have run
away screaming right there.
AI
Really? What, because of the grenade?
Method Acting
Designer
No, no, because of the kitten.
AI
Huh. So I’m afraid of kittens?
Designer
Yes.
Method Acting
AI
So would you say I’m more afraid of kittens or of
water?
Designer
Well, I hadn’t thought of it, but … yeah, I would say
you’re more afraid of kittens.
AI
Alright. Let’s go again!
Cooperative AI
 Medical Expert Systems
 Mycin
 CALO/IRIS
 GPS Navigation
 Clippy
2 Solutions
1. Need a new breed of engineering-competent
designers or design-sensitive engineers
(Michael Mateas)
2. Need better authoring paradigms, a
“Photoshop of AI”
(Chris Hecker)
2 Solutions
3. Both



Content creation for AI will continue to be
extremely technical
It will be a form of coding
It will be done by designers*
* where “designer” is defined as the person
responsible for making the game fun.
Thanks
Alex Champandard, AiGameDev.com
Petra Champandard-Pail, AiGameDev.com
Michael Dawe, Big Huge Games
Brett Laming, Rockstar Leeds
Steve Mariotti, Nihilistic Software
Jeff Orkin, MIT Media Lab / Monolith Productions
Brian Schwab, SCEA
Bungie Studios