IA on AI

AIIDE 2009 - AI Challenges in Sims 3 - Richard Evans

2009-10-29T16:38:00.005-05:00

This is the rough dump of my notes from Richard Evans' AIIDE 2009 invited talk on the AI challenges they faced in developing The Sims 3. Some of it was familiar to me as being exactly what he presented as part of our joint lecture at the GDC AI Summit in 2009. Other portions of it were new.Specifically, I enjoyed seeing more about how they handled some of the LOD options. For example, rather than

2010 GDC AI Summit Announced

2009-10-21T09:03:00.001-05:00

The GDC folks have put up the main page for the AI Summit at the 2010 GDC. This year, I am listed as a Summit Advisor alongside Steve Rabin. While I helped out a lot last year, I wasn't listed as an official advisor. That makes for a wonderful honor. I'm so pleased to be working with all the great people in the AI Game Programmers Guild to put this event on.

AIIDE 2009 - The Photoshop of AI Debate - Michael Mateas

2009-10-19T17:22:00.003-05:00

The following are my rough notes from Michael Mateas' invited talk. He continued the "Photoshop of AI" debate that was started by Chris Hecker at GDC 2008 and continued at a panel at the 2009 AI Summit at GDC. To sum up what he presented, he basically said it was a non-issue because it was based on a number of false premises. Here are my notes:Recaps Chris Hecker's 2008 talk on the subject. Talks

AIIDE 2009 - Game Design: An AI Perspective - Paul Tozour

2009-10-18T21:18:00.002-05:00

My rough notes from Paul Tozour's AIIDE 2009 presentation, Game Design: An AI Perspective Game design from the perspective of AI - the opposite of Will Wright's AIIDE lecture. How can AI contribute to the advancement of game design? Using game AI as formal modeling and analysis tools. Not as modeling NPCs. You stop playing a good game when you stop using enough of your mind to be engaging.

AIIDE 2009

2009-10-14T10:44:00.002-05:00

I'm at AIIDE this year for the first time. I will try to post some comments here or there throughout the week. Considering the speakers that they have invited--Paul Tozour, Richard Evans, Michael Mateas, David Hernandez-Cerpa, Steve Gargolinski and Leland Helper--I figure I'm good for a while.

Now on Twitter...

2009-09-10T11:21:00.001-05:00

While I have been rigidly avoiding getting sucked into the vortex that is Facebook, I figured it was time to get onto Twitter. You can follow me as "IADaveMark". I promise not to bombard you with useless messages... for a while, anyway.

Dave Mark to speak at GameX Industry Summit

2009-08-07T11:08:00.002-05:00

I will be speaking along with Kevin Dill (Rockstar-New England) at the GameX Industry Summit in Philadelphia this October 24-25th. From the GameX site:"GameX Industry Summit is designed by industry professionals for industry professionals. It represents a deep and concerted production between the GameX production team and five IGDA chapters in New York, New Jersey, Boston, Baltimore and

Silicon Prairie News Interviews Dave Mark

2009-08-04T17:02:00.000-05:00

About a month ago, I was invited to sit down with Adam Templeton of Silicon Prairie News. He wanted to talk to me about Intrinsic Algorithm, my book, the state of game AI, and - more relevant to the purpose of their site - the Omaha Game Developers Association. We had a great chat for about an hour in the library on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha. What resulted was a 20-minute

Details of GDC Austin Lecture

2009-06-11T21:21:00.003-05:00

The information for my lecture, Cover Me! Promoting MMO Player Interaction through Advanced AI, at GDC Austin has been posted.Here's the relevant information:TakeawayThis lecture shows examples of some of the aspects of PvP games that are attractive to players, the AI techniques that can be used to replicate them, and the effect that inclusion of these aspects can have in an MMO environment. The

Speaking at GDC Austin

2009-06-06T12:55:00.000-05:00

I will be speaking at the 2009 Austin GDC, September 15-18. Rather than the broad-based coverage of the GDC, the Austin GDC is more tailored to online games. In that vein, I will be doing a 1-hour lecture entitled "Cover Me!: Promoting MMO Player Interaction through Advanced AI". More details soon.

And the award for Best AI goes to...

2009-05-28T14:40:00.005-05:00

(This is a repost from my Gamasutra Expert Blog)At the last GDC, I attended a session by David Sirlin entitled Balancing Multiplayer Competitive Games. Being an AI designer and programmer, this session may seem like somewhat of an outlier in my typical GDCfare. However, a simple strikethrough on the title could yield Balancing Competitive Games – which falls squarely into the AI and simulation

Interview on AIGameDev

2009-04-15T09:57:00.004-05:00

Back on April 5th, Alex Champandard of AIGameDev interviewed me for about 90 minutes for the Members portion of his site. Our topic was how to use behavioral mathematics (such as I cover in my book) to improve the bots in Left 4 Dead. We cover a lot of interesting information in the interview. Some of the examples refer to things I covered in my Post-Play'em columns on the AI in the game.He has

2009 GDC AI Roundtable Audio

2009-04-12T20:45:00.004-05:00

I have just posted the audio from the GDC AI roundtables on my GDC 2009 page. You can either stream it from the plug-in or you can download it to your own machine.

Choices: Not Just for Players Anymore

2009-04-10T10:26:00.004-05:00

In a recent opinion article by James Portnow entitled The Problem Of Choice, the idea was posited that there are two types of decisions that a player can be faced with in a game: "problems" and"choices". The former is something that involves a "right answer" such as a mathematically optimal solution. Therefore, theoretically it can be solved. We are all familiar with such challenges ingames --

Lost Contacts

2009-04-04T22:08:00.001-05:00

I lost my email and contacts file in a virus escapade right after GDC. If I am supposed to have your email address, please tag me so I can re-add you.Additionally, if you attended the AI Summit at GDC and I didn't get a chance to meet you, feel free to introduce yourself. You can find my contact information here.Thank you.

Post-GDC Ramblings

2009-03-30T16:31:00.006-05:00

Well, I'm back and somewhat recovered from GDC. (It always helps to have a day of downtime built into the end of the week.) From the comments that I and the rest of the participants received, the inaugural AI Summit was well received. I know that all of us were very pleased in not only the presentations that we each delivered but in all of the other ones as well. Apart from a false start at the

GDC 2009 Coverage

2009-03-22T12:27:00.005-05:00

As the week of GDC rolls out, I will be posting observations both here and on this page. Additionally, any files or pictures related to the AI Summit, will appear on this page. It's going to be a hectic week so I might not get stuff up daily. Be patient with me.For those of you looking to find the stuff from last year, you can find it here.

Thoughts Before the GDC AI Summit

2009-03-19T14:00:00.007-05:00

I have been busily preparing all sorts of stuff at the last minute for the upcoming AI Summit at GDC. Having been involved since the initial discussions started at the last GDC, it has been interesting watching it grow.The Summit is being put on by the newly formed AI Game Programmers Guild. As such, there are plenty of really sharp people involved. What was very striking, however, was how many

Gamasutra "Expert Blogger"

2009-03-19T00:39:00.003-05:00

Today I was invited to begin writing as an "Expert Blogger" for Gamasutra, the game industry's #1 news and information source. This is apparently something they have started recently. There are "member blogs" and "expert ones". It seems like anyone can start a member blog on the site, but the "expert" ones are invite only. Anyway, I'm in some good company. Some of the other experts that are

Gamasutra Article on Intelligent Mistakes

2009-03-18T09:18:00.004-05:00

There's a nice, if incomplete, article on Gamasutra today by Neversoft's Mick West titled Intelligent Mistakes: How to Incorporate Stupidity Into Your AI Code. It's not a new subject, certainly, but what caught my eye was the fact that he used the game of Poker as one of his examples. In the first chapter of my book, "Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI," I actually use Poker as a sort of "jumping

Rebalancing Scrabble (and other games)

2009-03-17T23:18:00.005-05:00

It's sometimes interesting the places you can find nuggets that can be applied to game development. The Wall Street Journal has a regular column called "The Numbers Guy". I have often been interested or amused at what appears there. After all, having just finished a book entitled, "Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI", I am obviously sort of a "numbers guy" myself.Anyway, today's column was titled

7 Ways to Make your AI Smarter

2009-03-15T21:32:00.004-05:00

I got steered to yet another new blog that I hadn't seen before, A Games Design Blog. (Not a terribly cryptic title, is it?) While the author, Rob Hale, writes more about game design in general than AI, his latest post, 7 Ways to Make your AI Smarter was, as you would suspect, about AI.There's nothing terribly earth-shattering about what he says, but there are some good points embedded in the

Look Inside "Behavioral Mathematics"

2009-03-14T15:35:00.004-05:00

Well, I guess my book has finally arrived on Amazon's loading dock. They have managed to scan it so that it shows the "look inside" logo and stuff. So those of you who would like to peruse the table of contents, the index and the first 5 or 6 pages may do so. Of course, if you really want to have some fun, you can do the whole "surprise me" bit. Keep at it long enough and you could read the

The Case for Procedural AI

2009-03-08T21:21:00.004-05:00

Ok... this goes in the "Amen, brother!" category. Kris Erickson at PS3Informer.com wrote a column entitled Why Procedural AI is the Next Big Milestone in Gaming. In it, he smacks on the problem of ostensibly large-scale world with very repetitive content. He sums it up with one question:How can we create realistic open world games where people that we meet in the street repeat more than the same

2019 per Microsoft

2009-03-03T11:20:00.005-06:00

Ok... it was one thing to listen to Ray Kurzweil's vision of the next 10 years during his Keynote last year at GDC. It is quite another to see a video from Microsoft of what they think 2019 will look like. Ray suggested that the game developers (and mostly we AI folks) would have a lot to do with the future. I believe that MS would agree with that suggestion.