CONFERENCE
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AI
The AI Summit at GDC features panels and lectures from more than two dozen of the top game AI programmers in the industry. Organized as a collective effort by the AI Game Programmers Guild, this event promises to give you an inside look at key architectures and issues within successful commercial games, as well as let you eavesdrop on conversations, debates, and rants on how game AI can move forward. This summit is targeted toward the intermediate to advanced programmer who wants deeper insight into the world of game AI, however anyone who is interested in what AI can offer next generation games will find invaluable insights and lessons from the speakers.
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2012 HIGHLIGHTED SESSIONS
Beyond Eliza: Constructing Socially Engaging AI
Richard Evans (Little Text People), Emily Short (Independent), Stephane Bura (Namaste), Michael Treanor (Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz), Josh McCoy (Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz)
One of the frontiers of game AI is building agents that socially engage the player and each other in deep and dynamic ways. Traditional behavior-selection rules do not apply, while hand-scripted solutions do not scale and are often prohibitively brittle. Social and conversational beings require a deeper modeling of interests, drives, emotions, and an awareness of social norms. This lecture will show you architectures from three production games, Storybricks, Prom Week, and a game yet to be announced, that introduce new ways of constructing characters to allow deeper, flexible and more meaningful social engagement with the player.
AI Postmortems: Kingdoms of Amalur, Darkness II and Skulls of the Shogun
Michael Dawe (38 Studios), Daniel Brewer (Digital Extremes), Michael Pfeifer (Plush Apocalypse Productions)
This session provides a high-density look into some of the unique challenges that were faced (and conquered!) in three upcoming or recently released games. We will show how massive open-world RPG, Reckoning, dealt with the scheduling of hundreds of NPCs and how they dealt with designer/programmer interaction for authoring behaviors. The Darkness II shows how agent co-ordination, collision avoidance, and the perception-reaction system all contribute to the believable enemies in this story-driven, supernatural action-shooter. Additionally, we will show the solutions that were used to address challenges unique to a fast-action, turn-based strategy game, Skulls of the Shogun.
Turing Tantrums: AI Developers Rant!
Michael Dawe (Big Huge Games/38 Studios), Kevin Dill (Lockheed Martin Global Training & Logistics), Stephane Bura (Storybricks), Brian Schwab (Blizzard Entertainment), Neil Kirby (Alcatel-Lucent), Michael Treanor (Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz), Dave Mark (Intrinsic Algorithm) and David "Rez" Graham (Electronic Arts (Sims Division))
Sometimes things just need to be said. Saying them out loud in a room filled with (hopefully) like-minded people just makes it all the more interesting and cathartic. Seven AI developers - and one AI evangelist designer - from all corners of the industry will deliver quick, to-the-point and often humorous rants about what's on their mind regarding game AI.
Believable Tactics for Squad AI
Alex Champandard (AiGameDev.com), Matthew Jack (Moon Collider Ltd) and Philip Dunstan (AiGameDev.com)
Squads of non-player characters are notoriously hard to get right, particularly when designing the highly visible interactions of teammate squad members. Through a series of live, interactive demos, this presentation will compare a wide variety of techniques commonly used in the games industry for creating dynamic squad behaviors, including attacking and flanking, suppression and player leading and following. The analysis will include both centralized and distributed designs for squad member synchronization, the trade-offs of scripted versus procedural designs and high-level techniques for tactical squad path finding and cover selection.
AI SUMMIT ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Steve Rabin
Nintendo of America
Steve is a principal software engineer at Nintendo of America, where he researches new techniques for Nintendo's next generation systems, develops tools, and supports Nintendo developers. Before Nintendo, Steve worked primarily as an AI engineer at several Seattle start-ups including Gas Powered Games, WizBang Software Productions, and Surreal Software. He managed and edited the AI Game Programming Wisdom series of books, the book Introduction to Game Development, and has over a dozen articles published in the Game Programming Gems series. He's spoken at the Game Developers Conference, moderated the AI roundtables, and founded the AI Game Programmers Guild. Steve teaches game AI at both the University of Washington Extension and at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. He earned a BS in computer engineering and an MS in computer science, both from the University of Washington.
Dave Mark
Intrinsic Algorithm
Dave is the President and Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, an independent game development studio and AI consulting company in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the author of the book "Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI" and is a contributor to the "AI Game Programming Wisdom" and "Game Programming Gems" book series from Charles River Media. Dave is also a founding member of the AI Game Programmers Guild and has spoken at numerous conferences including being a co-advisor for the previous AI Summits at GDC. He continues to further his education by attending the University of Life. He has no plans to graduate any time soon.
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