The "Lambda Parameter"?

Greetings Fellow Newsgroupies,

I work for a video game company producing games that would fall under
the category of "First Person Shooter". These are heavily 3D
simulated environments (forgive me if you are already familiar), where
the game involves using a handful of simulated weapons to kill others
and not be killed.

I often find in writing AI for these games that there is a "sweet
spot" of behavioral complexity where the allies and enemies provide
enough variety to make the game challenging, but not so much as to
appear erratic or indecisive. To be honest, I was quite surprised by
this when I first ran into it.

Starting with AI for such a game is simple enough:
- If you can't see the enemy, move until you can.
- If you can see the enemy, shoot at him / her.

This is an effective strategy, but very simple and predictable,
clearly "dumb" as our target audience would rightly criticize. Now
add a third behavior:

- Occasionally move to a nearby random location.

And suddenly the game becomes infinitely more complex and considerably
less predictable. It's tempting at this point to say "if one extra
behavior is good, two is better". However having explored that road
in painful detail, I have yet to find any additional behaviors that
substantially add to the qualitative appearance of Intelligence, and
in fact further detailed attempts at things like the so called "squad
AI" or "tactics" are more often a detriment. I suspect that a similar
situation holds for most nondeterministic games, including something
like GO.

So where are we going here? In so far as AI playing a game as an
opponent or an ally, is there such a thing as a behavioral complexity
"Lambda Parameter" between too chaotic and too static? And if so, how
does that affect our concept of AI as a game player and AI as a whole?


Just Curious,
Christopher Reed
Raven Software / Activision

Your point of view is quite interesting and hopefully you'll find
that lambda parameter to progress level of reality of AI opponents.

Though I'd like to say it doesn't exist. Situation you mentioned
is a one on one fighting scenario and is described well,
meaning additional AI would make it more erratic but not smarter.

Compared to human evolution this is equivalent to pre stone age.
Later on humans learned to fight in groups and rises effectivity
in terms of killing - of course. This new tactic is more challenging
and used in Far Cry and pleasures player - you may know.

Acting as a compact group or flock of opponents implys
communication between individuals. So you may say language
is that searched lambda parameter, but it is not a parameter
and not a technology it is kind of sibling of consciousness.

Personaly I wouldn't describe the difference between
grass hoppers and ants as a parameter. If biologists discover
this difference as a switch to turn flies into state building insects,
you're right then.

Don't bother me as somebody detecting mind in ants. As long
as nobody has a provable test to find consciousness in human
brains it is not worth to discuss.

So train your AI opponents to talk to each other, make them
aware of each other, let them know how to fight together, give
them tools to develop an adequate strategy, the ability to forget
a failed one and memory to learn from failures.
Balance maximum kills and survival.

Then one day they will learn to make peace not war.

Regards