Just a quick question, Ive never really looked at the AI subject in depth. But say I wish to develop a NPC (AI) in a game. All I need to do it program the AI to just react to the changing world right?

i.e.

at x time of day walk faster
jump up nearby cliff, but only allowed to jump every x seconds...

etc...

There really is nothing else behind AI I'm assuming? I'm just making sure xD

All replies are appreciated, thanks

There can be alot more behind it if you want. (It all depends on how complex you need/want the decisionmaking and behaviours to be)

OK, I don't know why I thought there would be anything else behind this. Thanks

To quote Brian Reynolds (GDC 2004), "rand(1..3) is a perfectly valid starting AI". Obviously it can get tons more complicated than that. Theoretically, however, all AI tends to boil down to looking at the world state and applying rules to it. Most of the differences in AI architectures is the organization of how you process those rules.

yeah, ok, thats what I thought : D. Thanks

To quote Brian Reynolds (GDC 2004), "rand(1..3) is a perfectly valid starting AI". Obviously it can get tons more complicated than that. Theoretically, however, all AI tends to boil down to looking at the world state and applying rules to it. Most of the differences in AI architectures is the organization of how you process those rules.

Makes perfect sense, that's what I thought as well. Thanks

To quote Brian Reynolds (GDC 2004), "rand(1..3) is a perfectly valid starting AI". Obviously it can get tons more complicated than that. Theoretically, however, all AI tends to boil down to looking at the world state and applying rules to it. Most of the differences in AI architectures is the organization of how you process those rules.

I would hope the description of (real) AI would include having the program do observations and write its own rules (adapt/learn).

Temporlal and Uncertainty aspects could come under 'looking at the world' -- as would cognizance (interpretting the world).

But I dont think 'applying rules to it' really covers that important AI feature of learning (building the logic the decisions are based on).

Even if its forced to build rules offline (because of the cost of doing that process) and even being guided significantly by a human-being at points.

Few of the things we see are really AI (in games) - mostly its just hand crafted rote logic and AI-useful tools.

But "learning" is not what game AI does. And it REALLY gets you in trouble from a design standpoint when it is attempted.

(Do I really need to keep typing "game AI" every time instead of "AI" on a message board devoted, by its very nature, to "games"?)

But "learning" is not what game AI does. And it REALLY gets you in trouble from a design standpoint when it is attempted.

(Do I really need to keep typing "game AI" every time instead of "AI" on a message board devoted, by its very nature, to "games"?)

No. No you do not.

Too, while I understand your point that "learning" can be troublesome - is it not at its heart simply giving the AI a different state to react to?

"
But "learning" is not what game AI does. And it REALLY gets you in trouble from a design standpoint when it is attempted.
(Do I really need to keep typing "game AI" every time instead of "AI" on a message board devoted, by its very nature, to "games"?)
"

That is why I mentioned offline -- though we ARE getting sufficient processing resources to do some (more than a little) 'adaption' in-game.

One of the problem with AI is the the huge amount of logic it takes as it gets better (more 'intelligent') and a big part of an AI task is building that logic.

Having the system's "learning" of that logic efficient has to happen -- some by observing player behavior - mimicing, others by building the logic dircted by a human (which becomes the choke point no matter how fast the computer gets).

Even 'emergent behavior' (touted by so much AI literature) has to be applied selectively by a human (emergent behavior that is wrong is worse than none).

Ditto for NN which is still built up and culled by a human hand (training sets and controlled learning cycles and disposing of mis-grown NN)

What is the A* search without the hand tailored heuristics which can grow horrendously as the game complexity grows. The further step of a meta search to create the proper heuristics is closer to "AI" (and yes, that will probably have to happen 'out-of-game' for a long time yet)

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You might also have to come up with a new term "Intelligence Simulation" to really express the truth about most 'Game AI'