Artificial Intelligence in Games

Benas Liekis

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What is AI in Games?
• Techniques used in computer and video games to
produce the illusion of intelligence in the behavior of
NPC's.

• It makes game ‘feel’ natural

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Goals of Game AI
• Be ‘fun’
• Run fast
• Use minimal memory

3
Game AI History
• 1960’s
– First computer game
– Board games against the computer

4
Game AI History

– AI defeated a human player in chess for the

first time (1983)
– Pac-Man (1980)

5
Game AI History

Deep Blue defeats chess champ Gary Kasparov (1997)

6
Popular AI Algorithms Used In
Computer Games
• A(*)
• Finite State Machines
• Artificial Neural Networks

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A(*) Algorithm
• Goal: Find the shortest path
• Prerequisites
– Graph
– Method to estimate distance between points
• Basic Method
– Try all paths?
• Takes time
– Orient search towards target

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Finite State Machines

• Each object in a game can have a number of states during its life.

• Model of behavior composed of:

– States
– Transitions
– Actions
• Entry action
• Exit action
• Input action
• Transition action

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Finite State Machines Example:
Pacman Ghost

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Artificial Neural Networks
• Brain

• Trainable

• How to take advantage of an artificial neural network in a simple

game?

• Fuzzy logic

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Conclusion
• Games With No AI?
• Game AI has come a long way since the 1970s
• Future looks bright

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References
1) Grzyb, Janusz. Artificial Intelligence in Games. Software
Developer’s Journal. June 2005.
2) Game Artificial Intelligence. Wikipedia Ecyclopedia. September 7,
2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_artificial_intelligence
3) Petersson, Anders. Artificial Intelligence in Games. WorldForge
Newsletter. August 2001.
http://worldforge.org/project/newsletters/August2001/AI/#SECTIO
N00020000000000000000
4) Popovic, Zoran; Martin, Steven; Hertzmann, Aaron; Grochow,
Keith. Style-Based Inverse Kinematics. 2004.
http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/styleik/styleik.pdf
5) A*. The Game Programming Wiki. September 15, 2006.
http://gpwiki.org/index.php/A_star

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