[ODE] OT: virtual creatures in games

[gl]

Interesting - I guess I should classify what I'm after.

Essentially I'd want creatures for an on-line world that do unspecified
interesting things using some believable motivation, and some would be
potentially hostile.  However, gameplay would not center around them (and
there would no need for predicatble outcomes) - it's more about having
interesting, unpredicatble and potentially dangerous things to explore, all
as part of a much larger landscape.  The creatures may themselves be
randomised to some extent, depending which way I end up taking this.

The idea is that the game is not only different every time, but I also want
my own creation to suprise me.

As this is a persistent online world, it would also be fun (if feasible) to
evolve creatures over time, or at least keep them learning and experimenting
with their environments.

As for inputs, I would have things like raycasting, light sensivity (if I
can figure out a fast way), perhaps smell, memory of other creature
types/individuals (eg. a creature could learn to become hostile to player(s)
if they treat them badly, or run scared etc), and possibly things like
memory of areas that are safe (hiding under a rock) - that kind of thing.

So, can anybody recommend an AI approach that fits the bill without huge
performance/memory requirements (memory because I'd want a lot of these, and
it might eventually be a console game too)?
--
gl

----- Original Message -----
From: "John DeWeese" <deweese@ict.usc.edu>
To: <ode@q12.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 11:54 PM
Subject: Re: [ODE] OT: virtual creatures in games


> I've had a few thoughts about this which might be fun to share. First
> of all, you have to ask what kind of game you want to make, but given
> that simulating an articulated creature takes a lot of investment in
> programming time and run-time computing, it is likely to be a primary
> feature of the game. If you have enough computing power, you can make
> it secondary and special-effects related if you so desire.
>
> Problem the first: traditional AI algorithms for path planning,
> decision making, etc. assume that the unit being controlled behaves
> predictably, i.e. that it will trivially (perhaps eventually) converge
> on a state, or die trying. Bad AI happens when the units get stuck, or
> start moving somewhere wierd like a live fire zone, but it's worse when
> you can't even guarantee if you virtual creature can move where a high
> level planner wants it to move. If you cannot guarantee this of your
> virtual creatures, you must limit their role to playthings (as in an
> exploration or toy game) or special effects. On the other hand, it
> would be very nifty to develop a framework which allows you to make
> some statements about what conditions are necessary for convergence
> (e.g. moving to a target) or divergence of a given creature. There may
> be some research on this out on the web. Karl Sims had a video of a
> little swimmy thing following a point, and it would follow it pretty
> well. If you've got some consistent directed locomotion, I believe you
> can start to design some meaningful higher level AI.
>
> One BAD thing to do would be to place the user in direct control of the
> creature, as in Quake... unless you can make some guarantees that the
> creature will do PRECISELY what the user expects when he or she expects
> it, which is difficult. You may have to come up with a hybrid kind of
> scheme, with some direct control and some implicit simulated control.
>
> What happens if you want to evolve the creature in-game? Well, lots and
> lots of waiting for one. Boring! That is, unless it's a "digipet" kind
> of game, which has different requirements.
>
> Regarding resource usage, you'll have to time it yourself according to
> the kind of creatures you have running around! This very much depends
> on your specific code. Very jointed creatures are a waste, of course.
> Neural networks should be pretty cheap if you keep the node count low,
> and most virtual creature projects have relatively small neural
> networks, on the order of 10 to 100. Memory is cheap!
>
> Finally, lack of control of basic gameplay principles like movement (as
> I mentioned before) generates big problems for a game designer setting
> challenges for a player. Often in a game you want to advance the state
> of a story or something of the sort, and in order to advance you
> require that the player accomplish some goal or solve a problem using a
> skill. If the player operates on different rules of movement or
> interaction than your assumptions, you as the designer will no longer
> have control over how the player is rewarded regarding goals and
> stories! If you require the player to evolve creatures for every task,
> this is expensive and the player will have difficulty exploring the
> space of what each creature can do. This might not even be a bad thing,
> but it is at least LOTS more difficult if you can't consistently teach
> all players a skill! This topic needs more discussion, though, since
> you may very well come up with a method to solve this problem or make
> it irrelevant and still make a game fun.
>
> Sorry for the long post...
>    John DeWeese
>
> On Tuesday, March 25, 2003, at 12:13 PM, gl wrote:
>
> >
> > Sorry for the (sorta) OT post, I promise it's a one off, but I know
> > there's
> > a lot of people here that have worked on virtual creatures.
> >
> > Without having done any work in AI (though I understand some of the
> > principles behind neural nets in general), I'm wondering how feasible
> > simple
> > learning creatures and/or fully evolved creatures are for use in a real
> > game.
> >
> > Using the simple creatures that learn to walk/crawl/jump as an
> > example, how
> > heavy are they on system resources (both memory & CPU)?  I'm really
> > asking
> > about two cases:
> >
> > a) where you have evolved a creature in a seperate app to a sufficient
> > level
> > of intelligence, and just want to use its brain as is in a game,
> > without
> > further learning ability - how much memory would its brain take up
> > (roughly), and how CPU heavy would a logic tick be?
> >
> > b) where you want the creature to continue learning in-game to make its
> > behaviour more interesting and unpredictable.  Again, what are the
> > resource
> > drains?
> >
> > I'm only after very rough guides - any insight would be appreciated.
> > --
> > gl
> >
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