How to Incorporate Stupidity Into Your AI Code

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3947/intelligent_mistakes_how_to_.php

by arem • 17 years ago

109 18 17 years ago

chops• 17 years ago

Very clever, and it's probably true that "intelligent mistakes" are the keys to believable and (more importantly) to enjoyable gamer experience, especially in the domain of games where everything is known and completely predictable (such as in his example with billiards).

Fascinating stuff indeed.

malkia• 17 years ago

Great article from Mick!

This also reminds how the folks from New World Computing (Heroes Of Might of Magic) were forced to dumb down the AI, so it's more interresting, challenging...

shellerik• 17 years ago

Interesting ideas. I wonder if the perfect AI would study its opponent's moves and learn to move just as they would, then it would be like the human is playing against themselves.

bad_user• 17 years ago

It would be really hard ... because it involves studying your intentions rather than your moves.

In chess this is doable (the intent is clearer after the fact, and the possible moves are more limited), but think about CStrike for example ... how is your algorithm going to realize that you're protecting a gate because you don't want your opponents to sneak behind your teammates? Even simple questions become hard ... say you're attacking X1 just as a distraction, while your teammates are attacking X2 ... a team uses slight variations of some tactic, it's mostly never the same (different men in charge, different hotspots, switching between X1 and X2, etc ...). Gathering useful statistics about it requires lots of played games and lots of resources, and I don't think it's doable on your average gamer's hardware.

I know, stupid example :) but you get the point.

iron_ball• 17 years ago

This is the reason it's difficult to come up with fun AI for head-to-head fighting games: once you get past the thin veneer of mastering the moves, they're entirely about mindgames. A FSM-based CPU opponent does not have a thought process a human player can predict and exploit, nor the ability to avoid repeated mistakes.

I believe this applies to many other types of games as well, but games with many split-second paper-scissors-rock decisions suffer the most. A computer can be programmed to scout out and react to a carrier buildup in Starcraft, but cannot easily be programmed to outguess a jab/throw mixup in Street Fighter.

dfranke• 17 years ago

Artificial stupidity? Isn't there already enough of the real McCoy?

patio112• 17 years ago

It is worthwhile taking this joke as serious, because the perspective on why we need AI at all is enlightening.

Take WoW, for example. Right now there are several million players logged in, busy beating the tar out of several million bad guys who are programmed to lose. They are playing, and paying good money, to have the illusion of challenge while winning the overwhelming majority of all encounters. (Why can't PVP replace this for most players? Because PVP implies someone is losing and the overwhelming majority of players want to decisively win the overwhelming majority of encounters. There is no way to accomplish those things without instructing a non-player to throw their matches.)

Let's say we replaced the AI with hired actors who played the monsters, and played poorly. Heck, we'll say the actors can even multitask 4 monsters at a time, all played to a similar level of poorly. At 60 monster-hours (15 man hours) per month per player, Blizzard would be in the red on accounts just from the actors salary unless their fully-loaded cost was under $1 a man-hour. Even if they got away with 40 cent wages for urban China and had minimal overhead this would slash their margins to bits.

So that's why we have AI: to do jobs humans won't do willingly (losing) at a price which is cheaper than the cheapest possible human implementation.

murrayh2• 17 years ago

We need calculators because it's cheaper than keeping a human with you at all times to calculate sums for you. That sounds pretty silly, right?

critic• 17 years ago

Incorporating intelligence is the hard part.

endtime• 17 years ago

Unless you're using 'intelligence' to mean something other than what the article means by it, incorporating intelligence is not the hard part.

Zaak• 17 years ago

Your off-world investments in artificial dumbness have paid $150 in dividends.

How to Incorporate Stupidity Into Your AI Code

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