Any good articles about Intelligent AI, Needs Based AI, or building a "living" town?

News & General Discussion
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Hello, and thanks for your time.

I remember awhile ago, I found a thread with a short list of 5-10 articles on NPC AI. One in particular was a NEEDS based AI. It mentioned a goblin, dungeon, goblin’s friends, fear, hate, love-- it was very interesting and even talked about how to implement it into code.

However, I lost my bookmarks and cannot for the life of me find where I got this list. I have tried google for a few hours on several different occasions, attempting the obvious unique words in the article, only to be swarmed with WoW goblin pages or silly AI talk. I do not remember if it was this forum, gamedev, a different one entirely, or from some random tutorial I found online one day.

If anyone knows this article I am talking about (I assume it’s quite popular, as I found it on a popular article or forum where it was a STICKY or at least a more obvious reference list of importance in the article or post.

I decided though, if anyone has ANY interested articles (or books, although I’m more keen towards articles) on intelligent AI, or one’s own experience or blog.

My Goal: To create a game similar to Settlers or Black White-- where each individual NPC has its own life, needs, and goals, but not requiring ANY player direction. A simulation, if you will. These NPC’s form together to make a camp, which turns into a town, and then into a city. Resource Gathering, Crafting, Building, and NPC’s having jobs are all vital, but really I want to start getting in the mindset of creating some really smart NPC’s. The article I am searching after specifically was simply amazing, in both thought provocation AND explanation how to turn it into code.

I absolutely love the idea of Settlers, and often play the demo of Settlers 7 just for kicks. I’ve never played Black White, but hear nothing but talkative nerding in relation to that game, specifically because of the AI.

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Could it have been on AIGameDev.com’s forums? I don’t have an account on there, so I can’t check—users have to register to read their forums.

If it was on GameDev.net, they did replace their entire content management system not too long ago, so it may be worth searching their site directly to see if Google missed anything.

3

Anyone? :stuck_out_tongue:

4

How many games have you created so far?

5

It was quite an old article in particular, and by the feel of the reference and article (and the detail of experience in AI) it most likely is someone who is popularly known for their articles on AI, if that helps.

I remember specifically, the article wrote about the specific variables of Hate, Like, Need, as well as the example explanation being a goblin, who starts his life in a dungeon room, and then opens the door to decide whether or not it should leave the room.

I will try a more detailed search on AIGAMEDEV.com later, to figure out if that was where I found the link, but I actually DON’T believe so, as it was an entirely unique website, and I had never been to AiGameDev.com before, or at least didn’t think I did.

6

I think Black White’s AI was largely based on a Bayesian network approach (should be fairly well documented around the internet - at least in concept, not sure about any specific implementations though).

There was an excellent article I read once from the makers of Oblivion on how they handled the A.I. in their game, but for the life of me I cannot remember where.

The book “A.I. Game Programming Wisdom” has a lot of really great articles - one of them in particular would probably be of great interest to you. Maybe you can find it online:

“A Dynamic Reputation System Based on Event Knowledge” - Gret Alt (Surreal Software) - Kristin King

There’s a lot of other great information in the book though, some of it’s a little outdated (2002) - but still well worth the $45 to pick it up at Amazon.

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i dont pay for books LOL

8

So, I’m assuming you go to the library?

9

yea…the…library…

10

So you came into this thread solely for the purpose of promoting copyright infringement to a community who relies heavily on the sanctity of their intellectual property?

1 Like
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I really don’t understand why someone would boldly proclaim that they don’t pay for books. It’s a if they are saying a book, something someone spent months researching and writing, isn’t worth anything.

To be honest, that’s probably your best bet when it comes to the AI thing. I don’t think many people substantially elaborate on AI on the internet.

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If you don’t want to pay for others hard research, don’t expect anyone to help you any further as this kind of attitude is among devs hated more than most other attitudes as this kind of people are worse trash than pirates that at least crack stuff (as they have a broken moral but at least skill)

Come up with your own solution, thats the way to get a $0 solution.

13

Register as insider in the aigamedev.com site, that’s free and have some nice articles.

14

I don’t know about the implementation, but there is a simplified (I think) version of Will Wright’s code from the Sims and its way of keeping the basic stats of the little folks you have to look after.

http://www.donhopkins.com/home/images/Sims/

Not what you might be searching for, but maybe interesting for some of us.

There is also a PDF on the website of Robet Zubek on the topic in question.

http://robert.zubek.net/