Ubisoft exploring procedural AI for next-gen consoles
We all expect shiny new graphics from the next generation of consoles, but Ubisoft's Yves Jacquier has said that AI is an important field which should also benefit from the extra processing power.
We all expect shiny new graphics from the next generation of consoles, but Ubisoft's Yves Jacquier has said that new and better AI should also benefit from the extra processing power.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, the executive director of production services at Ubisoft Montreal talked about challenges with the current generation of consoles. "We're extremely limited in what we can do. It's a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time," Jacquier said. "We think that the next generation of consoles won't have these limits any more. Games might have more realistic graphics and more on-screen, but what's the value of making something more realistic and better animated if you have poor AI?"
"AI has always been the real battleground. The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you've failed. And that's a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless worlds."
Procedural AI is one of the fields Ubisoft is currently researching as it explores "other ways of thinking" about making video games. The developer and publisher is investing $1 million over the next five years into poking around and looking at stuff.
According to Jacquier, "the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more" with the next generation of consoles. However, we shouldn't expect the graphics fixation to pass too soon. "Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can't show," he said.
Ubisoft Monreal is currently developing Assassin's Creed Revelations and Far Cry 3. With large crowds and cover-providing foliage for the AI to consider, no matter how respectable it is, we'll probably end up wishing the AI were a little more advanced.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Ubisoft exploring procedural AI for next-gen consoles.
We all expect shiny new graphics from the next generation of consoles, but Ubisoft's Yves Jacquier has said that AI is an important field which should also benefit from the extra processing power.-
Well let's hope so, give my CPU something to do.
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Lets hope that some of that ends up being actual design.
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After Far Cry 2's horrible excuse for AI, Ubisoft can only go up from here.
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Always wondered if an AI accelerator might be the next thing after 3d accelerators and especially after physics. It never happened. Then we had multi-core chips. Figured having threaded AI could mean some really powerful logic if you dedicated an entire core to advance AI routines. Maybe, just maybe that could still happen and maybe this might be a way to get there?
Although, AI is not as marketable of a selling point as the eye candy ones.-
Wait, this is Ubisoft. What are the odds that they mix the AI code with their DRM? If you lease connection with the DRM server all enemy AI go into god mode and all their weapons convert to hit-scan with 100% accuracy and 0 reaction time and able to fire through walls without range limits. Yeah, that sounds like Ubisoft.
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Eventually everything will be tied to DRM and your system will blue screen because of how fucked up everything is once your ping got too high.
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I don't think AI requires that much processing power. We're at a point where there's far too little AI programming talent in games because it's not as glitzy and sellable as graphics and sound enhancements. AI programmers are also more rare than artists or environment designers, and earn more.
We need a real expert in the field to speak on this, but I'm getting sick of the usual routine of "follow waypoint X, duck behind chest-high wall, pop out and fire at a quasi-regular interval, panic at incoming grenades or try to throw them back if there's enough time on the fuse, etc., etc., etc...".-
This isn't true, I've listened to an expert in the field give a talk about this at a boston postmortem, specifically, the AI developers of halo and FEAR had a live discussion and debate. There were specifically tradeoffs taken in Halo because of the need for more graphics / physics cpu compute cycles stealing away from AI.
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Interesting; I didn't know the CPU contention was that tight with all threads running. Did they comment on whether the 360 or PS3 had less headroom for CPU cycle planning?
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yeah it was specifically the 360 that was giving the developers issues IIRC, although I guess that makes sense since halo isn't on PS3.
HALO AI is very procedural, but the FEAR AI is more smoke and mirrors and tricks than real AI, so I don't think one of the speakers said it had issues on any platform.-
I was actually fairly impressed with FEAR's AI...it managed to navigate a level to come all the way around to kill me when I was trying to break the AI one time. I saw the AI do stuff (and do it differently when I'd kill myself and load back up to see what it'd do again...this was back when I had lots more time and I loved to play with game AI) that was pretty damned impressive and wasn't just smoke and mirrors.
I've always had the impression that HALO's AI was very good at things like taking cover and reacting within the little arenas the battles take place in...but I've never had much of an impression that it reacts well to the world as a whole and I've seen it get broken down trying to navigate areas occasionally...it seemed like you could game it. FEAR seemed to be a bit harder to game in some ways.-
FEAR's AI reaped the benefits of (somewhat) open, non-linear level design. They had room to move and options given to them so as to flank the player as you described. Now go play FEAR 2; it's same AI but with smaller, linear level design. (With a scant few exceptions) The AI in this case has nowhere to go and no options to flank or "act" intelligent. Instead they pile on top of each other trying to use cover spots or run around confused looking for things to topple because there's nothing else for them to do.
Anyway, what i'm getting at is.. you can have the greatest AI in the world but if you don't create spaces for them to utilize it to full potential, it's for nothing.-
I agree...a lot of it comes down to how you present your AI. You not only have to have the enemies reacting in a "smart" fashion...you have to make sure that is apparent to the player.
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Why not explore procedural AI for PC?
I know the PC is old and doesn't have much processing power, but maybe, just maybe, it could do better then a console.-
But that's crazy talk, talking all logical-like. You're supposed to blindly assume that a magical box that can play games, but is stuck with the same hardware for 5+ years is more powerful than a modern powerhouse of a computer because consoles are...magical, right?
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Because PC games that are made by real developers (not Valve or Blizzard), even if are awesome, sell worse then a mediocre console game?
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True, people love buying the SAME CoD game over and over and over and over and over and....
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No, I meant Valve and Blizzard aren't real developers.
Since they are both Publisher and Developer with tonnes of surplus money, they are allowed to live outside the realm of a real development cycle since they do not have realistic constraints of time and money from publishers.
Ubisoft is technically a developer and publisher in one, but they don't really have the cash to float a functional game for a year or two for crazy amounts of play testing/polish. Ubisoft would only work on a super AI game if it works for all their game titles, which at this time are predominately console games.-
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No, success creating a property that provides extremely high constant profit allows this (Steam, WoW) and it's beyond difficult
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In the context of "teams held under a gun to pump out a title in 18 to 24 months and not miss the end-of-quarter or end-of-holiday deadline", I guess they wouldn't be "real developers". Maybe Square would have more leeway, but they're hurting after FFXIII not setting the world on fire, and FFXIV tanking and requiring an overhaul. Activision and EA are legendarily brutal to the dev teams they own; even if they say there's autonomy, there really isn't.
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Ohhh right.
Blizzard didn't developed new AI for SC2 (go have some look at the GDC lectures ;) ), and Valve didn't make any improvements for the L4D titles. Add Crytek battling AI with very complex environments and still getting a decent result in the first Crysis, and add indie devs working with different AI in a smaller scale, off mainstream.
Indeed there's no one looking for AI on PC. Go invest more money in consoles since there's no interest here, publishers.
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$1 million over the next five years?! Is this a joke?
Just look at the ammount of money that publishers will dump into the marketing campaign for both CoD:MW3 and Battlefield 3, and both proudly saying to the media "oh were gonna spend on marketing more than you, just wait!". And this is just for two games, gotta consider the rest of the industry, and consider that Ubisoft mainly works with key franchises tightly connected to marketing campaigns.
C'mon... sometimes this industry is a joke. $1 million? and research targeting console's limited hardware, being the main two with two different architectures? :/ -
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and not really something that will improve with more money or processing power afaik. A wider search radius for chest-high concrete barriers probably won't add much to a game.
I feel like we'd need more complex systems for NPCs to interact with to make a noticable jump over current AI - like tying it to naturalmotion's animation systems and having movable props or something. And even then the range of options would need to be beyond 'climb that wall' or 'throw that object' as those are passable now.-
So you're saying an AI should also have the option "dig a tunnel, crawl through tunnel, and stab player in the foot from underground before pulling him down underground while his buddies play whack a mole on the players head? The problem is not the AI itself, I agree with that. I see the problem being the environment, and that I have yet to play a game that had deformable and manipulative environments that didn't require a special gun that only the player had access to, if that, let alone it only being usable on specified surfaces, etc.
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Well when people talk about procedural generated content as it relates to graphics, they're talking about content that is created on the fly based on algorithms or functions rather than manually created artwork. So with regard to AI, I'm assuming they mean to create a less specific, more algorithm based approach to AI. In other words, designing the AI to rely less on specific environmental information and scripting. Ideally you could throw the AI into any environment and have him behave and act intelligently. I dunno, I'm just throwing guesses out here because I don't know fuck about AI programming.
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It really is about fucking time developers threw more resources at AI development. AI has been clearly the most stagnant field in game design. The last time I noticed a leap in AI quality was half-life with the marines you fought. Everything I've seen since then has been marginally better, if not the same.
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