AI run content

Vermillion_Raventhal

We started out with NPCs that stand around or pace as content.   You gained experience and gear by killing NPCs.

Themepark era we had quest and questhub driven experience.  This has been the go to content driver for more than decade.

I have hoped that we would have complex scripting so procedurally driven content eventually.  Currently the industry has stalled and concepts stagnated.  EQNext seemed like the only game attempting it and its it's dead. 

AI driven content and world building is the holy grail to me.  An AI that can craft worlds and change them to respond semi realistically to players.  An AI that controls behaviors of NPC to learn, respond and take action against players.  

I don't know if we will ever get that point the rate things are going now.

AlBQuirky

Graphics first. All else is forgotten in today's gaming world with a notable exceptions

Vermillion_Raventhal

AlBQuirky said:

Graphics first. All else is forgotten in today's gaming world with a notable exceptions

They already have AI doing graphics.  Ray Tracing 

even ad models jobs could be jeopardy.

Mendel

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

We started out with NPCs that stand around or pace as content.   You gained experience and gear by killing NPCs.

Themepark era we had quest and questhub driven experience.  This has been the go to content driver for more than decade.

I have hoped that we would have complex scripting so procedurally driven content eventually.  Currently the industry has stalled and concepts stagnated.  EQNext seemed like the only game attempting it and its it's dead. 

AI driven content and world building is the holy grail to me.  An AI that can craft worlds and change them to respond semi realistically to players.  An AI that controls behaviors of NPC to learn, respond and take action against players.  

I don't know if we will ever get that point the rate things are going now.

I have my doubts, too.

I *think* that most games use hand-created and placed content, no rumors of AI being used to build static game worlds.  There's still too much human review and revision needed to simply let a machine generate even static game worlds.  The big issue, in my estimation, is the lack of quality in the writing (that's also a big issue for manually created elements, too, but that's another thread).

AI could be used more dynamically to improve individual NPC behavior to some degree.  That seems the most likely next phase we will see.  This would allow complex choices between statically generated content and behavior.

Full dynamically generated content is very far off.  Turning a full world over to dynamic creation will require improvements to the writing issue (above) and a different approach to creating stories and lore in games.

• An NPC is present and game events drive that NPC to gather more resources and initiate global plans to achieve a high goal.  This goal might be winning next years festival for a prized sheep, or it might be becoming the Sheep Herder Supreme or taking over the world or simply a burst of jealousy that causes the NPC to kill another NPC, or steal a rival's sheep.  The Wants and Needs of each NPC factor with the NPCs Persona to develop actions in the game, all without human intervention (the creation part, anyway).

• The developers (and players) would need to accept that many events and stories in the game are non-repeatable, and may not exist for everyone.  Not every character would be able to interact with the NPC to see this particular storyline.  (This may actually be more difficult than the more technical challenges).  Owners of spoiler sites won't like that, certainly.
  

I don't expect to see this level of AI integration in my lifetime, but I had hoped to see some indications that the first steps were being taken.  So far, it's just not there, or at least, invisible to the outside observer if it is.

Vermillion_Raventhal

Mendel said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

We started out with NPCs that stand around or pace as content.   You gained experience and gear by killing NPCs.

Themepark era we had quest and questhub driven experience.  This has been the go to content driver for more than decade.

I have hoped that we would have complex scripting so procedurally driven content eventually.  Currently the industry has stalled and concepts stagnated.  EQNext seemed like the only game attempting it and its it's dead. 

AI driven content and world building is the holy grail to me.  An AI that can craft worlds and change them to respond semi realistically to players.  An AI that controls behaviors of NPC to learn, respond and take action against players.  

I don't know if we will ever get that point the rate things are going now.

I have my doubts, too.

I *think* that most games use hand-created and placed content, no rumors of AI being used to build static game worlds.  There's still too much human review and revision needed to simply let a machine generate even static game worlds.  The big issue, in my estimation, is the lack of quality in the writing (that's also a big issue for manually created elements, too, but that's another thread).

AI could be used more dynamically to improve individual NPC behavior to some degree.  That seems the most likely next phase we will see.  This would allow complex choices between statically generated content and behavior.

Full dynamically generated content is very far off.  Turning a full world over to dynamic creation will require improvements to the writing issue (above) and a different approach to creating stories and lore in games.

• An NPC is present and game events drive that NPC to gather more resources and initiate global plans to achieve a high goal.  This goal might be winning next years festival for a prized sheep, or it might be becoming the Sheep Herder Supreme or taking over the world or simply a burst of jealousy that causes the NPC to kill another NPC, or steal a rival's sheep.  The Wants and Needs of each NPC factor with the NPCs Persona to develop actions in the game, all without human intervention (the creation part, anyway).

• The developers (and players) would need to accept that many events and stories in the game are non-repeatable, and may not exist for everyone.  Not every character would be able to interact with the NPC to see this particular storyline.  (This may actually be more difficult than the more technical challenges).  Owners of spoiler sites won't like that, certainly.
  

I don't expect to see this level of AI integration in my lifetime, but I had hoped to see some indications that the first steps were being taken.  So far, it's just not there, or at least, invisible to the outside observer if it is.

I agree.  I thought elaborate procedural content would be the next step.  But since lack of what would seem like obvious content delivery vehicle makes me seem like it will be skipped.  

Mendel

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

Mendel said:

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

We started out with NPCs that stand around or pace as content.   You gained experience and gear by killing NPCs.

Themepark era we had quest and questhub driven experience.  This has been the go to content driver for more than decade.

I have hoped that we would have complex scripting so procedurally driven content eventually.  Currently the industry has stalled and concepts stagnated.  EQNext seemed like the only game attempting it and its it's dead. 

AI driven content and world building is the holy grail to me.  An AI that can craft worlds and change them to respond semi realistically to players.  An AI that controls behaviors of NPC to learn, respond and take action against players.  

I don't know if we will ever get that point the rate things are going now.

I have my doubts, too.

I *think* that most games use hand-created and placed content, no rumors of AI being used to build static game worlds.  There's still too much human review and revision needed to simply let a machine generate even static game worlds.  The big issue, in my estimation, is the lack of quality in the writing (that's also a big issue for manually created elements, too, but that's another thread).

AI could be used more dynamically to improve individual NPC behavior to some degree.  That seems the most likely next phase we will see.  This would allow complex choices between statically generated content and behavior.

Full dynamically generated content is very far off.  Turning a full world over to dynamic creation will require improvements to the writing issue (above) and a different approach to creating stories and lore in games.

• An NPC is present and game events drive that NPC to gather more resources and initiate global plans to achieve a high goal.  This goal might be winning next years festival for a prized sheep, or it might be becoming the Sheep Herder Supreme or taking over the world or simply a burst of jealousy that causes the NPC to kill another NPC, or steal a rival's sheep.  The Wants and Needs of each NPC factor with the NPCs Persona to develop actions in the game, all without human intervention (the creation part, anyway).

• The developers (and players) would need to accept that many events and stories in the game are non-repeatable, and may not exist for everyone.  Not every character would be able to interact with the NPC to see this particular storyline.  (This may actually be more difficult than the more technical challenges).  Owners of spoiler sites won't like that, certainly.
  

I don't expect to see this level of AI integration in my lifetime, but I had hoped to see some indications that the first steps were being taken.  So far, it's just not there, or at least, invisible to the outside observer if it is.

I agree.  I thought elaborate procedural content would be the next step.  But since lack of what would seem like obvious content delivery vehicle makes me seem like it will be skipped.  

Procedural content has always seemed only a portion of the whole.  Yes, it can generate lands and vistas and resources to no end, but the story requires human intervention at this point.  Look at No Man's Sky.  It generates magnificent worlds.  Empty, barren worlds.  Without story and plot elements, they are merely postcards, without interactive elements.  Procedural generation of content could be used to a) generate the physical world (and probably should by now) and b) speed up the transferal of a world from server to client.  Without the story layer, it isn't much of a game.

Generation of content is a tool that *could* be used to reduce development time by now, especially by filling a 'zone' with 'landscape'.  I don't know of any company that is really using that over human artists.  Even then, someone has to come along behind the algorithm to clean up and check what the machine did.  Then place NPCs and add dialogs.  Right now, I don't know a company that trusts their "build a zone" algorithm far enough to reduce the manpower costs.

anemo

Ad lips and markov chains can give you AI like answers.

Something like:

Player found X location,  Player spent lots of time in X location to find Y Maltesse Falcon item.

Then they pick which characters they talk about Y item.   They'll have an ad lipped reply based on the item, that will cause random "one small favor quests" until you earn a "letter of introduction" that gets access to a person that has a human written story for it.   In the end you keep that letter of introduction (short cuts other quests that need that character) and get warm fuzzies of completing the "It belongs in a museum" quest.

Alternatively if they hold onto the item for too long it'll get stolen by an event, which has the same sort of deal of "one small favor quests" attached to it.   Except this time you choose between getting the item back, or keeping access to one of the thieves guilds.

Or thirdly the player gets written into someone else's quest.   Where they can give the item to the player, sell it to that one specific player, or join them on a raid where it shortcuts some of the bosses features (disabling a CC move, or halving their health).   If they can't come to a deal, the player that is trying to get the item just gets a harder boss kill.

_______________________

Basically you spend LOTS of time hard scripting a "fill in the blanks script", and multiple random paths that the script can go down.    And those blanks instead of being any genric noun, are instead "literary device related to X thing".

Caffynated

I thought Mount & Blade in 2006 was going to be a turning point in how content is generated in games with dynamic spawns and objective oriented NPC/mob movement; it never came to be. Rather than building on a system that gave NPC unit commanders goals, and allowed them to pursue them depending on priority and resources available we just kept having static mob spawns.

iixviiiix

My question is : what AI will do to improve your gaming experience ?

Mendel

anemo said:

Ad lips and markov chains can give you AI like answers.

Something like:

Player found X location,  Player spent lots of time in X location to find Y Maltesse Falcon item.

Then they pick which characters they talk about Y item.   They'll have an ad lipped reply based on the item, that will cause random "one small favor quests" until you earn a "letter of introduction" that gets access to a person that has a human written story for it.   In the end you keep that letter of introduction (short cuts other quests that need that character) and get warm fuzzies of completing the "It belongs in a museum" quest.

Alternatively if they hold onto the item for too long it'll get stolen by an event, which has the same sort of deal of "one small favor quests" attached to it.   Except this time you choose between getting the item back, or keeping access to one of the thieves guilds.

Or thirdly the player gets written into someone else's quest.   Where they can give the item to the player, sell it to that one specific player, or join them on a raid where it shortcuts some of the bosses features (disabling a CC move, or halving their health).   If they can't come to a deal, the player that is trying to get the item just gets a harder boss kill.

_______________________

Basically you spend LOTS of time hard scripting a "fill in the blanks script", and multiple random paths that the script can go down.    And those blanks instead of being any genric noun, are instead "literary device related to X thing".

Imagine if the AI could create/modify a Markov chain without all the human scripting.  A simple state loop could add a new state dynamically, changing the choice / reaction.  Suddenly, the state diagram for an NPC could change depending on in-game actions.  Now, the NPC would be have its options changed, adding a 'respond to threat' option to a conversation ranging from 'move location' to 'inform authorities' as the situation dictated.  It gets heavily into dialog parsing, and many players (maybe too many) don't bother with their own dialog that much in an MMORPG.  (The old InfoCom text-based adventure games were great with dialog parsing).

Wizardry

Well op,you likely know i keep saying FFXI for years now.
I still know that many seriously do not understand what FFXI brought to the table,way ahead of all these other mmorpg's.

AI drive..yes sir,as is/was my favorite content to do.Besieged which imo is also the best AI driven content ever in any mmorpg and the idea is like idk 12 years old.Another positive is that it was designed for FUN,no rewards,no loot but yes you would get xp.

Another was called Campaign,way better than what Rift was doing.It was built around an entire system of ranks and rewards and was in many players minds fun to do.It also featured as did besieged a Boss or more to really challenge the player/s.

Even better? BOTH ideas were open to all players,no raid instance or dungeon  but Besieged was limited to inside an entire city.Campaign was wide open in the game world.

On the subject of what EQNext was doing.."Storybricks",it wasn't going to be what i assume people think it was going to be.Sure they did a good job of hyping it up,i mean that is their job.To put it in very simple terms,Storybricks was going to just run the whole themepark idea from one hub.If i could explain it in a different manner think of that game that just rearranged the assets and allowed yo uto make quests but in relaity was just rearranging the furniture.

BTW Storybricks simply died,nobody would help fund it and in a day n age when seems like all kinds of crap games are being funded,it really tells you it wasn't all that big a deal.So where does that leave us,well FFXI still rules the roost while blizzard still keeps making instances and EASIER hand holding features,like auto lfg instnaces ...sigh.

Wizardry

If you couldn't tell @op,YES i am in agreement,we need more actual CONTENT that is not the normal ho um do it because it offers the best rewards.

vegetableoil

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

AlBQuirky said:

Graphics first. All else is forgotten in today's gaming world with a notable exceptions

They already have AI doing graphics.  Ray Tracing 

even ad models jobs could be jeopardy.

you are late about ai replacing people, China even has 2 news anchor for their state media it's completely ai generated, one big problem with learning ai is that it out paced people really quickly, for example alphago (in 6 months self learning) beats the current go champion lee see dol 4-1 (The current champion needs to learn playing go for 20 years), and the problem lies alpha go zero beats alpha go 100-0. put that kind of ai in game, what are you going to expect? It will just beat us to death and torture us in game. Btw the go champion cried when he lost, because it's his passion since he was 6 years old, Alphago on the other hand, has no expression or feeling when it wins. So please don't put AI machine learning in game it will just ruin it for the player. 

AAAMEOW

random generated game play are pretty fun.  Many games have treasure map hunting which randomly placed treasure on the map.

I'd be happy if there are more of those. 

I dont' think sophisticated AI is needed to create randomized content.  

Celcius

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

We started out with NPCs that stand around or pace as content.   You gained experience and gear by killing NPCs.

Themepark era we had quest and questhub driven experience.  This has been the go to content driver for more than decade.

I have hoped that we would have complex scripting so procedurally driven content eventually.  Currently the industry has stalled and concepts stagnated.  EQNext seemed like the only game attempting it and its it's dead. 

AI driven content and world building is the holy grail to me.  An AI that can craft worlds and change them to respond semi realistically to players.  An AI that controls behaviors of NPC to learn, respond and take action against players.  

I don't know if we will ever get that point the rate things are going now.

AI generated content has never proven to be better then structured content. I think that while there are certainly games that can benefit from procedural generated content (Randomized maps are the most common one), but even in those maps you can see there are certain rules in how they are structured. Eventually they all feel the same as a result of those rules.

While I haven't seen it done with much more beyond randomized affixes in an ARPG, I would imagine that no matter what any game content created via AI would suffer a similar fate. These AI systems are still created by human beings and until human beings can come up with a system that designs content that feels like it was created by...humans. I am not saying it can't be done for most of a game, but I feel like we are years or even decades away from tech this sophisticated. The closest to this we will get is games like No Man's Sky. I will tell you right now that NMS doesn't feel that random after a while and feels very much not built by humans.

I think there is plenty of room for this kind of content, however, and we have only really scratched the surface. The reason we don't see this very often -- and with bugs / issues / terrible graphics when it does exist; is because of just how much processing power systems like this would need to handle them. I also don't see this happening in MMOs until long after it has been mastered in smaller games with far fewer people in the world with you.

Wizardry

To the last poster,that is pretty much Atlas's content idea.It has randomized treasure maps that give you a portion of a map to look at to figure out where that treasure is.Then depending on the quality of the treasure map,you get an army of the damned that spawn to kill you for trespassing on their treasure.

it is endless,thousands and thousands of treasure bottles with maps.

Now that does not make a GAME but all the little ideas i see in some games is what i want in one giant complete game.
I think it is easier to lump it all into one ideal.....EXPLORATION.i think many of us just want a lot of stuff to explore,be it treasure maps,hidden alcoves,sunken ships under water,an old burial ground,traps and puzzles that can also be randomized to unlock the secrets to enter a hidden cave entrance.

Thing is that i have seen ALL these ideas done in games but nobody puts the whole package together.Most of our mmorpg's are the linear often instanced hubs.Give us exploration that is NOT on rails.I detest games that offer you rewards or reward points for discovery areas,meanwhile the hand holding linear quests lead you directly to that point,you didn't discover a single thing.

AlBQuirky

Vermillion_Raventhal said:

AlBQuirky said:

Graphics first. All else is forgotten in today's gaming world with a notable exceptions

They already have AI doing graphics.  Ray Tracing 

even ad models jobs could be jeopardy.

That really wasn't my point. I meant that video games go for pretty graphics first and foremost. Anything else plays third or fourth fiddle at best.

But thanks for the insights

cameltosis

I believe that what you are talking about is what was originally intended for both UO and SWG.

The goal was to give every NPC various needs based on where and who they were. So, a farmer who grows cabbages would have a need to "get cabbages". If he was unable to do so, the game would figure out why (e.g. rabbits, who have a need to eat food) and then generate a quest for you to kill rabbits on behalf of the farmer.

Its not really artificial intelligence so much as a shitload of tracking (hence ridiculously bloated databases, which is one of the reasons it wasn't implemented originally, alongside lack of time to add in the feature properly) and some interesting scripts that allowed NPCs to react to the world.

You could then build up hierarchies of needs, so for example:

A blacksmith has a need to GET MONEY

This is achieved through SELLING ITEMS

Which is based on MAKING ITEMS

Which is based on GET METALS, GET LEATHER and GET WOOD

If the blacksmith was short on metals, for example, then he could create a dynamic quest for players to provide him with metals, or else the NPC could wander away from the forge and try to purchase metals from vendors within a short radius.

This sort of setup would help give the illusion of a living world, with NPCs genuinely having their own lives that carry on independant of us, but are also affected by us.

For example, lets say a city ruler (npc) has a need for PEACE

This is achieved through LOW CRIME and HIGH HEALTH

So, if player activities in the city increased crime, the city ruler would then increase the number of guards on patrol within the city.

Or, lets say theif NPCs increased the crime, the city ruler could dynamically create a quest for players to track down those theives and arrest/kill them.

We certainly have the tech to do this sort of thing right now. Its not AI, but its a big step closer to a living world compared to what we have now. It's only really the end needs that would require lots of work, for example, you'd need to make sure your blacksmith has decent pathing so that when he tries to GET METAL, he can actually do so. You don't need to program much in for the higher level needs like GET MONEY, that is simply a trigger that sets off his actual actions.

Amathe

I sort of picture myself logging in and hearing a soft but scary female AI voice saying:

Amathe ....

What are you doing Amathe ....

I'm afraid I can't allow that Amathe ....

Be careful what you wish for.