Dr. Paul Kruszewski, CTO © 2000–2004 BGT BioGraphic Technologies Inc. The Challenges and Follies of Building a Generic AI engine

Overview AI.implant: Post-mortem the first 4 years –I thought I was going to talk over game could teach film but it is really about what we learned from all of you The vision What went right What went wrong Pleasant surprises The vision’ (Take 2)

The mindset Background –Procedurally modelling of branching patterns (“the tree guy”) –My Virtual Model –Just quit my job as CTO to start-up a company Convergence between film and game –SIGGRAPH vs GDC –Crowd simulation vs game AI –I felt they were solving the same problem but didn't know it

The vision Build an AI generic game engine –Different markets Special Effects (SFX) : digital extras Video games : AI middleware Simulation: digital soldiers –Different users Animators Level editors Programmers –Roll out / Adoption Film Cut scenes Game engines Simulation

The vision Build an AI generic game engine (cont.) –Architecture Character based –If it moves in an intelligent way, it’s a character (e.g., human, bird, fish, etc.) –Otherwise it’s physics Real-time C++ SDK Integrated as visual plug-ins into art packages and components into game application Data-driven

What went right We survived as a company –Dot com crash –Many (AI) middleware companies came and went

What went right (cont.) Overall architecture was correct –The character / vehicle paradigm Humans Fish Flaming Cows Tanks Space ships Spiders Weird bipeds –Tools went well Integration into Maya/max was key to every sale in the entertainment space

What went right (cont.) Customers used it in all three markets –For film and video –For game cinematics –For a PS2/Xbox game (PSI-Ops) –For simulators

What went wrong $ –VC crash; money came more slowly and more expensively –Game industry shakedown developers went broke after they bought the product but before they paid us –Price slashing in animation –All of this naturally affected our execution

What went wrong Technology –We initially built something that no one liked Game people said that it was only good for special FX SPX people thought of it as a game engine –We built the wrong things first Animation –An AI system was no good if you couldn't »control the underlying animation »render things out Game –People really cared only about the path finding –Didn't want level editors/animators to author things –Build decision trees instead of FSM Focus was on flocking and decision making –Pathing and animation control turned out to be the hot stuff

What went wrong Technology (cont.) –Too ambitious Too split on the two markets with two different pipelines Too many tools Wide but not deep functionality –Consoles are hard –Bleeding edge tech causes you to bleed Culture –Learning the 3 cultures took longer than we thought speaking game with a heavy film accent –Really underestimated the resistance to middleware You can't argue on cost-it really has to be better –It is a very new field so we had to make up a lot of stuff including language

Interesting twists Military simulation –We really expected the military to be ahead of us –KMW uses our system to drive tanks and control all humans Decision trees –Wrong choice for game (should have used FSM) but animators love them Did a lot of things that weren’t AI (we really thought somebody handled them already) –Surface solving –Animation control Essentially turned Maya into a game engine

Moving forward Challenges in game AI –Complex worlds New graphics cards allow huge worlds Physics creates dynamic worlds Automatic tools are no longer an option Navigation meshes are becoming the core data structure –Complex characters Integration of all human systems to form intelligent skeletons –AI driven NLA –IK/FK –Ragdoll Volume –No more ghost town (Craig Reynolds) –Parallelism

Moving forward (cont.) Industries –Game will continue to be the most dynamic environment for innovation –Animation (SFX). It is really becoming a question of playing the game with the record button on –Military is most open to these techniques –Convergence is happening, I was just out by 4 years Film, games and simulations use the same database (Blackhawk down) –Most users want a drag and drop system particularly in sim and film

Thanks Dan Fu for inviting me My team back home for building such difficult software All the customers who have helped us along the way