Technical Discussion Aug 6 2010

Warm-up Topic: General AI and philosophy of AI

  • the current topic of CMPT320, which Jordan is taking
  • talked about an online video Jordan had seen about brain emulation theories
  • brain emulation: what would it take to simulate a brain on a computer (supercomputer)
    • neuron level in the next 5 years maybe
    • atom level in the next 50 years
    • quantum level in the next 100 years
    • we might need to simulate chemicals in the brain and how they interact
  • we would probably need to analyse the brain closer to be able to simulate it
    • probably cant completely analyse a living brain without damaging it
  • other approaches to AI
    • genetic algorithms
    • neural networks

Club Update

  • Recapped what happened on Wednesday
    • board game making wrap up thing
    • details to be sent out by email
  • Looked at project progress
    • not much to say, probably to be continued in future semesters

Passive AI in games

  • AI that does not play against you but just sort of exists in the world
    • NPCs in simulation games and RPGs
    • probably a good way to do it would be to use meters for hunger
    • could give them goals
    • could give them things like memories and field of view or hearing
    • another way to do it is to give them schedules like oblivion
      • would need to balance schedules with needs, wants and goals
    • some newer games give AI personalities
      • change the way the players make decisions
    • often gets strange behaviour
      • a hungry person walking into a neighbours backyard to cook something on their barbecue because its closer.
      • a painter who wants to paint so bad that he kills someone holding a paint brush.
    • are useful in simulations
      • simulating the ways people move about a building
      • simulating traffic, etc.

Aggressive AI in games

  • AI that plays against the player, often in place of another player
  • in almost all our games we find that we need some sort of AI and just end up hacking it out.
  • some games give AI advantages
    • many RTS games give AI infinite resources, etc.
  • some times AI could be made perfect but would be no fun to play against
    • pong can easily be made with an AI that never misses
    • can be instructed to play more the way a person would play
    • make estimations instead of exact calculations

Rendering, Filters and Modelling Topics

  • Photo realistic rendering
    • talked about photon mappers like the blender plug-in yafaray: http://www.yafaray.org/
    • the biggest problem becomes scenes looking too perfect
    • add randomness to alignment of objects so they look more natural
    • something are naturally easier like cars
    • photon mapping provides a lot of things that ray tracing doesn't
      • Caustics: shiny light that has past through a liquid
      • CMPT461 covers topics like photon mapping and photo realistic rendering
    • yafaray is fairly easy to use and photo realistic images can be made with very simple geometry
      • see this tutorial on modelling a kitchen and rendering it using yafaray: Tutorial
  • Modelling things in blender
      • difficult to model organic objects like people
      • things need to be very perfect or you notice
      • lighting often becomes a factor
      • cell shading can hide many minor imperfections
      • edges of panellings can be hard for curved surfaces
      • flat square objects are fairly easy, like architecture
  • different methods of modelling
    • could use sculpting in blender or ZBrush
    • using front and side reference imagery
      • seems to be essential that there is some kind of reference image for all modelling
    • modelling with blocks like building Lego
      • would create a lot of extra faces and vertices, many that would be hidden
      • could probably recalculate the faces and vertices and remove them
        • if you take Lego as a simplification, each piece only has a set number of ways it can be combined
  • First vs Third person
    • first person works well in some games, and vice versa
    • some games should and do offer an option
    • some you would think should be one but actually work well as the other
      • looked at mirrors edge and some of the reasons they probably went with a first person perspective
      • often would have been interesting to have seen, not just that you jumped over the object, but how they actually jump over the object
      • probably a simplification
        • they do not have to worry about perfectly animating the body
        • allows for a more simplified control scheme
          • do not need a different button combo for each different type of vault
        • there are mods that have added a third person view and you can see that the character model moves very strangely in order to get the right effect in the first person view
          • runs such that the hands are in view of the first person camera
  • field of view
    • though that the problem with the mirrors edge example maybe was that they were not properly simulating the field of view, or whether doing it properly is even possible on such a small 2D computer screen
    • talked about how we would design a mech simulator with a large field of view, where things might look fish eyed but certain parts of the view could be zoomed into
  • view filters
    • discussed possibly using different view filters in games, like night vision, heat vision, electronic vision, xray, etc.
    • thought that this could possibly be used as an interesting puzzle mechanic
    • having a lot of different filters could result in a use-everything-with-everything scenario like in old point and click adventure games
    • probably best solved by designing some context into the level
      • its dark so you use night vision
        • you hear people talking on the other side of a wall so you will know to use heat vision.
      • how would you implement these features
        • use a combination of different texture maps and some depth mapping, along with fancy blur filters to make it look more real
        • could have actual organ geometry inside characters, that can be seen in xray vision because other body parts become transparent.
        • could have some features like motion filters that highlight motion in a scene using computer vision techniques.
        • other filters based off computer vision like Sobel filters to highlight edges.

Members present

  • Mediator: Jordan Fox
  • Ramin Nazarali
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