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JoshParnell -> RE: Limit Theory (11/30/2012 10:44:10 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Kayoz
Indeed, getting your brain wrapped around binary space partitioning can make your grey matter dribble out your ears. But it's all been done before. There's a vast amount of documentation and resources to help you through all the rough spots. With AI development however, there are precious few resources and of those, very few are applicable to what you are trying to accomplish.
This is what I mean by graphics being the "trivial" part of the project. There's a lot of work - hard and long work - but it's comparatively straightforward in comparison.
That's fair, you're certainly right that, on the whole, there's more documentation on practical implementations of graphics techniques than AI techniques. Although, it's worth mentioning that the reverse is probably true of documention on theoretical ideas (but I won't claim that means anything). Still, if you're going to choose one part of the game to call "too difficult," I should think that it would be the procedural generation of everything. After all, there are no well-documented sources (of which I am aware) that describe how to build the kinds of nebulae that you see in my engine, or how to construct ships in the manner that I have done. I'm not saying either of those things is hugely difficult - just that one should ask why there's even less documentation on procedural techniques than on AI.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Kayoz
You seem to be in disagreement with most game code-monkeys that I know of.
Here's an example
"The second challenge is where I throw down the gauntlet and challenge game AI to save the day. If increasing realism doesn't give next-gen games the requisite new feel, then something else must help achieve it" - Steve Rabin, AI Game Programming Wisdom
As you say, AI is full of "beautiful, theoretical ideas and lovely abstractions" - which is where the difficulty lies - turning an abstract idea into solid code is quite difficult. It's easy to see if the 3D models display correctly - it's quite another to check if the ships displayed are flying around in a sensible manner and reacting reasonably to the player's actions as well as the other NPCs and their environment. This, I contend, is much more difficult and time consuming than merely rendering them on the screen.
This part I may have to disagree with; my point was that game AI is a field in which turning theory into real-time implementation is not prohibitively difficult! Think deterministic state space AI. Completely trivial, yet nonetheless powerful and certainly fast enough for real-time games.
As for the Limit Theory AI, it uses an even simpler model for high-level AI, which is nonetheless absurdly powerful. The core of LT AI is a planning engine, in which high-level goals are formulated as game state differentials, and then a set of heuristics is called upon to turn a game state differential into a sequence of concrete actions. For example, an obvious heuristic is that if a goal is to modify the location of oneself, the "solution" is to "travel" to the desired location. It's effortless to think of an AI model in this way, and equally effortless to implement. But I claim that the results are impressive and fast. I guess that's the part that I'll have to prove!
quote:
ORIGINAL: Kayoz
How many pretty games are there out there, with shiny graphics - lots. How many out there are actually challenging and make the player stay on their toes - precious few. The ratio of those - pretty to challenging ones - should be a warning sign as to how simple (as you seem to contend) AI programming is.
I can't find his (Rabin's) book on my shelf at the moment, but I contend that a good AI is key to a game's success - and is the most difficult part of game development. That you seem to think it's "more natural" to code is either an indication that you're a programming prodigy - or that you haven't really considered the scope of what you're trying to do.
I think my choice of genre is absolutely key to why I claim that AI is easy. Let's face it: in a space game, you have minimal things to worry about. Pathfinding is extremely easy, collision avoidance equally so...in general, there's just a lot less that one has to worry about. Thus, in a space game, most of the work falls into the high-level AI, i.e., the planning engine. And that part, as I already mentioned, is the place where one uses beautiful abstractions to make everything easy. Now, to be fair, I would NOT claim that AI is, in general, an easy thing for a game. In fact, I most definitely would not want to deal with AI in your average AAA game. But if you think about it for a while, I think you'll probably agree that space sim AI is a good bit simpler, and affords the programmer more time to worry about the "cool/fun" part of AI (high-level) and worry less about the low-level nuisances that pop up everywhere in other games.
And by the way, no worries, I have the book :)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Kayoz
No professional experience.
If you go into a job interview and they ask you "what experience do you have" - they mean professional experience. Whether or not you've fixed your own car is of little interest or value in interviewing for a mechanic job - they want to know what professional experience you have. Regardless of your tech demos - they're not being done in a professional environment where you have programmers with decades of experience looking over your shoulder and picking apart your code. Nor the QA bods trying to break your code - and some of them are very good indeed at that. You haven't experienced this, and until you do, I contend that the "zero experience" label is justified.
Ok, that's still not fair! I don't want to name drop, but if you go to my website you can download my CV and see that I have worked in the graphics industry. Sure, you can say that it's "not enough" professional experience, or whatever. All my work was code reviewed, and I did indeed get grilled by pros! But hey, credit where credit is due please.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Kayoz
I wish you the best of luck - I really do. But it seems that you've picked out an enormous mountain to move - all on your own and with no real experience at moving mountains. That isn't to say that you cannot succeed. It's possible - but in my experience - it's very unlikely. Time will tell. I'll be sure to bump this thread in a year to confirm or correct my prediction.
Thank you. Again, I understand your skepticism, and all I ask is that we can be civil about it. Obviously, the only way I can prove it to you is to make this game, and make it as good as I say I will. So yes, I hope we can speak again in a year-and-some :)
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