GCDC 2008: AI developer promises smarter opponents in shooter games

While giving a speech on the Developer’s Conference, Maier presents the A.I. middleware of his company and demonstrates the advantages. Instead of the commonly used waypoint system the Xait Engine works with Navigation Meshes, which can be easily created with Xait Map. According to Maier, Navigation Meshes only need a few polygons to function and the space that has to be scanned is a lot smaller than necessary for the waypoint method, where multiple nodes are responsible for the navigation (take a look at the pictures).

Another technique to make the virtual opponents is the Probabilistic Target Tracking that allows the A.I. to guess where the player could be and make a stealthy approach. Dynamic Tactic Position Evaluation and efficient In Game Learning are other A.I. techniques, to provide realistic gameplay, which can be integrated into a game with the Xait Control Editor. Thomas Maier gave some examples with the company’s program followed by recorded scenes from Counter Strike that showed Bots with noticeably improved behavior.