hola AImigos,
Thanks for the blog-vitation Damian! I guess my life as a game AI guy has come ironically full circle. Years ago I started reading publications from the Synthetic Characters group at the Media Lab, which influenced how we architected our AI systems for NOLF2, and to a greater degree FEAR. Now I find myself writing for naimad's blog, and heading to the Media Lab myself.
I have a habit of putting my foot in my mouth when someone hands me a microphone, so I can only imagine where blogging will get me. There are already a bunch of interesting threads here that I would like to respond to, but I'm preoccupied at the moment wrapping up work on FEAR, and preparing to move from one end of I-90 to the other (Seattle to Boston). For now I'll just post the obligatory bio.
I've been developing AI systems for games since 1996; most recently at Monolith Productions, where I've had the privilege of working with the team behind NOLF2 and FEAR. My work has focused on developing re-usable, modular architectures to support goal-oriented behavior. My colleague at Monolith, Brian Legge, has made countless improvements to these architectures, and reused them on other games. Lately I've been excited about planning. Inspired by our adventures with chaotic goal-oriented behavior on NOLF2, and some interesting discussions in the Goal Oriented Action Planning (GOAP) group of the AIISC, I decided to take the plunge and implement FEAR's AI with a GOAP system. We hope game players will find that this approach to AI provides a noticeably more dynamic, over the top combat experience. Time will tell...
My decision to head back into academia does not indicate any lack of interest in games. I'd just like to dive into research for a while, and explore solutions to the problems I found most interesting (and challenging) while working on FEAR; communication and coordination within groups of autonomous agents. I'll be joining the Cognitive Machines research group, which aims to create machines that can communicate on human terms.
Meanwhile, I'm glad to see the future of FPS AI tech in the capable hands of smart dudes like Damian, Paul, Brian, and Greg.
Posted by jorkin at July 12, 2005 11:46 PM