From gameai_news at igda.org Fri Mar 20 16:32:26 2009 From: gameai_news at igda.org (AI SIG List for Game AI News) Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:32:26 -0400 Subject: [gameAI_news] Game AI Newsletter (03/2009) Message-ID: <20090320203226.42368.qmail@mail.superb.net> Hi everyone, By now you have probably already realized that the previously announced move to an integrated forum/wiki/community platform for the IGDA's AI SIG still hasn't happened. Unluckily, the IGDA faced many problems with implementing the system, and finally switched to another one (Drupal). They're now trying to get everything ready right after GDC, so this is likely the last newsletter from this mailing list. I will try to move/transition the subscribers to the new system, but in case this is not possible, I'll send another note. With things not going too well in the games industry with layoffs left and right, people already asked me if I'm a bit crazy with starting up my new company now (www.kingdom-crafting.com). The company, by the way, is not on AI middleware but full game production, and you can certainly expect the games to be extremely AI-heavy! And at least it's easier to hire good people when starting up in the current economic climate :-) --- GDC --- GDC starts in a few days, and this time, it looks like it's a great treat for everyone interested in AI! There are so many AI session that you can likely stay the whole week only in AI sessions (and then likely collapse thereafter)! Here is an overview of AI-related GDC action: * Artificial Intelligence SIG Roundtable: Of course the most important event at GDC :-) We will focus in particular on potential short- and mid-term initiatives and issues to be addressed by the AI SIG, how to utilize best our new IGDA infrastructure, and everything else that you want to bring up! https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8578 Friday, 10:30am-11:30am, Room 112, North Hall * AI Summit: Yes, you read correctly! Two days full of AI-focused sessions! General link: http://www.gdconf.com/conference/ait.html And all the goodies: * AI Summit Introduction and Welcome [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8958 Monday, 9:00am-9:15am, Room 2018, West Hall * #define GAME_AI [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8957 Monday, 9:15am-10:00am, Room 2018, West Hall * Preparing for the Future: As a Professional Game AI Developer, What Should I Know? [Panel] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8276 Monday, 10:00am-11:00am, Room 2018, West Hall * Animating in a Complex World: Integrating AI and Animation [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8277 Monday, 11:15am-12:30pm, Room 2018, West Hall * 2008 AI Postmortems: SPORE, GEARS OF WAR 2, and BIOSHOCK [Panel] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8956 Monday, 2:00pm-3:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall * AI and Designers: Mind the Gap [Panel] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8484 Monday, 3:00pm-4:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall * Toward Solving Pathfinding [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8961 Monday, 4:15pm-5:15pm, Room 2018, West Hall * Characters Welcome: Next Steps Towards Human AI [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8499 Monday, 5:15pm-6:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall * Breaking the Cookie-Cutter: Modeling Individual Personality, Mood, and Emotion in Characters [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8483 Tuesday, 9:00am-10:00am, Room 2018, West Hall * When Good AI Goes Bad: Tools, Techniques, and Strategies for Testing and Debugging AI [Panel] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8278 Tuesday, 10:00am-11:00am, Room 2018, West Hall * From the Ground Up: AI Architecture and Design Patterns [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8500 Tuesday, 11:15am-12:30pm, Room 2018, West Hall * The Photoshop of AI: Debating the Structure vs Style Decomposition of Game AI [Panel] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8279 Tuesday, 2:00pm-3:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall * Beyond Behavior: An Introduction to Knowledge Representation [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8498 Tuesday, 3:00pm-4:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall * Parallelism in AI: Multithreading Strategies and Opportunities for Multi-core Architectures [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8959 Tuesday, 4:15pm-5:15pm, Room 2018, West Hall * AI Summit Final QA and Closing Remarks [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8960 Tuesday, 5:15pm-6:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall * Steven & Neil's Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games Roundtables: https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9418 Wednesday, 4:00pm-5:00pm, Room 121, North Hall https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9415 Thursday, 9:00am-10:00am, Room 111, North Hall https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9412 Friday, 12:00pm-1:00pm, Room 111, North Hall * Other AI-related GDC events: * Momentum vs. Character Animation [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8549 Wednesday, 12:00pm-1:00pm, Room 2007, West Hall * Threaded AI For The Win! [Sponsored Session] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9267 Wednesday, 12:00pm-1:00pm, Room 2011, West Hall * Procedural Speech Generation: How to Achieve Open Ended Dialog in Games Using Speech Technology https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9137 Wednesday, 2:30pm-3:30pm, Room 3020, West Hall * Character Pathfinding and Animation: How to Make Them Work Together https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9320 Wednesday, 4:00pm-5:00pm, Room 131, North Hall * How Sackboy Learned to Love Physics [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9091 Thursday, 9:00am-10:00am, Room 135, North Hall * On the War Path: Tactical AI in DAWN OF WAR 2 [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8855 Thursday, 9:00am-10:00am, Room 2024, West Hall * Building AI behaviors from Improvisational Actors [Poster Session] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8989 Thursday, 12:15pm-1:15pm, Station 2, Second Floor, West Hall * Directing the Prince Of Persia Camera: A Sustainable Development Approach [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8976 Friday, 10:30am-11:30am, Room 2014, West Hall * Robotic Testing to the Rescue [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8545 Friday, 12:00pm-1:00pm, Room 2022, West Hall * State-Based Scripting in UNCHARTED: DRAKE'S FORTUNE and UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8548 Friday, 12:00pm-1:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall * Aarf! Arf Arf Arf: Talking to the Player with Barks https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=8676 Friday, 11:10am-11:30am, Room 2002, West Hall * Dynamic Walking with Semi-Procedural Animation [Lecture] https://www.cmpevents.com/GD09/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=9004 Friday, 4:00pm-5:00pm, Room 2018, West Hall If this is not already enough, there's also some AI party fun to be had: * AiGameDev.com Launch Party http://events.linkedin.com/AiGameDev-com-Launch-Party-GDC-2009/pub/30086 Tuesday, 9pm-2am, Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street * ...and don't forget the IGDA Members-Only Party - though that's of course not only AI-related! (and unluckily overlaps with the event above) http://www.igda.org/gdc09/rsvp_gdcparty_09.php Tuesday, 8pm-1am, IGDA Members-Only Party, Westin on Market (aka Argent), Metropolitan Ballroom, 50 Third Street I guess I will scream and run for some weeks thereafter if anyone even only mentions "game AI"... --- OTHER EVENTS --- EVENT: AAAI Symposium on Intelligent Narrative Technologies II March 23-25, 2009 Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA http://www.cc.gatech.edu/conferences/aaai-int2/ EVENT: 2009 AISB'09 Symposium: AI & Games April 8-9, 2009 Edinburgh, Scotland, UK http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~daniela/AISB09/ EVENT: Paris Game AI Conference '09 June 10-11, 2009 Paris, France http://aigamedev.com/site/paris-cfp-2009 EVENT: The Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment October 14-16, 2009 Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA Paper submission deadline: Abstracts: April 14, 2009 http://www.aiide2009.org/ --- STUDY MATERIAL --- ONLINE RESOURCE/PROCEEDINGS: Rob Zubek has compiled some direct links to previous game AI events/conference proceedings that are now available as AAAI opened up their library - great stuff! http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000158.html ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLES: Here is a list of recent Gamasutra articles in the game AI area: * "Intelligent Mistakes: How to Incorporate Stupidity Into Your AI Code" by Mick West (March 18, 2009) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3947/intelligent_mistakes_how_to_.php * "Intelligent Brawling" by Tom Smith (February 19, 2009) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3931/intelligent_brawling.php * "Creating All Humans: A Data-Driven AI Framework for Open Game Worlds" by John Krajewski (February 4, 2009) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1862/creating_all_humans_a_datadriven_ .php * "The Pure Advantage: Advanced Racing Game AI" by Eduardo Jimenez (February 3, 2009) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3920/the_pure_advantage_advanced_.php * "The Technology of F.E.A.R. 2: An Interview on Engine and AI Development" by Christian Nutt (December 19, 2008) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3887/the_technology_of_fear_2_an_.php * "Procedural Spooling In Games" by Mick West (October 2, 2008) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1605/procedural_spooling_in_games.php * "Beyond AIML: Chatbots 102" by Bruce Wilcox (August 14, 2008) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3761/beyond_aiml_chatbots_102.php ONLINE RESOURCE/MEDIA: GDC 2008 keynote presentation of "The Next 20 Years of Gaming" by Ray Kurzweil https://www.cmpevents.com/sessions/GD/S7036i1.ppt ONLINE RESOURCE/MEDIA: GDC 2008 presentation of "Building a Better Battle: The Halo 3 AI Objectives System" by Dami?n Isla http://www.bungie.net/images/Inside/publications/presentations/betterbattle .zip ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: Paul Tozour on "Fixing Pathfinding Once and For All" (July 26, 2008) http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000152.html ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: SIGGRAPH 2008 paper on Spore's "Real-time Motion Retargeting to Highly Varied User-Created Morphologies" by Chris Hecker et al. http://chrishecker.com/Real-time_Motion_Retargeting_to_Highly_Varied_User-C reated_Morphologies ONLINE RESOURCE/INTERVIEW: Will Wright's 5 Prophecies about Artificial Intelligence (with video) by Erik Sofge (October 16, 2008) http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4287680.html?series=60 ONLINE RESOURCE/TUTORIALS: Tutorial slides from the CIG'08 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games ("Learning to Play Games", "Inducing Agent Models from Examples", "Measuring and Optimizing Player Satisfaction") http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au/cig08/tutorials.html BOOK: Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI by Dave Mark Course Technology PTR http://www.courseptr.com/ptr_detail.cfm?isbn=978%2D1%2D58450%2D684%2D3 BOOK: AI Game Engine Programming by Brian Schwab Course Technology PTR http://www.courseptr.com/ptr_detail.cfm?isbn=978%2D1%2D58450%2D572%2D3 BOOK: AI and Artificial Life in Video Games by Guy Lecky-Thompson Course Technology PTR http://www.courseptr.com/ptr_detail.cfm?isbn=978%2D1%2D58450%2D558%2D7 NEW JOURNAL: IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games http://www.ieee-cis.org/pubs/tciaig/ ONLINE RESOURCE: Well, AiGameDev.com is not really a new site, but they have substantially revised and improved their content. Really very cool what they're doing! Check it out: http://aigamedev.com/ ONLINE RESOURCE: Dave Mark's site with lots of game AI resources: http://www.intrinsicalgorithm.com/ (including notes & audio recordings from last GDC's AI Roundtables and an interview with Bioshock's AI lead!) ONLINE RESOURCE: Daniel Harabor's page with lots of pathfinding-related info: http://harablog.wordpress.com/ --- MISC --- ... and some info on a new German player in the AI middleware game (no, it's not me this time!) as well as some other interesting news: COMMERCIAL GAME AI SOLUTION: EKI One by Artificial Technology GmbH http://www.ekione.com/home INTERESTING NEWS: Nvidia and AMD to accelerate gaming AI on GPUs http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605389/nvidia-and-amd-to-accelerate-gaming-a i-on-gpus/ Wow... judging by the length of this newsletter, AI is becoming pretty hip! See you guys perhaps then at our GDC AI SIG session next Friday - and I'll keep you updated how we will proceed with the transition to the new IGDA site framework! Best, Alexander Nareyek Chair of the IGDA's AI SIG http://www.igda.org/ai/ P.S.: Did I miss anything? If you want to add anything for the next newsletter, please let me know! P.P.S.: By the way, just as a note - please don't ask about including "general AI" links in this newsletter. The field of AI is much too broad to cover, and there are other newsletters out there that target the general topic in a much better way. This newsletter is only for links/events/resources with a strong "game" emphasis. -- Alexander Nareyek http://www.ai-center.com/home/alex/ Tel: +65 9223 1756 (mobile/cell) Fax: +65 6779 1103 Director @ interactive intelligence Labs http://www.ai-center.com/ii-labs/ Block E4, Level 5, Room 25 Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering National University of Singapore 4 Engineering Drive 3 Singapore 117576 Director @ NUS Games Lab http://www.ai-center.com/games-lab/ IDM Institute National University of Singapore 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road Singapore 119077 Studio Head @ Kingdom Crafting Pte Ltd http://www.kingdom-crafting.com/ --