One of the biggest pushes was to collect lots of data concerning military tactics, doctrine, weapons stats, and vehicle operation to govern the enemy AI. Lindop and his crew wanted to make the AI as realistic and flexible as possible. Players won’t find any scripted AI events in the game. Instead they’ll find an AI that adjusts itself on the fly according to the massive amount of military data gathered by the team. This includes everything from the weapons being used, movements being made, weather happening, strength of troops, terrain advantages and so on. What this should do is create battles that begin and end at least a little bit differently every time they’re played. It should also keep players on their toes and heads on a swivel. The enemy that attacked from the front the first time through the level may flank you through the forest in the second.

They also mentioned that the campaign AI will now advise the tactical AI about how important a battle is. So if an enemy is fighting while retreating on the strategic map, they might tell the tactical AI to fight a delaying action, preserving as many of their troops as possible. If the battle takes place just adjacent to the enemy capital, the campaign AI will tell the tactical AI to go all out and fight to the very last man.

Also, the enemy AI is far more dynamic than before. The enemy will adapt to your tactics better than ever before, and will be trying to outflank you at the same time. The Ai will try to destroy your cover as well, and the tactical advantage of the battlefield is in a constant state of flux. Fortunately, trusting your squad is easier than ever before thanks to superb AI on their end too. The game will tell you when you have an enemy suppressed and my squad never walked in front of my shots or ran off and did their own thing without my order.

Videogames are getting smarter with virtual enemies improvising during battles, storylines shifting based on moral choices and in-game characters sending players text messages for help.

in “Project Origin,” an action horror game built by Monolith for Warner Interactive Studios. Artificial intelligence integrated into the game causes enemies to respond to threats in ways that seem to mimic real life. “See, he threw the car door open because it was the smartest way to take cover,” the developer added.

How timely stories found on the mental_floss blog can be! It was only a week ago that I wrote about some of the exciting applications the concept of evolution can have in computing. Around the same time, I found a story about a TED Talk called Simulating Humans.

In addition to competing against the AI in the scripted missions, you can encounter them in deathmatch-only skirmish games or on the online servers. The AI provides good practice for the online game as they can engage (and avoid) you pretty well, but their somewhat simplistic nature shines through during the team-based games as they don’t capture flags or bases too well. They do play fair, however, and playing against them is about the same as with other multiplayer-centric titles like Battlefield and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Like the campaign, the AI lacks difficulty settings, but they don’t really need to become any easier of an opponent.

Typically, a game artificial intelligence developer views their job as creating an opponent that will entertain the player. There’s nothing wrong with this view. After all, if the player isn’t having fun, it doesn’t matter what the AI does well. The most realistic play in the world doesn’t mean a thing if the player doesn’t enjoy playing against it. It’s possible to make AI that plays like that, of course. If a human can play so well it frustrates their opponent, an AI can do that too. But is the problem the AI design or the game design? I’d argue the game design is at fault. In other words, AI design is a counterpoint to game design.

Groundbreaking artificial intelligence research at QUT has produced a computer program that invents highly absorbing, brain-stretching games that can be played across the board or online between people in different countries.

Big news on the A.I. front - I’ve figured out (most of) an algorithm that will place A.I. towers near bottlenecks in the terrain. w00t! Currently, A.I. players only place towers randomly, around their bases. If A.I. players could recognize natural bottlenecks in the terrain, and concentrate their defenses there, they would play much more effectively.