From gameai_news at igda.org Wed Feb 15 02:13:37 2006 From: gameai_news at igda.org (gameai_news@igda.org) Date: Wed Feb 15 02:17:17 2006 Subject: [gameAI_news] Game AI Newsletter (02/2006) Message-ID: <20060215071337.26648.qmail@vpop4.superb.net> Hi everyone, We're approaching GDC, and it's time for another game AI newsletter! In the beginning, a quick pointer to a call for new members for our AI Interface Standards Committee (AIISC). The deadline for applications is NEXT MONDAY (Feb 20) so hurry if you are interested in joining our initiative: http://www.igda.org/ai/call-for-applications.htm Of course, this newsletter has lots of stuff related to GDC! Let's start with some info from Neil and Steve about their great AI Programmers Dinner: EVENT: The Annual AI Programmers Dinner Friday, March 24th, 6:00pm Eulipia restaurant on 1st Street Meeting: Get to the "lobby bar" on the second floor concourse of the convention center by 5:30. At 5:30 the group heads over to Eulipia restaurant. Reservation: As early as possible, get a business card and a $20 to Steve Woodcock or Neil Kirby to reserve your place. Neil can be found giving a tutorial on Monday. Neil and Steve can be found moderating the AI round tables Wednesday through Friday. The $20 covers the food/tax/tip portions of the dinner. Bring your own money for you bar tab. We usually run out of places after the AI round tables on Wednesday. If you change your mind, let us know as soon as possible and we'll give you your $20 back and let some one else take the slot. Bring your digital camera and email the shots to Steve Woodcock. Be ready to talk game AI! Getting to the actual AI content of GDC, here is an overview of related sessions: * AI Learning Methods for Game Designers [Poster Session] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1647 * Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games - Present and Future [Roundtables] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1519 http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2473 http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2470 * Battle Cam: A Dynamic Camera System for Real-Time Strategy Games [Lecture] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1530 * Behavioral Animation for Next-Generation Characters [Sponsored Session] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2114 * Crowd Simulation on PS3 [Lecture] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2769 * Crowds In A Polygon Soup: Next-Gen Path Planning [Lecture] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1559 * Embodied Agents in Computer Games [Tutorial] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1340 * Extreme Memory Optimization for Path-Finding and Spatial Partitioning Systems [Lecture] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=1569 * Human to Virtual Human [Panel] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2314 * Invoking Life and Character Emotion: Crossing the Uncanny Valley [Sponsored Session] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2378 * Next Generation Facial Animation - Making Your Characters More Believeable [Sponsored Sessions] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2431 http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2432 * The Art of Munging AI [Roundtables] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2308 http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2484 http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2480 * The Next Generation Animation Panel [Panel] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=11&SessID=2272 * Three States and a Plan: The AI of F.E.A.R. [Lecture] http://www.cmpevents.com/GD06/a.asp?option=C&V=1 Quite a list, isn't it? And please note that CMP states at the GDC website that content is continuously being added to the program, so there might even be more relevant sessions! Here is a list of more events: EVENT: The Second Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE'06) June 20-23, 2006 Marina Del Ray, CA, USA http://www.aiide.org/ EVENT: ICAPS 2006 Workshop on AI Planning for Computer Games and Synthetic Characters June 6 or 7, 2006 The English Lake District, Cumbria, UK Paper submission deadline: February 17, 2006 http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/aip-gsc.html EVENT: SAB-06 Workshop on Adaptive Approaches for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games October 1, 2006 Conference Centre of the Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy Paper submission deadline: May 1, 2006 http://www.sab06.org EVENT: Narrative AI and Games: A symposium part of the AISB 2006 conference April 5-6, 2006 University of Bristol, Bristol, England http://www.nicve.salford.ac.uk/AISB06/CallForPapers.html EVENT 2006 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG'06) May 22-24, 2006 University of Nevada, Reno campus, Reno/Lake Tahoe, NV, USA http://www.cse.unr.edu/~sushil/cig06/ Check previous newsletters for events that were already mentioned there! Continuing with the event above, let's move on to some new resource links: ONLINE RESOURCE/PROCEEDINGS: Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2005) http://csapps.essex.ac.uk/cig/2005/index.jsp?page=papers.html ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: Make-believe Tanks: a Report from the Trenches of the VizSim Industry by Holger Gruen http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060131/gruen_01.shtml (only a small part on AI though) ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: Using Particle Swarm Optimization for Offline Training in a Racing Game by Etienne de Villiers http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051213/villiers_01.shtml As a final note on resources, all proceedings of the previous GDCs are now accessible from one webpage: ONLINE RESOURCE/PROCEEDINGS: GDC Proceedings http://www.gamasutra.com/features/gdcarchive/ Here's a link to EA's AI-focused UK programming challenge: SOFTWARE COMPETITION: EA's Programming Challenge: Tank Wars (Submission date delayed) http://www.info.ea.com/company/company_tw.php That's it for this time! I hope everyone has a chance to go to GDC and enjoy the sessions there. Unluckily, I won't make it this year, but we'll surely meet at the one or other event elsewhere! And don't forget the deadline on Monday for membership applications for the AIISC :-) An EA quote related to its student competition above seems to be a great way to end this issue: "In this competition, we have deliberately downgraded the graphics to emphasize the importance of AI. Over the next five to 10 years, AI is going to differentiate great games from the rest. With this competition, we hope to find people with a passion for AI and understanding of the magic that makes a game truly fun to play." 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. From gameai_news at igda.org Fri Sep 29 03:24:09 2006 From: gameai_news at igda.org (gameai_news@igda.org) Date: Fri Sep 29 03:26:03 2006 Subject: [gameAI_news] Game AI Newsletter (09/2006) Message-ID: <004801c6e398$520289b0$4d4814ac@stf.nus.edu.sg> Hi everyone, As many of you know, I have started a professorship at the National University of Singapore, and I need to apologize as my e-mail responsiveness consequently suffered quite a bit from all the related activities, like setting up my new game AI labs (http://www.ai-center.com/ii-labs/)! Looks like Singapore was a great choice though, and there's a vivid and very enjoyable game development scene and a ton of government support. But back to the main topic! There were lots of events related to game AI recently, and here are some links to their proceedings: ONLINE RESOURCE/PROCEEDINGS: Proceedings of the SAB'06 Workshop on Adaptive Approaches for Optimizing Player Satisfaction in Computer and Physical Games http://www.mip.sdu.dk/~georgios/gamesWorkshop ONLINE RESOURCE/PROCEEDINGS: Proceedings of the ICAPS 2006 Workshop on AI Planning for Computer Games and Synthetic Characters http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~ruth/ICAPSWorkshop/WorkshopProgram.html The next two articles are from the 2006 ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium on Video Game Design: ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: Big Fast Crowds on PS3 by Craig Reynolds http://www.research.scea.com/pscrowd/ ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: Emotional Remapping of Music to Facial Animation by Steve DiPaola and Ali Arya http://www.csit.carleton.ca/~arya/pubs/vgs-06.pdf (and other interesting work at: http://ivizlab.sfu.ca/about.php and http://www.csit.carleton.ca/~arya/pubs.html) The Second Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE-06) was held in June. The papers are not directly online, but you might be lucky if you search the net for articles that sound interesting: http://www.aiide.org/papers.html And some other new game AI articles on the net: ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: Anticipatory AI and Compelling Characters by Bruce Blumberg http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060216/blumberg_01.shtml ONLINE RESOURCE/ARTICLE: Evolving Pathfinding Algorithms Using Genetic Programming by Rick Strom http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060626/strom_01.shtml ... and even lots of more material in printed book form: BOOK: Artificial Intelligence for Games by Ian Millington Morgan Kaufmann http://books.elsevier.com/us/mk/us/subindex.asp?isbn=0124977820&country=Unit ed+States BOOK: AI Game Programming Wisdom 3 edited by Steve Rabin Charles River Media http://www.charlesriver.com/books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=124279 BOOK: Game Programming Gems 6 (including some articles on game AI) edited by Michael Dickheiser Charles River Media http://www.charlesriver.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=124038 Some forthcoming events: EVENT: Artificial Intelligence for Games (workshop/seminar as part of the London Games Festival) October 4, 2006 Imperial College London, London, UK http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/businessdevelopment/newsandevents/events/aigamese vent EVENT: 2007 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG 2007) April 1-5, 2007 Hilton Hawaiian Village, Honolulu, Hawaii, US Paper submission deadline: October 31, 2006 http://csapps.essex.ac.uk/cig/2007/ While my very own game AI company - Digital Drama Studios - is folding down because I left the wonderful city of Prague (a new company in Singapore will certainly be set up sometime soon!), the game AI middleware scene is going more strong than ever! Here is a new entry in this category: TruSoft and their Artificial Contender engine, which specializes in capturing human behavior. In their words, "the solution can enable characters in a game to emulate playing styles of humans and to adapt." Check out their technology at: http://www.trusoft.com/ Havok advances to the AI area as well, and has just launched their new Havok Behavior tool/SDK, which is based on hierarchical finite state machines: http://www.havok.com/content/view/285/79/ You may also want to have a look at Chris Crawford's Swat (their interactive storytelling authoring tool) that has just been released as a kind of pre-alpha version: http://www.storytron.com/swat/index.htm I hope you guys will meet your holiday deadlines and have a lot of fun during the next months when testing out the forthcoming games and consoles! While I skipped GDC this year, I'll be making quite a "conference tour" in November and December (Singapore/Perth/Montreal/Liverpool), so if you'll be at the same spot, feel free to drop me a message. 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/ Block E4, Level 5, Room 28 Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering National University of Singapore 4 Engineering Drive 3 Singapore 117576 Tel (office): +65 6516 5153 Tel (mobile): +65 9223 1756 Fax: +65 6779 1103 --