AI and NPC’s

“Today NPC’s are blind men with a stick”

The Core tasks of programmers:

The three core tasks that programmers face are -

• Synchroniation of synthetic speech and gestures.
• The expression of emotion and personality by means of body movement and facial display.
• The coordination of the embodied conversational behaviour of multiple characters possibly including the user and the design of artificial minds for synthetic characters.

3D topology analyzer:

A 3d topology analyzer is a system that scans and looks at the 3d game world/geography that gives information.

An example of this is that the analyzer will dynamically identify all potential locations for someone to shoot at a VIP, you will then be able to place body guards at these locations.

Another example of this is that the analyzer will identify  different ways to reach enemies to organize an opposite flank assualt.

NPC’s

An NPC is a coded character in a game that plays out certain tasks given to it. An NPC is a character that is not controlled by the player but by A.I.

Here is an example of an NPC, this character is A.I controlled.

The Core Tasks Of Life Like NPC’s:

The core tasks consist of synchronization of synthetic speech and gestures, the expression of emotion and personality by means of body movement and facial display, the coordination of the embodied conversational behaviour of mulitiple characters.

Data needed for NPC’s to move intelligently:

NPC’s must have data to move intellig:ently, identify hiding positions and more generally analyse 3d topology.

• Identify all potential locations from where an enemy can easily shoot and hide.
• The 3d topology analyser will dynamically identify all potential locations from where one can shoot at a VIP.You will then be able to position body guards in order to cover4 these threats.
• The 3d topology analyser will dynamically identify the different way to reach enemies to organize an opposite flank assault.
• To position your camera properly, the 3d topology analyser will identify the best perspective that gives you the best understanding of scene topology.

Accurate World Navigation Also Known As:

Accurate world navigation is also known as path-fiding.

This is an example of path finding.

The two different types of catergories:

There are two different types of categories, World navigation and local navigation. World navigation is doors, rooms and general geography and works out a way for the character to get from point A to point B. Local navigation is the detail what may happen around and to the character when getting from point A from point B.

Animation Systems

Disadvantages of using mesh based characters:

The disadvantages of using mesh based characters is that the vertices and polygon count stacks up very high which can eventually be alot of data once animated.Another disadvantage is that because there are so many vertices the animation of the character is much harder to produce because you would have to move vertex by vertex which would take a long time.

Advantages of using a skeletal animation system.

The advantage of using skeletal animation is that instead of the mesh representing each and every vertex they represent bones relative to the vertices.

1.2.

As you can see above these two pictures show a mesh based character system and a skeleton based character system. In picture one you can see the mesh based character, in picture the mesh is still there but a skeleton based character is over it.In both pictures you can see the weight curves on the vertices, the bigger the curve the bigger the effect it will have upon the vertices once moved.

What does “to ‘weight’ each vertex individually” mean?

Weight on a vertex is the effect the bone has on the mesh , the bigger the curve the bigger the effect the vertices will have.If the weight is done wrong the character will mutate and deform.

Lighting

API (Application Programming Interface):

An API is an interface that uses source code that a computer application will use to help with requests for services given by a computer program. Its basically a gateway between two programs that will use code to do different functions on one of the programs.

Examples of an API:

• Google search API
• Java API
• GoogleMaps API
• WebMail API

Lighting Offered By OpenGL:

There are three different lighting used in OpenGL, these are Vertex lighting, Polygon lighting and pixel lighting.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Vertex Lighting:

The advantage of using vertex lighting is that the hardware can normally help speed up the process using hardware transform and lighting  (T & L)

The disadvantage of using vertex lighting is that it does not support shadowing, e.g. when a actor has lighting on his body in areas where you normally get shadow, you dont.

Transform and Lighting:

Transform is the process when abit of world space is transformed into a 2d screen view.

Lighting is added after the transform has happened and is added to all the objects in view.

 Shaders:

Shaders are the algorthm that shows how lighting is used and how lighting responds to lighting on an object.

Light Maps:

A light map is premade static light used in games/programs.Light maps are still used today in games because they are a very cheap way to show some lighting.

Tron 2.0

Rendering – Fogging

Why Is Fogging ‘Handy’?

Fogging is handy because it fades the world in the distance so you dont see models and landscape popping up as they come in view.

What Is A Clipping Plane?

The clipping plane is the area where models and landscape come into view to the player.

Is Volumetric Fog Considered To Be An Object Or A Result Of Distance From The Camera?

Volumetric fog is considred to be an actual phusical object rather than a result of distance from the camera.

What Is Volumetric Fogging Like?

Volumetric fogging  is like walking through a big cloud.

What Is A Read – Modify – Write Operation ?

This is when a pixel may have to be changed or combined with another pixel, so the pixel is taken out and edited/combined with another pixel and then put back in the same place.

Name And Describe Two Blend Modes.

The first blend mode is straight Alpha blending , this just simply adds a percentage of background pixel to an inverse percentage of the new pixel.

The second is additive blending, this is when it takes a percentage of the old pixel and then just adds a specific amount of new pixel (rather than a percentage).

Rendering – Anti-Aliasing

What Does Anti-Aliasing Actually Do To Pixels?

When rendering a polygon the graphics card will look at what has already been rendered and then blur  the edges so you dont get jagged pixel edges that would normally be visable.

How Many Ways Are There For A 3D Card To Generate Anti-Aliased Images?

There are two ways for a 3d card to generate anti-aliased images, the first is an approach at the individual polygon level.This requires for you to render polygons back to front of the view, so each polygon can blend with what is behind it.

The second is that you render the whole frame at a much larger resolution that you intend to desplay it, and then when you scale the image down you sharp jagged edges tend to blended with the scaling.

Pro’s And Con’s

When using the first approach if you render out of order you can end up with all sorts of strange effects.

As for the second approach you can get nice results but requires a large amount of memory bandwidth because the card has to render more pixels than are in the resulting frame.

Unreal Engine Research

The first Unreal engine came with integrated redering, collision detection, A.I, visibility, networking and filing system all in one. With the level of intergration used, performance levels had to be maintained to fit hardware around that time.

On the first Unreal and Unreal Tournament,Epic (games company) decided to use

Level design

 To be a successful designer you would need a tremendous traditional art or architectural experience, and a tremendous frame rate, game flow and pacing experience You need both qualities to do good in level design. A digital architect is a dedicated individual who spends their time creating and developing levels. These architects have good artistic skills, traditional art, architectural, frame rate, game flow and pacing experience. With Moore’s law in place the future of digital architects will keep changing, more and more architects will be required in order to create levels in time. Moore’s law says that processor speed doubles every eighteen months and 3d accelerators constantly get better. More digital architects will be needed for each level because of the huge size and graphical mass, games are getting better and better. A level designer is sometimes thought of as a chef or is likened to glue. The chef part is that the level designer will take ingredients (bits) from other talented people and mix them together while sticking to the recipe (the plan) of a design document.As for the glue part of a level designer this all down to how important the level designer is. Designers have become one of the most important members of developing teams, this is because they take parts, textures, ideas, characters and have to plan out where things are placed and what things are used.The designer has to shape his level around the ideas and work he has from other people.http://www.cliffyb.com/art-sci-ld.html(information on whats needed for a level designer)

Importance of a renderer

The cpu in while in game will use 50% of its processing just to render a games engine, If the rendering is wrong  then the game company making the engine can be called a joke.The acronym ‘API’ stands for application program interface, this is how the 3d graphics work. ‘API’ is all about three-dimensional math, how 3d rendering works and how to get it on screen.It is more difficult to build a renderer for a pc than a console, this is because the hardware for a pc is always changing and getting better. When it comes to consoles the hardware is still, in other words it doesn’t change at all except until a new console comes out.Vertices are stored 3d objects in a 3d world that have a relation to each other. These vertices have a relation because the computer has to draw lines or fill surfaces between these points in the world.The renderer in a games engine is replaceable if the engine is good enough. Many cross-platform engines e.g. the unreal engine do just this and are playable on all the consoles out at that time.

What is a Games Engine?

A game engine is  the core of a game, a software componant that handles all the necessary technology such as rendering and artificial intelligence (AI).

A game engine is alot different from the game itself, its alot like a car and a car engine, you can take the engine out of the car and build another shell around it and this is what games are like. Today multiple games will use the same game engine.

Unreal Tournament 3                         Gears Of War

Unreal 3 engine