In a wacky sort of follow-up to yesterday's
Q&A
with Graeme Devine,
Computer Gaming Review
has posted a quick Q&A with Stephen Polge, master of all things AI at
Epic
Games regarding the bots in Unreal Tournament. Here's a quick excerpt:
I've rewritten most of the bot AI for Unreal Tournament. I was only
able to spend a little over a week focused on the Unreal I bots (although they
also shared a good bit of their AI with the Unreal I monsters), while I've been
able to devote a substantial part of the last 10 months to the Unreal Tournament
bots. As a result, I've been able to really tweak and improve them in a lot
of areas. Their navigation is much more polished. They feel a lot more human,
in terms of how they make decisions about what to do, how they use weapons and
inventory items, how they hit or miss targets, and how they have different personalities.
Another significant improvement is their vastly improved team AI support. The
bots play the Unreal Tournament team games (Assault, Domination, and Capture
the Flag) very well. They work together and support each other, as well as changing
strategies based on the situation. Players can also give them orders on the
fly. The code is also designed so that mod authors will be easily able to extend
the AI support for new game types.
I never really enjoyed playing the reaper bots or the Unreal I bots, because
I was always too cognizant of their flaws, which really distracted me from the
game. I do really enjoy playing against the UT bots.