Artificial Intelligent Modular Ecosystem

Overall this was a fabulous project,
Excellent concept and very well realised.

- Jane Turner
(Brisbane International Game Developers Association Representative)

AiMe Demo Link

Many modern video games focus on immersing the player; they use realistic graphics and interesting stories to draw the player into the game world, making them believe that they are part of the game, rather than an objective observer. While the use of graphics and narrative as an immersion tool is widespread within the gaming industry, modern games are lacking in the realistic representation of flora and fauna within the environment. The lack of an effective behavioural representation ruins the immersion for the player as the behaviours of the flora and fauna within the game are not convincing enough to maintain the illusion of a game world.

In the perfect world these behaviours would be modelled by the Artificial Intelligence (AI), due to the time and budget constraints AI coders usually resort to using coding tricks rather than actual AI to make creatures within a game seem real. Background creatures usually wander aimlessly around the game world instead following a set of needs based behaviours. This project aims to create a solution that will allow an AI team to implement realistic, needs based AI modelling into a game within the time and budget constraints of a large project.

The aim of this project is to create a reusable AI module (AiMe) that can be implemented into video games that are currently in development, quickly and efficiently. AiMe will act as the environmental AI engine for this game, calculating the behaviours of all flora and fauna within the game world. The AiMe module will be easier and cheaper to implement into a video game than any hard coded solution, proving a cost effective investment for any Game studio.

This project will allow studios to implement a realistic environmental AI simulation without spending costly time and resources creating a custom solution. The AiMe module will also be reusable, allowing studios to use it in many different games without having to create a new solution.

This project is being developed by the following people:

  • Rowan Hellings
  • Simon Rylance
  • Jenny Hodgson
  • David Gamer