Giving Credit Where It’s Due
Our concept of asymmetrical cinematic AI was heavily inspired by reading what Chris Park of Arcen Games has to say about it in the following articles on his site:
- designing-emergent-ai-part-1-an-introduction
- designing-emergent-ai-part-2-queries-and-code
- designing-emergent-ai-part-3-limitations
- designing-emergent-ai-part-4-asymetrical-goals
- designing-emergent-ai-part-5-dont-squeeze-a-handful-of-sand
- designing-emergent-ai-part-6-the-tempo-and-ai-vs-player-agency
Quote:
I made a separate rules system for parts of the AI versus what the humans do. The AI’s economy works based on internal reinforcement points, wave countdowns, and an overall AI Progress number that gets increased or decreased based on player actions. This lets the players somewhat set the pace of game advancement, which adds another layer of strategy that you would normally only encounter in turn-based games. It’s a very asymmetrical sort of system that you totally couldn’t have in a pvp-style of skirmish game with AI acting as human standins, but it works beautifully in a co-op-style game where the AI is always the enemy.
