Crafting the Illusion
Paul Roberts · 2024
Incorporating difficulty into any artificial intelligence (AI) system can be a challenge. Too often, this is a consideration that is left until the later stages of development when the development team realises the game is too hard. This chapter covers an approach to incorporating difficulty from an early stage, which opens the door to different ways of exploiting difficulty to not only make the game challenging but more fun too. Difficulty scenarios (within a sports title) allowed the AI team to add personality to the team as a whole. This is different from focusing on the personality of an individual agent. It is an appreciation that teams can go on a winning streak and become more than their constituent parts, or maybe a great team takes a hit to their confidence and their performance suffers as a result.