Virtual Intelligence from Artificial Reality: Building Stupid Agents in Smart Environments
Patrick Doyle · 1999
As the nature of online gaming changes to accomodate vast, persistent virtual worlds, there is a growing need to populate them with inhabitants capable of dynamic, adaptable, fruitful interactions with players. In this paper we argue that by separately placing abstract compentencies in the agent and concrete domain knowledge in the environment, we can build simple intelligences that exhibit sophisticated behaviors. Introduction The technological advances of the last decade in networking and processor power have brought a growing number of computer games online. The playing public now expects new combat or simulation games to have multiplayer modes with at least a few participants. We are also beginning to see massively multiplayer games such as Everquest, Asheron's Call, and Ultima Online, that support hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously. The advantage of these massive world is that the players themselves are the source of its constant change and growth. The environ...