Improving the Spatial Awareness of Virtual Agents in Games

提高游戏中虚拟代理的空间意识

• 批准号: RGPIN-2019-05213
• 负责人: Verbrugge, Clark
• 金额: $ 2.04万
• 依托单位: McGill University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=738126
• 关键词: Improving; Spatial; Awareness; Virtual; Agents

Many modern games incorporate artificially intelligent agents, as opponents, companions/followers for the player, or even just as bystanders.  These Non-Player Character (NPC) agents have different roles, but all of them are required to interact with the game environment in a way that makes sense to the player.  Spatially aware NPC behaviours, however, are rare, with most NPCs enacting simple, stereotypical and heavily scripted behaviours that indicate little understanding of spatial properties relevant to their intended activities.  Advanced opponents in games may "take cover" or mimic other strategic behaviours, but they do so based on embedded, manual space designations and very simple (and highly localized) properties of the space. Characters in general are not able to realistically hide, sneak, explore, ambush, or otherwise exploit an arbitrary space, or one with dynamic, changing properties.  NPCs tend to interfere with each other and the player, and make overly simple, apparently irrational choices in contexts not foreseen by the game developer, inducing frustration by contradicting a player's expectation of how an agent should behave. This research aims to improve the technical capability and interactive qualities of artificial agents in modern computer games.  It is aimed at the mechanical benefits, where algorithmic potential exists to better analyze and abstract a virtual space to improve environmental awareness.  "Summarizing" aspects of the world state in different ways to better, and more compactly represent spatial qualities relevant to common movement and strategic planning problems has significant potential for improving the quality of decisions made by an NPC, whether applied to opponents in less-scripted game combat simulation, or to non-combat NPCs that need to align their behaviour with high-level player expectations.  This work addresses challenges in developing abstractions appropriate to different spatial tasks, focussing on core issues related to use of visibility and perception.  This is coupled with efficiency requirements due to real-time computation concerns, typical of interactive environments, as well as the need for practical implementation designs and tooling necessary in rapid development contexts like games. Games have a long history of pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence.  Modern games continue to raise that bar in presenting virtual contexts that represent agents and environments in increasing detail, and thus with increasing need to demonstrate rational and effective behaviour.  This research work benefits Canada's strong presence in the game development industry, and offers abstractions and techniques useful for the practical use of artificial intelligence in the growing, real-world integration of virtual environments.

许多现代游戏都加入了人工智能代理，作为玩家的对手，同伴/追随者，甚至只是旁观者。这些非玩家角色（NPC）代理有不同的角色，但他们都需要以一种对玩家有意义的方式与游戏环境进行互动。然而，具有空间意识的NPC行为很少，大多数NPC行为都很简单，在游戏中，高级对手可能会“隐蔽”或模仿其他策略行为，但他们这样做是基于嵌入式的手动空间指定和非常简单（高度本地化）的空间属性。一般来说，角色无法真实地隐藏、潜行、探索、伏击或以其他方式利用任意空间，或具有动态变化特性的空间。NPC倾向于相互干扰和玩家，并在游戏开发商无法预见的情况下做出过于简单、明显不合理的选择，通过违背玩家对代理人行为的期望而引发挫折感。这项研究旨在提高现代计算机游戏中人工智能体的技术能力和交互质量，它针对的是机械效益，其中存在算法潜力，可以更好地分析和抽象一个虚拟空间，以提高环境意识。“总结”世界状态的各个方面，以不同的方式更好地和更复杂的代表空间质量相关的共同运动和战略规划问题有显着的潜力，提高质量的决策，由一个全国人大，无论是应用于脚本较少的游戏战斗模拟中的对手，还是应用于需要将其行为与高级别玩家期望相一致的非战斗NPC。这项工作解决了开发适合不同空间任务的抽象的挑战，专注于与可视性和感知的使用相关的核心问题。这是由于实时计算的关注，典型的交互式环境，以及在快速开发环境（如游戏）中需要的实际实现设计和工具的效率要求。游戏在推动人工智能的边界方面有着悠久的历史。现代游戏在呈现虚拟环境方面不断提高标准，这些虚拟环境越来越详细地代表代理人和环境，因此越来越需要展示理性和有效的行为。这项研究工作有利于加拿大在游戏开发行业的强大地位，并提供了抽象和技术有用的人工智能的实际使用中不断增长的，现实世界的虚拟环境的集成。