Improving Artificial Companions in Computer Games

许多现代游戏为玩家提供人为的“同伴”或追随者。从表面上看，它们是人类陪伴的故事驱动代理，尽管在更普遍的意义上，它们也是游戏系统的自然界面形式，在为玩家实现游戏目标或制定游戏机制提供各种形式的被动或主动帮助方面很重要。然而，人工伴侣设计仍然是一个难题。积极的例子是存在的，但往往主要是因为它们的美学和故事导向的整合。更常见的情况是，游戏中同伴的执行往往达不到玩家的期望，在帮助玩家的同时也让玩家感到恼火；错误的支持行为，糟糕的玩家（以及同伴之间）协调，迟钝的互动以及有限的能力范围都是玩家经常抱怨的内容。不恰当的、无益的回应会大大降低沉浸感和陪伴感，并破坏将同伴作为游戏界面一部分的目标。******本研究旨在提高现代电脑游戏中人工同伴的技术能力和交互质量。我们的目标是机制上的好处，其中算法的潜力存在于开发高级同伴能力，大大扩展和更灵活的环境意识，识别玩家的意图和需求，并显著提高与其他人工非玩家角色的协调能力。我们的方法针对人工角色交互的两个核心需求。同伴首先需要有一套广泛的能力，适合它们作为智能代理的表现形式。这包括以符合玩家行为的常见、复杂模式（游戏邦注：如战斗策略、潜行、探索等）的方式行事的能力，执行相关分析的能力，以及解释和询问模式的界面。这种能力的使用是基于良好的模型和对玩家意图和策略的理解。这需要能够识别玩家的基本属性，如技能水平、挫败感等，以及捕捉特定战略行为（如探索、潜行、伏击等）的动机和使用的更新颖的措施。对于估算和表示玩家知识的紧凑、有效技术的需求导致了一系列有趣而复杂的知识表示和推理问题。******创造好的虚拟伴侣的一般问题当然是无限的。游戏是朝着这个方向发展的天然跳板，它提供了一个严格约束且易于修改的交互环境。我们的工作直接改善了游戏设计，但也具有推广虚拟环境的优势，在虚拟环境中，复杂虚拟空间的自然界面需求变得越来越重要

Many modern games provide artificial "companions" or followers for the player. Overtly, they function as story-driven proxies for human accompaniment, although in a more general sense they also serve as a form of natural interface into the game system, important to providing various forms of passive or active assistance to the player in achieving game goals or enacting game mechanics. Artificial companion design, however, remains a difficult problem. Positive examples exist, but tend to be lauded mainly for their aesthetic, story-oriented integration. More commonly, implementations of companions in games tend not to live up to player expectation, aggravating as much as actually helping players; misjudged support behaviours, poor player (and inter-companion) coordination, obtuse interactions, and a limited range of abilities are frequent complaints. Inappropriate, unhelpful responses greatly reduce the sense of immersion and accompaniment, and defeat the goal of using companions as part of the game interface.******This research aims to improve the technical capability and interactive qualities of artificial companions in modern computer games. We aim at the mechanical benefits, where algorithmic potential exists to develop advanced companion abilities, greatly extended and more flexible environment awareness, recognition of player intent and requirements, and to significantly improve coordination with other artificial, non-player characters. Our approach aims at the two core requirements of artificial character interaction. Companions first need to have an extensive set of capabilities, appropriate to their representations as intelligent agents. This includes the ability to act in ways that accord with common, complex modes of player behaviour (combat strategy, sneaking, exploration, etc), the ability perform relevant analyses that enable such behaviour, and interfaces for explanatory and interrogative modes. Use of such abilities is predicated on a good model and understanding of player intent and strategy. This requires the ability to recognize basic player properties such as skill level, frustration, etc., as well as more novel measures that capture the motivation for and use of specific strategic behaviours, such as exploration, sneaking, ambush, etc. The need for compact, efficient techniques for estimating and representing player knowledge leads to a range of interesting and complex knowledge representation and inference concerns.******The general problem of creating good virtual companions is of course unbounded. Games are a natural stepping stone in that direction, providing a tightly constrained and easily modifiable interaction context. Our work directly improves game designs, but has the advantage of also generalizing to the growing use of virtual environments, where natural interface requirements to complex virtual spaces are becoming increasingly important.**