Mutating Animations 218
Weird_one writes "Discover magazine's current issue has an intriguing article involving using genetic algorithims to evolve an animation of a walking individual."
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Mutating Animations
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"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you'll have to spend 20 years playing the AI over, and over, and over again before it can even begin to evolve into something worth playing.
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll hold my final opinion until the leak comes out, but it sure beats killing scientists and barny because they wont move out of the way.
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the case of board games, we've had learning algorithms for a long time now. I remember Fritz4 (chess program) having it 6-7 years ago.
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... (Score:4, Insightful)
Call me a skeptic, but I don't swallow that immediately. When Black and White was still in production there was some press that stated that the game had such a great AI that if the developers dropped a ball to the citizens, they started to play soccer by their own, assisted by the AI only. Did anybody ever see anything even remotely near that level of intelligence in the final release?
Yes, that scene could really use AI to move all the characters but it remains to be seen if the scene is constructed specially so that AI can survive on its own or was the AI really intelligent? Don't expect too much. It's AI instead of I for a reason.
Re:Its more difficult than one thinks... (Score:1, Insightful)
The character's body plan involved 700 distinct parameters that needed to be optimized to teach it how to walk like a human.
So its not like the computer learnt to walk by itself. There's a lot of hard work involved before you can even start the GA. Congrats to Reil.
The computer did learn to walk by itself. The control of those 700 distinct parameters to move the legs is what the genetic algorithm was optimizing.
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, game makers no longer have to record a real person's movements, or formulate the movements themselves. They just let generations of these things learn in a "lab" setting. Once they've got the result they want, they can then save the settigns and use it in the production game without the need to "learn on the fly". You don't have to have a fast CPU to use it in a game. This is a development tool that saves time on making a walking algortihm that will look artificial. Instead, you make a computer come up with that walking algorithm for you.
The best part is, you could apply this strategy to models that are entirely dreamed up. Maybe a 5 legged serpent? No one knows how one of those might walk, but this technique learn how one walks.
Re:These must be stopped! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature... (Score:2, Insightful)
Objective: escort Gordon to helipad
Obstacle: Gordon isn't moving
Algorithm: Hang around, look for bad guys
Obstacle: Gordon moved out of sight
Algorithm: Follow cheapest path to Gordon's location
Obstacle: Enemies ahead firing at Gordon
Algorithm: Cover him. Kill bad guys.
Obstacle: There is no path to Gordon
Algorithm: Find closed portals that would lead to him, open them in turn until a path is available
The real difficulty here is determining which obstacle detections and algorithms to add and how to link them together (and then implementing them all). The more complex your environment, the more detections you must have and the more different types of obstacles, the more algorithms.
If they get it right