Artificial Intelligence is quite a hot topic these days – not only as a main theme for several movies, TV shows and games but also as a practical tool that helps in designing a realistic encounters, probable situations and behaviours that look as natural as possible. In our game, where the “realness” of the world matters, we make sure that everything that is happening around you will be as close to the reality as humanely possible. And that is why we are using some particular AI tools to make that happen.
Notice how the NPC move around predesigned points - they follow particular set of motions and animations to simulate the real-life world to the highest degree. We have prepared a wide selection of different animations, acts and actions that they choose from so they remain vividly distinct from each other.
In the first part of our discussion about the AI in our game we would like to start with the simpler half of our design choices. As you might have notice in contemporary games, many of them are designed to simulate life of whole communities. You can visit certain cities or villages and see people hard at work, children playing at the side of the road and few businessmen just minding their own business. It is AI that decides the activities of those people – it can be very simple, scripted even or it can grow to enormous size and react to player’s actions. Both of those options are present in games these days and they make for much more entertaining games because you can feel that you are inside this world and you are a part of it.
Here you can see the way our NPCs navigate particular areas remaining locked in their "patrol" routes. They have different actions to perform at different points making sure to remain as life-like as possible.
In Chernobyl Liquidators Simulator we will do something similar. As you have seen in the trailer there will be other people around fighting with the catastrophe that happened in Chernobyl and they will do their best to make sure that it is contained and liquidated. In order to achieve that feeling we are going to be using, among other tools, scripted AI community behaviours. Thanks to this particular technique we can achieve a lot of realistic behaviours that will be implemented in the game. Other liquidators on the field will be able to perform a set of activities designed by us – letting us create the very real image of working along other people. We are preparing a lot to make sure that it looks perfect – various set of animations, many different activities loops, paths and tasks that other entities in the game will follow is steadily growing. By pairing them all in different combinations we are going to make sure that the world of NPCs will stay diversed and complex.
But this is only one part of our Artificial Intelligence “training”. In the second part, very soon, we will let you know about more complicated side of things that excites us even more than what we have prepared for today – and believe us, we are excited today too. Thank you for reading and stay tuned!
Cheers!
Chernobyl Liquidators Simulator Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1113010/Chernobyl_Liquidators_Simulator/