AI in AoC?

snowii

Hello everyone

I'm looking super forward to alpha two, but as this sadly still might take some time, I very much enjoy watching all the monthly updates until then.

What got me curious was the following question:

In AoC, in which parts are you guys planning to implement AI?

It's not just a very dominant subject in recent months, but it also became more and more adapt to be used in games (boss mechanics, quest generation, npc dialogs, mob pathing, armor coloring/decay patterns, ....).

I look forward to your answer (and please add more smileys for the forum to use )

~snow

Kilion

As far as I am aware AI is not going to be a part of Ashes' development. Environments, assets of all kinds, sounds, gear and behavior will all be designed by actual humans. Just like the Pathfinder campaign that Steven made, Intrepid seems to intend to build everything by hand.

I personally think like this approach and am looking forward to the finished game.

superhero6785

"AI" is such a broadly used term these days. I don't believe there are plans to implement AI in any way that you may be thinking. But remember, enemy mobs, bosses, pathing, etc. have already been controlled by "AI" for a long time.

I could see potentially adding some sort of Chat Bot AI into NPC background dialogue to make the world seem "alive", though I doubt that will happen.

Voidwalkers

Been trying to advocate the idea of AI-generated-quests (as illustrated in the world of Sword Art Online) for a while, although given the current level the technology, I imagine we'd at most see partially AI-generated dialogues or flavor texts -- as the above post said, fillers that make the world look "alive". Though even that seems unlikely as I don't recall the Intrepid crew mentioning AI at all.

My rationale being given Ashes's node system, (each node can develop to a different level, can be of a different type, can have a different theme depending on the races of players that contributed to their developments ... etc.), ideally you'd want a large number of level-type-race-geography combination specific, or even node specific quests to provide a rich questing experience. But handcrafting all those quests will not only be a shit ton of work, it is also somewhat wasteful as you'll eventually only use a small subset of those on each server (depending on how nodes develop). So I believe having designers instead define various "contexts" & rules for the nodes, and have AI generate a good amount of quests (reviewed by humans, of course), could be a plausible alternative.

snowii

Yeah absolutely, that's also what I'd love to see!

Having an awesome game but it's different for everyone (even if it's just a small line in a dialog )

And the best is, it's already super simple to implement this technology into a game.
Here a super recent video from Matt Wolfe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCfCuLy4RJA

(I hope it's ok for me to link this in here )

I also think it's a super nice idea when having the node system as the NPCs & world would react differently

Ace1234

@snowii

Yeah absolutely, that's also what I'd love to see!

Having an awesome game but it's different for everyone (even if it's just a small line in a dialog )

And the best is, it's already super simple to implement this technology into a game.
Here a super recent video from Matt Wolfe:



(I hope it's ok for me to link this in here )

I also think it's a super nice idea when having the node system as the NPCs & world would react differently

Yeah I would love to see something like that, this is a great way of testing player knowledge because they have to organically think of information themselves to prompt conversations, rather than reacting to prompts/cues given by the game- while also being very immersive because it is done in a natural flow of conversation where different A.I characters can have their own personalities, which makes for a more believable world.

Selo

Yea NPC dialogue between eachother and players would be cool.
Needs some restrictions not talking about stuff outside the world.

WHIT3ROS3

Well "AI" is already being used in development. Mob behavior trees are "AI". UE5 utilizes various aspects that incorporate "AI". That's the problem, "AI" is such a broad term these days. It almost makes no sense when I see artists who use digital programs like Photoshop complaining about the likes of AI when just a few short years ago paper and pen artists were complaining about Photoshop. It's an amazing tool and creatives should always be at the bleeding edge when utilizing exciting new tools that help with the creative process. IMO.

These recent advancements in language models and image generation can allow for a smaller studio like Intrepid to even the playing field against larger development studios. With the help of AI programs, a single concept artist can now produce and curate the content of a dozen concept artists in a month (and that is not an exaggeration)

I know people are generally worried. "Is it really authentic? It'll miss the personal touch" This might sound a bit harsh, but wake the fuck up. The genie is out of the bottle. The future is now.