We’ve all experienced it – enemies in videogames which seem to want us to beat them. Bosses that have attack patterns we can match in our sleep, enemies in shooters who seem to like head-butting our bullets, guards in stealth games who have 10 degree peripheral vision… the list goes on. The smarter gamers among us, especially the ones with a bit of programming savvy, can usually figure out more-or-less what’s going on behind the curtains code-wise, by paying attention to the way enemies react to certain situations. I remember a buddy of mine and I sat for a whole afternoon playing Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven and discussing the various routines, checks and random elements we’d put into the enemy guard scripts to make the experience seem more human and organic. Well, a fascinating article along similar lines has just been posted at DAMNLAG. Check it out. These ideas are not revolutionary or poised to usher in a new age of AI computing, they’re just simple little things which could be easily implemented to make the behaviour of enemies in videogames seem more organic.
