An All-New Character AI

Sometimes, Will was really puzzled by Lin Lixin's connections.

They have connections everywhere!

The company that once held half of Atari's market share has, without my knowledge, become Lin Lixin's man.

"Is Mr. Will also planning to develop a life simulation game?"

David looked at the young man with great interest, but his eyes were filled with more amazement.

Just as Will was very familiar with him, David had naturally heard of Will's reputation.

The designers of SimCity.

When David first played that game, even he, who had seen countless storms, couldn't help but be amazed.

"Yes! It's called the Sims Simulated Life, but it's still in its infancy."

Will became incredibly excited.

LCP was the game that inspired him to develop the Sims.

"Mr. David, although the character in LCP is always the same fixed male character, I heard that you designed each player's character to have a unique personality. Is that true?"

"You know that?"

David was slightly surprised; this was a unique design he had left in the game.

However, due to functional limitations, it cannot function as fully as it requires.

The final system presented to players has an extremely weak presence, to the point that it is almost imperceptible.

Knowing this shows that Will was not just flattering him, but was a true die-hard LCP fan.

"That's absolutely right. I designed a system of random parameter combinations, paired with a simple state machine, so that each player's character will have subtle differences in behavior."

"Some little people prefer playing the piano, while others prefer watching TV; their preferences for gifts will also vary."

"Depending on their needs for food and water, and their current mood, each little person will do different things."

David himself was quite fond of this work, and seeing how much Will cared about it, he recounted the many design ingenuity he had left behind at the time.

Even though two years have passed, he still remembers those things clearly.

"That's amazing?"

Even Lin Lixin was somewhat surprised after listening to David's account.

Keep in mind that this game was designed for a low-end consumer PC like the C64, not an arcade or notebook PC.

A performance monster among bit machines.

David's ability to create such a highly sophisticated living system with such a small amount of data and extremely limited functionality is undeniable.

This is carving patterns on sesame seeds.

No, it's like carving the Along the River During the Qingming Festival on sesame seeds.

"It's hardly any technology; it's Old Huang history from the 8-bit era."

David waved his hand.

What good is it to be meticulous about the details?

If it weren't for Lin Lixin's sudden appearance, he would already be sleeping on the streets after leaving Activision.

Bruce didn't agree with his approach to refining his work at all.

"Mr. David! I—although our the Sims hasn't been officially launched yet, I'd like to show you the new character AI that Lin and I designed."

Will looked at Lin Lixin, and after receiving his nod of approval, he continued, "This system originated from our development of ' Momotaro Dentetsu' —oh, that is, the American version of 'Tycoon'."

"The inspiration came from a random number generator."

"I named it the Jazz system."

This is the flower that bloomed from the seed planted by that simple PRD system.

This is also a crucial character AI module that Lin Lixin and he have been working on to develop.

The name was given by Will.

According to him, this is because the system's improvisational and collaborative mechanisms are like a jazz band.

The musicians do not strictly follow the fixed score, but rather improvise within the framework.

In Will's view, if you want to make a the Sims game, it is essential to break out of the rigid and mechanical framework and give the characters a real sense of life.

"The core of the Jazz system is the decision tree, which I designed based on the finite state machine of LCP."

The birth of Jazz is actually quite related to "Civilization".

It was the design of the technology tree and the Civics Tree that inspired Will.

"The entire AI logic is organized into a tree diagram, radiating out from the root node."

"Each branch node will determine its current state and search for the next child node that meets the criteria to continue the query, until the bottom of the tree is reached."

1

Will spoke eloquently about the core design principles of this Jazz system.

David's eyes grew brighter as he listened.

That's brilliant.

Its readability and maintainability are frighteningly high.

If a specialized tool could be developed for this, all the logic of an AI could be completely delegated to a layperson who knows nothing about programming.

You can easily design various behaviors for an AI simply by dragging and dropping nodes and modifying their content.

Especially in modern times, where AI needs to handle increasingly complex situations, the tree-like design still allows it to maintain clarity.

If we continue to use David's FSM finite state machine design, the entire AI source code will become a huge, unmaintainable mess.

Although Lin Lixin has been searching for a more advanced solution called "HTN hierarchical task network", Jazz is already the best performing solution in all aspects given the current capabilities.

"This system—can it be used in more than just the Sims?"

David meticulously extracted the core logic of this system and discovered this astonishing fact.

Each new content innovation from GAMENOVA seems to be something that doesn't happen in isolation.

It seems Will is developing something completely unrelated to Quake, but it----

"That's right, and this is also a key module that Carmack is developing in his 3D engine."

Lin Lixin laughed heartily.

Game engines are tools designed to make game development easier for developers, so it's natural that such a crucial component would be included.

Whether it's an NPC or a hostile unit, this system allows you to easily design the corresponding character logic.

"Hiss----"

David gasped, a strange look creeping into his eyes as he glanced at Lin Lixin and Will.

Think ten steps ahead before taking one.

No wonder Gamenova has become such a massive conglomerate.

Each game, in addition to becoming a groundbreaking blockbuster, is also a huge experiment conducted by GAMENOVA.

David's eyes flickered slightly as he recalled every game GAMENOVA had ever made.

When strung together, they seem to form a complete and magnificent history of the advancement of video game technology.

Now, GAMENOVA is about to turn a new page in history.