A Day in the Life of an AI Designer

[B. de la Durantaye]

Joe "Adus" Hegarty writes about his day-to-day life in Funcom offices, as an Artificial Intelligence Designer for Age of Conan. He tells us what his job entails, and gives us an in-depth look into the robust AI system designed for the game.

One of the most interesting things I have personally worked on is the children in Old Tarantia. They run about playing during the day (as children do), but once nightfall is reached, their parents will come out the collect them. The obvious “just 10 more minutes”-type argument ensues before they finally admit defeat and actually go inside. They will then remain inside until the following morning. The system we use for this is based on the actual day/night cycles we have in nearly all areas of the game.

• Read the full article here.

[sobeguy]

So if I understand the Maslovian pyramid . . . AOC sits right at the top of mine, just above "Self Actualization." ;-)

[tehsorrow]

Sounds awesome, reminds me of Oblivion with a hint of Fable.

[Philomorph]

It sounds like they've taken a cue from Oblivion and even old Neverwinter Nights scripting projects. I remember designing NPCs in my NWN cities to do more than just stand around and it was much easier using the base scripting built in and those created by the community.

Funcom seems to have taken it to the next level and I'm happy to finally see it in an MMO. To be honest nothing irked me more in this regard than walking around the starting areas in WoW and seeing vast fields filled with panthers and lions roaming around or pacing back and forth within 20 feet of deer and emu that seemed oblivious to them.

MMO AI is in need of a serious upgrade and I hope AoC is the next step.