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Jumpgate Evolution - AI
In this Developer Journal, Herman Peterscheck, the Lead Producer of the upcoming MMORPG, Jumpgate Evolution, takes the time to talk to us about AI for the space-based game.
SAL-9000: “Will I dream?”
Dr. Chandra: “Of course you will. All intelligent beings dream. Nobody knows why.”
I can distinctly remember this scene from 2010; and it is a most amazing moment in a Science Fiction movie, I find. Amazing not only because it shows some kind of sentience in a machine (we got plenty of that in 2001), but because of the response. Nobody knows why. When you consider how things in games work, that mantra comes up over and over again. Most things in games are the result of nobody knowing why. Why is that wonderful thing that happens when all the pieces come together and things just seem to work. It’s a moment we all work for. It’s a moment we all hope for. It’s what games are all about.
Let me back up a few paces and go over why we thought AI was necessary in Jumpgate Evolution. The obvious reason is that you need to have stuff for players to do. One of those things is to blow things up. In order for blowing those things up to be interesting they must behave in some kind of predictable or unpredictable way. They need to fly, shoot, miss, hit and vary in difficulty. All of this is pretty much expected at this point. But we wanted a bit more than that.
Our chief goal when thinking about AI for Jumpgate Evolution is to use it to help create a believable and emotional universe. These are very important features of games. Players want to believe, they want to feel that they are in your world; and any opportunity you can give them to enforce that will always be appreciated. So we began the task of figuring out the bits and pieces that make for a believable space universe. The ironic thing is that it wasn’t that hard to make the list. All you have to do is come up with a list of stuff you want to do in space: fight, mine, trade, transport, patrol, explore – those are the major ones anyway. Since those are things players can do, they should also be things that non-players should be able to do.
;)
With these basic goals in mind, our AI programmer, Darren, went to work on some basic architecture. We decided early on that AI would run as its own dedicated server. This is not uncommon in the MMO space as you want to be able to scale hardware demands based on player activity. Then we set about deciding what is needed to define an AI element. Since we are a space game, they need to come from somewhere (launch from a station, spawn from a “vortex” (i.e. appear in mid air) etc. They also needed to fly around in various ways so we put together a database to define their ships attributes and equipment.
The next step was to give them behaviors. For example, if you want something to “patrol” then it needs to have a series of destination points and ways of figuring out how to get there. This kind of functionality can be reused over and over again as well. If something was going to fight it needed to have a sense of what is hostile and what is friendly, evaluate whether to attack or not, when it runs away, etc., so we made up values for those things. These are all pretty much straight forward AI things as well. You have a set of rules and behaviors and set the things into motion and watch them work their magic.
;)
We did, however, take an additional step in that we added things that allowed the AI to respond to things that were happening in the game world. The example I always use is the station in sector X being low on carbon for some weapon that it wants to build (based on its production queue). So the station broadcasts “Hi! I need carbon! Oh, won’t someone please give me some carbon?” Some other station in some other sector can then check its carbon supply and, sure enough, it has a surplus. Now, it’s possible that players could buy the carbon, fly it over to sector X and make some money. However, it’s also possible for the AI server to generate a hauler, fill it with carbon, chart a course to the sector (either the quickest path, safest path or some mix) and then start its journey. Deep in the heart of sector Y is a group of pilots that are patrolling around. When this hauler jumps in, they might decide “Wow. Look at that big fat hauler flying around all undefended, let’s get it!” So they decide they are going to attack. The hauler, of course, may then call for help to which some nice a friendly defense drones may reply and a big fun battle ensues! These are the kinds of things we want to have happen. The next step is to allow players to interact with these events. So if the besieged hauler asks for help it would be fun if the player could respond and then go take out the pirates and collect some reward.
The final step in this experience is to communicate the state to the players. For example, when a hauler is docking, having a nice sound play that it’s requesting permission to dock. If a hauler is under attack have it radio you for help and ask for it. Those are the kinds of things that help sell the believability more – and that is what you really want, isn’t it? It is not particularly useful to have all this cool stuff going on and then the player is robbed of the full experience.
In the end there are thousands of little things that go into it and I hope that my description is not too watered down to be useful. When all those things start to work together they really produce some cool and unexpected results, and guess what. Nobody knows why.
The AI in mmorpgs so far has been horrid, the basic algorithm was spawn, fly to the player, shoot him. Even the original jumpgate used this algorithm.
If the new jumpgate creates proper AI this will be a real fun game, personally I cant wait to see it :)
This does indeed sound impressive and interesting...
I think they read my Blog on my Trade Routes system.... jk
A MMO where the AI creates its own goals and objectives, then allows the player to have a fundamental impact on those goals/objectives is already well on its way to being the most dynamic and interactive MMO ever created... I hope they aren't just 'tooting their own horn' and the example given in the interview is a serious probability
I just hope the NPCs won't be using any non-standard ship configurations (e.g. oversized engines or shields) to cover a poor implementation.
I'd also like to know if there will be NPC-only ships (apart from aliens), and if the AI can be tweaked enough to be useful for RP events, removing the need to "man" those vessels with GM staff.
What about AI and a players faction with it? I would think that faction would have some play in how the AI would react with a player. Would an AI cargo ship call for help from a player that had bad faction with it's company, or fire at the player once he/she arrived on the scene? Would an AI cargo ship give a bigger reward to a player that helped?
I really have high hopes for this game. I was in the orginal Jump Gate beta, and the DEV team was always around asking players how they like this or that. They even took suggestions from players and acted on it.
The problem with MMORPG's is that most of their own staff, don't even play their game. I know that this wasn't the case with the orginal Jump Gate.
"The final step in this experience is to communicate the state to the players. For example, when a hauler is docking, having a nice sound play that it’s requesting permission to dock. If a hauler is under attack have it radio you for help and ask for it".
in EVE online we have a similar NPC system but most in time the NPC´s are just a useless "phenomenon" - you see NPC haulers and traders docking out from a station but you dont know where they are flying to. at the stargates you see only a few times one of em, most in time there are only police ships who patrolling arround there.
it´s a cool feature to let the players interact more with the NPC´s
Is this going to be a new jumpgate, or a revamp on the old jumpgate, if it will be brand apnking new, i will look forward to playing it.
The following is from an interview with their new Community Manager, Nicole Hamlett: "There is a bit of a misconception that it's an expansion to the original Jumpgate. The JGE team is actually creating a new game entirely."
When you play a new game you always compare it with similar games.
In my case it was 'mankind' (arround 2000) and 'eve-online'. But honestly the only feeling i got with the old Jumpgate was 'this looks like space invaders'...
So i hope that they are able now to create a better feeling. The graphics are exellent...if they're not artistic images only...
The classic Jump Gate was far from anything like Space Invaders. The game was centered, almost exclusively arround players. If a station needed certain materials to make something, it was up to the players to figure it out, it was up to the players to set up convoy transports (thank you MACK), and it was up to the players to keep these convoys safe from other players.
Unfortunately, this sounds great on paper, but when actually implemented.. it creates alot of downtime for other things, such as pvp. You lose your ship, you get another. but unfortunately your docked at say... Quantar Core, in a Solrain ship that cant use any of the engines that are there. (example only) So you are stuck at that station until you get help with a delivery, because... that station is understocked at the moment.
Now, ND did fix this situation through some patches, however... this type of scene did play out at one point for almost everyone who played the game.
By adding AI as they are stating, they will be creating a fascinating tool for not only the devs, but for the player base as well. Not to mention, that by doing this, they have given some of the shadier members of the community, more targets =),
And for gods sake, enough with the Eve comparisons! Jump Gate existed well before Eve, and is a fly by wire (twitch skill) space simulation. NOT A POINT AND CLICK. Its like comparing Halo3 with Command & Conquer FFS. Jump Gate is not just a point and click rts.. it is a full, ACTUAL SKILL REQUIRED pilot simulation, with economics, stations, player interaction and more... added in.
I am sooooo looking forward to Jump Gate Evolution.
But nor did the original "Elite", and yet this classic provided tens if not hundreds hours of fun for me.
Despite the ever growing MMOG market, Jumpgate is still pretty much unique. I believe that is part of why it has survived against all odds.
I just hope they keep the first-person cockpit view.
Some quick comments.
/flame on
/flame off
To throw another comparison. I am hoping for combat akin to Allegiance. If I could have EVE economy and PVP, Jumpgate Evolutions NPC interactions and AI (as advertised), and Allegiance's combat system. . . How can I buy a lifetime subscription?
EvE pvp, whats that? I played the game.. but didnt see this exciting element, yes I was blasted away by another players but I didnt even got the chanse to look up my counter attack in the menu.
THIS IS EXACTLY THE THING MISSING FROM EVE!!!!
Good work guys, and i really hope you manage to pull this one out
Sounds interesting. I really hope they can pull it off. Must be an overwhelming task take on the might Eve.
Netdevil has clearly stated somewhere that JG doesn't want to compete with EvE. And it doesn't need to, either. It is still quite unique in its niche, and thats what they are probably building upon rather than trying to become an "EvE Killer" (which would require much much more resources).
I'm ordinarily not a nit-picker, but I actually looked at this a lot because I thought it was HAL as well.. turns out I remembered wrong as is noted here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000#SAL_9000
In the movie it sounds like this: http://www.palantir.net/2001/tma1/wav/dream.wav which confused the hell out of me. I found a reference here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/quotes which shows it both ways in what I'm assuming is from the script. The "I don't know" reply is in the movie (I think), but it didn't suit my puposes so I used to other one instead. I'm glad to see you read so closely, but that is my defense such as it is
.
Just to let you know that I did try and be accurate :)
Hermann
This is one of the things we decided to change, actually. Losing stuff is not very fun especially when you spend a ton of time getting it... and even though it may be a good way to take items out of the economy, and it seems realistic, it's not a very user friendly way of doing it. The trick is to make the players feel they have influence and meaning - that is give a reason to haul stuff back and forth - without causing most of them to become frustrated and quit when they lose items and get stuck. When deciding between "Wow. That seemed real but it sucked. I'm quitting" and "Wow, that's not very real, but pretty fun, I'm staying" it's easy to pick which leads to success .Hermann
/emote Waves to NDHerman
You may not remember me from the JG beta, but I'm the one that sent in the suggestion to make the new station construction a "player event." It was a real success too, I hope there will be something simular in JG Evolution.
Pilot Leemebe
I am so VERY much looking forward to this game, Jumpgate was the very first mmo i played so it means alot that they have come back out with this =D
Cant wait!
Exactly.
Losing equipment imho is a good thing, not being able to equip your ship due to a galaxy wide shortage is a real downer. (Or as some may remember, certain individuals or squads that were able to actually strip a station of equipment.)
The money sink isnt the only important factor here, there still needs to be a decent time sink to get your ship relaunched (or it would make fleet battles kinda pointless). That time sink however, shouldnt be over 3-5 minutes however... and 30m-1hr was just a headache.