For example, in my gameDamage Incorporated, players are responsible for not only
controlling their own character, but also for directing four teammates in a 3D environ-
ment. When I was working on that game, one of the greatest challenges I encountered
was getting the teammate AI working in a way that appeared intelligent to players. For-
tunately, I had a rudimentary form of this AI working before any real level design began.
This way I realized ahead of time that the teammate AI would not be smart enough to
jump or swim to areas. This meant that the levels had to be designed accordingly, or the
teammates would not be able to reach the end of a level with the player character. Also,
the teammates performed badly in tight, constrained spaces, often running into each
other or blocking players’ progress. The levels had to be made with large, open areas so
that the AI agents could have a decent chance of performing well.
But even with foreknowledge of the sophistication of the game’s AI, onceDamage
Incorporatedentered testing, endless problems arose with the AI. The teammates con-
stantly seemed to be able to get wedged in tiny little spaces they were not supposed to
enter. The end solution turned out to be about 25 percent code fixes and 75 percent
reworking parts of the levels to eliminate the little nooks into which the AI agents
jammed themselves. There were countless sections of levels that I had wanted to look
a certain way but that needed to be scrapped because the AI simply could not function in
those areas. I was sad to see those sections go, but not as sad as players would have
been when they managed to get a teammate stuck in a crevice. The AI and levels had to
work together if the final game was going to be any fun to play.
InThe Suffering, I had a much smoother experience getting friendly AI characters
to navigate through the game world, though a few snafus arose. It was not originally in
the plan to have the human characters be able to climb ladders, open doors, or jump
across chasms. As we built the world, we realized that there was no way around getting
them to navigate the ladders. We had relatively few scenarios where it was necessary,
but there was no way to easily remove them or to script or “can” the AI agent’s ladder
movement. Without the ability to open and close doors, the AI agents simply looked too
dumb when you slammed doors in their faces, so we ended up adding that as well. We
166 Chapter 9: Artificial Intelligence
Getting the AI agents in
Damage Incorporatedto
work properly required
many changes to the
levels.