How an AI learnt to play Quake 3

[Newsfeed]

How an AI learnt to play Quake 3

By Maude Lavanchy and Amit Joshi – IMD Business School

Since the earliest days of virtual chess and solitaire, video games have been a playing field for developing artificial intelligence (AI). Each victory of machine against human has helped make algorithms smarter and more efficient.

But in order to tackle real world problems – such as automating complex tasks including driving and negotiation – these algorithms must navigate more complex environments than board games, and learn teamwork. Teaching AI how to work and interact with other players to succeed had been an insurmountable task – until now.

 

[Lupus]

But Quake 3 had bots... Surely that was a really rudimentary AI?

 

[TelkomUseless]

Skynet

 

[ArmatageShanks]

Learn teamwork? You seen Pezbots from COD4?

 

[whatwhat]

But Quake 3 had bots... Surely that was a really rudimentary AI?

The original Q3 bots were mostly scripts that would react to certain things in a certain way, with little bits of fuzzy logic to add some randomness to what they did.

 

[Lupus]

The original Q3 bots were mostly scripts that would react to certain things in a certain way, with little bits of fuzzy logic to add some randomness to what they did.

Which is essentially A.I as it is now to be honest.

 

[saor]

But Quake 3 had bots... Surely that was a really rudimentary AI?

Like ghosts in Pacman they were programmed entities living a life on rails with very little capacity to collect & integrate their own datasets from the world and no way to effectively use that data to drive better behaviour. These algos are being designed to be more general in their intelligence, such that these Quake-playing bots could also maybe figure out how your fridge works whereas pacman ghosts or Deep Blue had no ability to function beyond their specific parameters.

 

[whatwhat]

Which is essentially A.I as it is now to be honest.

Well the original Quake bots had to be programmed. These taught themselves.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240430519_The_Quake_III_Arena_Bot
Here is a paper that was done in 2001 on the bots, and yes while they refer to "AI" in the paper its not AI of today.

 

[Gaz{M}]

I could use these AI bots to game for me when I don't have time, as a parent. I can live vicariously through them.