AIKajam! 6 0
toasty
Rise of the robots
Improvise, adapt, and overcome! Or at least, tell a computer how to do that. Yes, the 4th Kajam's theme is Artificial Intelligence.
AI has been used in games since at least the early '70s, becoming more popular with classics like Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980). Genres —like RTS and FPS—from the '90s brought the development of AI in games to a new level, and with more recent titles like the Half-Life episodes we started to see quite convincing cooperative AI.
Your mission—should you choose to accept it—is to create a game using AI in some way. It doesn't have to CRUSH ALL HUMANS be particularly complicated: if you're stuck for ideas, try tweaking your path-finding algorithms; creating a novel NPC; or just making a really hard-to-beat opponent. If that doesn't suit you, other takes on the theme are very welcome too! (Edit: In particular if you'd rather make a game where the player has to write the AI, that's also fine!)
Schedule
- March 29th - April 23rd: The jam. Make a small gam, trying to focus on AI in ways you might not have done before. Spend as much or as little time as you want, and work with others or alone. There are no rules, so just try to have fun!
- April 23rd - April 30th: Feedback time! For a whole week, all entrants can play and rate other people's games. Try to give encouragement for things that went well, and useful suggestions on what to improve.
- April 30th: The results!
For inspiration
- How to simplify your AI code with Finite State Machines – an introduction to state machines and how to model simple, deterministic behaviour of AI
- The Monte Carlo Method for Game AI – for finding good-looking moves in a somewhat random fashion, useful when there are just too many things that an AI can do
- What Makes Good AI? – some considerations for what a player could appreciate in enemy AI
- A* search algorithm – extremely popular algorithm for pathfinding, navigation, or even finding "paths" in other kinds of state spaces
- Artificial Intelligence in Games – a summary of various kinds of AIs you might want to use for different game genres
- Artificial Intelligence in Board Games – simple techniques for AI in the board game genre
- Video games where people matter? The strange future of emotional AI – for more story-rich, emotionally-focused games
Comments (6)
Hey @Raindrinker, yes, that also works! Anything AI-related (or not, really; the only requirement is that you make a game and be nice, after all) is great. :)
FWIW I'd even argue that making the player write the AI still requires the developer to think about how the AI should work, so you're still gaining experience in the same areas. So all good :)
At the moment the most active place seems to be IRC: you can join us using the web interface on this site, or pointing your own IRC client at #alakajam on AfterNET :)
I don't think there is currently a discord but I might be wrong. I know there was one at some point, but it wasn't very active IIRC.
Does that mean the game has to have AI, or the game can be about AI?
I'd really like to make a programming game of the likes of Zachtronic's stuff, but in their games, the player is the one tasked of "developing" the AI. Would that fit? :)