The Design and Implementation of a Testbed for Comparative Game Al Studies

An essential component of realism in video games is the behavior exhibited by the non-player character (NPC) agents in the game. Most development efforts employ a single artificial intelligence (AI) method to determine NPC agent behavior during gameplay. This paper describes an NPC AI testbed under development which will allow for a variety of AI methods to be compared under simulated gameplay conditions. Two squads of NPC agents are pitted against each other in a game scenario. Multiple games using the starting same AI assignments will form an epoch. The testbed allows for the testing of a variety of AI methods in three dimensions. Individual agents can be assigned different AI methods. Individual agents can use different AI methods at different times during the game. And finally, the AI used by one type of agent can be made to differ from the AI used by another agent type. Extensive data is collected for all agent actions in all games played in an epoch. This data will form the basis of the comparative analysis.