AI postmortems of Assassin's Creed III, XCOM, AI rant planned for GDC 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting several notable Artificial Intelligence Summit lectures for its March conference, including AI postmortems of Assassin's Creed III, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Warframe (pictured), its annual AI dev rant, and 'The Simplest AI Trick in the Book.' The AI Summit has been organized with the help of the AI Game Programmers Guild. The Summit promises to give attendees an inside look at key architectures and issues within successful games and provide insight into what AI can offer the next generation games. (The AI Summit is just one of eight Summits to be held Monday-Tuesday, March 25-26 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.) Firstly, in a collection of three 'AI Postmortems,' developers will dive right into the most challenging AI issues they faced and how they overcame them. Ubisoft's Richard Dumas and Aleissia Laidacker will discuss improving climbing and running mechanics in Assassin's Creed III, Firaxis' Alex Cheng will share approaches to movement and ability usage for the various aliens in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Digital Extremes' Daniel Brewer will cover creating tactical and behavioral AI in procedurally generated levels of Warframe. In 'The Simplest AI Trick in the Book,' each developer will only have a few minutes to present truly simple yet profoundly effective techniques that will "maximize the bang for your buck in your AI projects." Speakers will include Daniel Brewer (Digital Extremes' Warframe), Luke Dicken (University of Strathclyde researcher, chair of IGDA's Special Interest Group on AI), Dino Dini (Kick Off, Player Manager, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences lecturer), Dave Mark ('Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI' author, Intrinsic Algorithm president), Jeff Orkin (No One Lives Forever 2 and F.E.A.R. AI developer, MIT Media Lab AI Researcher), Steve Rabin (DigiPen Institute of Technology adjunct faculty, AI Game Programmers Guild founder), and Brian Schwab (Senior AI/Gameplay Engineer II at Blizzard Entertainment, 'AI Game Engine Programming' author). In 'Turing Tantrums: AI Devs Rant!', developers will once again have the chance to deliver quick, astute rants about what's on their mind in an action-packed, hour long session. AI ranters this year will include Stephane Bura (Hairy Tales, Totems, Storybricks lead designer), Luke Dicken (three-time IGDA Scholar), Dino Dini (Dino Dini's Goal, Dino Dini's Soccer), Andrew Fray (Codemasters F1 series, now Spry Fox programmer), Daniel Kline (Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Diablo III, now Maxis engineer), Dave Mark (Intrinsic Algorithm president and lead designer), Steve Rabin (Nintendo of America principal software engineer), Brian Schwab (Blizzard senior AI/gameplay engineer II), and Ben Sunshine-Hill (Havok software engineer). Elsewhere, Mika Vehkala of IO Interactive and Matthew Jack of Moon Collider will examine more intelligent modern shooter and action game agents in 'Spaces in the Sandbox: Tactical Awareness in Open World Games,' Hitman: Absolution, their work developed at Crytek, and Xaviant's upcoming RPG, Lichdom. Lastly, 'From the Behavior Up: When the AI Is the Design' will be a two-part lecture first featuring Damian Isla and Christian Baekkelund of Moonshot Games on how they took a single AI technique (occupancy maps) and built their game, Third Eye Crime, around it. Second, Intelligence Engine Design Systems founder Paul Tozour will show how he used AI techniques to help him design, balance, tune, and test his mobile game, City Conquest. The schedule builder of GDC 2013 is available online for attendees to plan their week of can't-miss lectures and tutorials, including those just highlighted. GDC still offers over $100 discounts to select pass purchases made by March 20th, at 11:59pm EST, with prices increasing for onsite registration. GDC 2013 itself will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2013, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.