Feature: Naughty Dog Shares Uncharted 2 AI Secrets

Author: by Staff

In Gamasutra's latest feature article, combat designer Benson Russell delves into the techniques the studio devised for its combat AI, including in-depth looks at enemy behavior. "Most games have some form of AI and regardless of the genre of game, there are fairly common requirements that have to be met," writes Russell. "The way we define an AI type is by creating a set of default data for all of the various AI systems. It's very open-ended, to allow us the ability to create almost any kind of behaviors we want without having to hardcode them into the engine via programming support," he writes, before launching into a detailed explanation of Naughty Dog's AI system design. Characters are governed by an "archetype", or set of data that governs behavior. "It's a simple structure that contains all the data needed for an AI to know what their abilities will be," Russell writes. At the same time, each AI is also given a Character Class. Writes Russell, "The Character Class sets the look of the character in terms of their animation sets. The classes are defined under the hood between the programmers and animators." For detailed descriptions of these systems and much, much more -- including examples with shots from Naughty Dog's tools, read the full feature: The Secrets Of Enemy AI In Uncharted 2.