GAIA - it’s hard to be sure of victory when your enemies are working together!

A word about AI in games. It’s not a new idea and it has seen its share of modifications throughout the years. There are many design solutions responsible for enemies’ tactics in games. Finite State Machine is the oldest one and, together with its hierarchical version, it is still in use. Behavior Tree is also very popular, and planners such as Goal-Oriented Action Planning or Hierarchical Task Network, which is used in Achilles: Legends Untold, are gaining momentum.

There have also been attempts of using neural networks and machine learning. Solutions are chosen to suit the tasks at hand and there is no right answer which would fit every task and project. However, the goal is always the same: to make the characters in games seem intelligent. Each character has a set of rules and behaviors, which react to the player's actions or even to the actions of other in-game characters. This leaves us with a collection of individualized characters, who can behave in a more or less predictable fashion.

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Game developers sometimes add an additional layer to this process, which serves as an overseer of sorts - deciding whether to intensify an action, spawn additional opponents or trigger a certain in-game event. However, even such additional layers do not change the fact that opponents in games act as individual units and do not interact with each other directly. Even if the player is faced with a squad, its units cooperate with each other only on a tactical level. If direct interaction ever appears, then it is the effect of a scripted action triggered at a specific time or location.

This is where GAIA steps in, as an additional layer overseeing not only the opponents but also the environment. Our system is tasked with analyzing the situation in the player’s surroundings, choosing one of the available actions, and triggering it. GAIA actions enable the opponents to directly interact with one another - the behavior of enemy units in Achilles: Legends Untold will seem more human – the best example is one of the enemies kneeling with his shield raised above their head, while another enemy unit takes a running jump, launching themselves from that shield into the air and attacking the player from above. Naturally, GAIA also enables the enemy units to cooperate on a tactical level, with enemies protecting each other, like for example group of enemies protecting their ranged units or commander. Also enables interactions with the environment.

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AI in games should form a challenge and be entertaining at the same time. Even the best-looking game will become boring fast if the enemies are not making things interesting for the player. This is GAIA’s role. In most cases, the player is able to learn the behavior patterns of individual enemy types. Additionally, the player’s character becomes more powerful as the game progresses, making the enemies who seemed challenging in the initial stages become more trivial with time.

GAIA allows to minimize this effect and make the game challenging throughout its duration. GAIA actions have varying threat levels and it is difficult to predict which of them will be triggered. The same action can be utilized by different types of enemy units, and the same enemy types can utilize different actions during consecutive encounters. GAIA allows making the gameplay more engaging, enabling us to focus on an aspect often neglected in game development - the credibility of the enemies. Thanks to this, combat will always be a challenge.

We hope that, very soon, you will all be able to experience GAIA. Until next time!

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