Teaching Intelligent Virtual Agent Behavior Design

SplashE-2014Portland, Oregon, USA21st October 2014

Jakub Gemrot, Martin Černý, Cyril BromCharles University, Prague, Czech Republic

My BackgroundSerious Game Developer

My BackgroundGame AI Consultant

Virtual AgentsLectures

Since 2005 Broad range of topics Mix of under/graduate students Focus on IVA behavior modeling and

“intelligence without representation”

Brom, C.: Curricula of the course on modelling behaviour of human and animal-like agents. In: Proceedings of the Frontiers in Science Education Research Conference …

Virtual Agents Workshops

Since 2008 Objective: let students incrementally build

something for real UT2004 ~ DeathMatch + Capture the Flag

The DoubtWhat will we be teaching?

Will workshop lessons actually practice

virtual agent behavior development

or will we be just teaching Unreal … ?

Behavior Oriented Design (by J.J.Bryson)

Agent Behavior Development Methodology

“ BOD is a methodology for developing control of complex intelligent agents, such as virtual reality characters, … “

-- J.J.Bryson, University of Bath, UKhttp://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/web/bod.html

Core idea:1. Decompose behavior in a top-down

fashion2. Implement it bottom-up3. Test, Revise, Reiterate

UT2004 Agent Behavior

UT2004 Agent BehaviorBOD Style

EmohawkVilleBringing peace to UT2004

Petting the DogDurative Actions

Petting the DogDurative Actions

Simple lifeParameterization

Developing with yaPOSH Death Match bot example

Showcase

BOD / yaPOSHSummary

BOD Abstracts behavior structure from an

implementation But understands that behavior language cannot

replace the underlying implementation language fully

yaPOSH Fixed behavior structure layouting Runtime feedback of behavior evaluation Node-level breakpoints Tightly coupled with Java

Behavior Design Challenges

Behavior language Cannot replace underlying language fully, but… Integration with FSM and Event Handling Coordination of multiple agents

Tool Usability / Productivity Drag&Drop ~ Move&Click is slower than typing▪ Fast tree navigation / manipulation using keyboard only?

Better IDE support Altering the speed of simulation / behavior

evaluation

Thank you for listening!Questions?

Hacking into UT2004 + yaPOSH:http://pogamut.cuni.cz

Workshop details:http://pogamut.cuni.cz/pogamut-devel/doku.php?id=lectures

I’m always willing to support anyone who wish to start working with

UT2004 / UnrealEngine !jakub.gemrot@gmail.com