9.2. OTHER NOTABLE AI ASPECTS / HLSL INTROCommon board game AI approaches and Strategic AI

TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC AIBrief introduction to tactical and strategic AI

Execution Management

World

Interface

Movement

S t r a te g y

Animation Physics ...

Tactical and Strategic AITactical and strategic AI encompasses a wide range of algorithms that try to:• derive a tactical

assessment of some situation, possibly using incomplete or probabilistic information

• Use tactical assessments to make decisions and coordinate the behaviour of multiple characters

Aside: Not every genre of game needs tactical and/or strategic forms of AI

Waypoint tacticsA waypoint is simply a position in the game world.

As with path-finding waypoints (holding path-finding information, e.g. terrain cost, etc.), tactical waypoints hold tactical information, e.g.:• Cover points• Reconnaissance/

sniper locations• Shadowed locations• Power-up spawn

points• Exposed locations

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Waypoint tacticsTactical locations can be either set by the designer or derived from game data or analytical algorithms.

Tactical nodes can be combined with pathfinding nodes to provide tactically aware pathfinding.

Influence maps

Influence mapping is widely used in strategy games to map the influence/strength of each side.

The game world is split into chunks (tile-based is a common representation). Each chunk is assigned an influence score based on the combined balance of influence ‘emitted’ by game objects that can effect that chunk.

The influence map can be used to identify points of weakness and strength and, from this, drive strategic goal selection.

Influence maps

The influence exerted on a particular area can depend upon the proximity of game objects (e.g. mobile units or stationary bases), type of surrounding terrain (e.g. a mountain range may ‘prevent’ influence passing), side specific factors (e.g. current financial or happiness state), etc.

In most games, influence emitted by a game object decays over distance (e.g. using a linear drop-off alongside a defined maximum influence range).

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JUMPINGOverview of approaches enabling jumping in games

Execution Management

World

Interface

Movement

S t r a te g y

Animation Physics ...

JumpingUnlike other forms of steering behaviour, jumps are inherently risky (i.e. they can fail, possibly with ‘fatal’ consequences).To jump, the character must be moving at the right speed and in the right direction and ensure the jump is executed at the right time.

Also, steering behaviours typically re-evaluate decisions several times/second, correcting small mistakes. A jump action is a one-time, single event, fail-sensitive decision.

Jumping (jump points)The most simple approach is to place jump points into the game level.

If characters can move with different speeds, then the jump point also needs a minimum jump speed.

The character can then seek towards the jump pad, matching the specified speed, and jump whenever it is on the jump pad.

Minimum jump velocity

Jumping (difficulties)

Some forms of jump require a defined target speed or a defined direction/angle of approach to the jump pad.

Precise jump speed needed

Additionally, some jumps may have a higher ‘price’ of failure (e.g. ‘death’ vs. a short delay to climb-up).

Precise jump direction needed

Aside: Such information can be incorporated into the jump point, but it is difficult to extensively test.

Jumping (landing pads)A good approach is to pair a jump pad with a landing pad.

Doing this permits the game object to determine the needed speed and direction (by solving the trajectory equations).

This approach is more flexible (different characters can differ in their movement approach) and is less prone to error.

HIGH LEVEL SHADER LANGUAGEIntroduction to HLSL

A bit of history (fixed function pipelines)

Early versions of the DirectX and OpenGL APIs defined a number of fixed rendering stages.

This forced all games to use the same approach with only a few parameters open to change.

ApplicationRecent history (shaders)

As GPUs increased in capability it became possible to inject small programs (called shaders) allowing the application to have greater control.• A list of vertices (points)

are sent to the vertex shader.

• In the rasterisation stage primitives are constructed from output vertices. The primitives are then rasterized (i.e. the onscreen pixels determined). Vertex attributes are interpolated between the pixels.

• The pixel shader determines the on-screen colour of each pixel.

Vertices

Vertex Shader

Pixel Shader

Rasterisation / Interpolation

Z-buffer test

Frame buffer

To screen

ShadersShaders are small programs that run on the GPU. Different shader languages are available.

Vertex Shader

The vertex shader can set/change rendered vertices, e.g. object deformation, skeletal animation, particle motion, etc.

Pixel Shader

The pixel shader sets the colour of the pixel, e.g. for per-pixel lighting, texturing. Can also be used to apply effects over an entire scene, e.g. bloom, depth of field blur, etc.Aside: DirectX 10 also supports geometry shaders (not supported by XNA).

HLSL(High Level Shader Language)HLSL is a shading language developed by Microsoft for the Direct3D API.

HLSL offers a number of functions (mostly centred around branching control, math functions and texture access).

Aside: See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb509638.aspx for a complete HLSL reference

HLSL

To do:Decide if you

want to explore this

HLSL(Data types)

HLSL supports the shown scalar data-types. Note: vectors/matrices forms can also be defined, e.g. float3, int2x2, double4x4, etc.

HLSL also provides a sampler type (used to read, i.e. sample, textures): sampler, sampler1D, sampler2D, and sampler3D.

•True or falsebool•32-bit signed

integer

int

•16-bit floating point

half

•32-bit floating point

float

•64-bit floating point

double

The sampler type is defined using a number of different states, e.g. MinFilter, MagFilter, and MipFilter controlling texture filtering, and AddressU, AddressV, and AddressW controlling addressing states.

texture textureName;

sampler2D textureSampler = sampler_state

{Texture = textureName;MinFilter = Linear;MagFilter = Linear;MipFilter = Linear;AddressU = Wrap;AddressV = Wrap;AddressW = Wrap;

}

HLSL(Semantics)

Semantics are used to map input and output data to variables. All varying input data (from the application or between rendering stages) requires a semantic tag, e.g. all outputs from the vertex shader must be semantically tagged.

Above right note: [n] is an optional integer that provides support for multiple data types, e.g. Texture0, Texture1, Texture2.

float4 vertexPosition : POSITION0;

•Vertex position in object space

Position[n]

•Colour (e.g. Diffuse)Color[n]

•Normal vectorNormal[n]

•Tangent vectorTangent[n]•Binormal vectorBinormal[n

]

•Texture coordinateTexcoord[n]

Aside: The only valid semantic inputs to the pixel shader are Color[n] and Texture[n]. Often, custom data (i.e. non-texture addressing) is passed using a Texture[n] semantic.

HLSL(Functions)

HLSL permits C like functions to be specified.

A shader must define at least one vertex function that will consider vertex information and at least one pixel function that will consider pixel colours. These functions must define their inputs and outputs with semantics.

Intrinsic Functions

HLSL offers a set of ‘built-in’ functions, mostly centred around flow control, math operations and texture access.

float2 CalculateParallaxOffset( float3 view, float2

texCoord ){

view = normalize(view);

float height = parallaxScale * (tex2D(HeightSampler,

texCoord).r ) + parallaxOffset;

float2 viewOffset = view.xy * (height);

return viewOffset;}

HLSL(Example)

The following is a simple example shader

pixelShaderInput SimpleVS(vertexShaderInput input) {

pixelShaderInput ouput;

output. screenPosition = mul(input.position, wvpMatrix );

output.colour = float3(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);

return output;}

float4 SimplePS(pixelShaderInput input) : Colour0 {return float4(input.colour.rgb, 1.0f);

}

technique SimpleShader{

pass{

VertexShader = compile vs_1_1 SimpleVS(); PixelShader = compile ps_1_1 SimplePS();

}}

float4x4 wvpMatrix : WorldViewProjection;

struct vertexShaderInput{

float4 vertexPosition : Position0;};

struct pixelShaderInput{

float4 screenPosition : Position;float3 colour : Color0;

};

Define world-view-projection matrix

Vertex shader function

Transform from model space to screen space

Pixel shader function

Output pixel colour

Technique definition – specifying VS and PS functions and compile type

Define input structure expected by the vertex shader

Define input structure expected by the pixel shader (and also output by the vertex shader)

Effects in XNAEffects in XNA are types of game asset (alongside textures and models). The Effect class represents an effect, permitting effect parameter configuration, technique selection, and actual rendering.

An effect can be loaded/configured as shown.

Effect effect;effect = content.Load<Effect>(“effectName");

effect.CurrentTechnique = lightEffect.Techniques[“techique"];

effect.Parameters[“colour"].SetValue(Vector3.One);effect.Parameters[“tolerance"].SetValue(0.8f);

effect.Begin();foreach (

EffectPass pass in effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes){

pass.Begin();

// Send vertex information to the effect, e.g.//graphicsDevice.DrawUserIndexedPrimitives

<VertexPositionTexture> (PrimitiveType.TriangleList, ... );

pass.End();}effect.End();

Load the effect

Select the desired technique

Aside: For better performance, the effect.Parameter[“name”] can be stored as an EffectParameter object (upon effect construction), and the setValue(...) method called on the parameter.

Define effect parameters

Begin effect and iterate over each pass

End the effect

Vertex information can be sent using other approaches

Summary

To do:Complete Question Clinic

Consider if material is of use within your game.

Complete section in project

document on Alpha hand-in

Roundup work for the alpha

hand-in at the end of this

week.

Today we explored:

Brief intro to some types of strategic/ tactical AI

Overview of how jumps can be supported within games

HLSL and effect usage in XNA