![]() When an AI is evaluating its choices and assigning each card a value, those values can be manipulated by certain personality quirks that Woods programs the AI to choose from. One of those thunks is "kneecapping", which encourages the AI to always thwart an attempt by a player to use spell cards to increase the strength of one of their troop cards. They also created "thunks", smaller subroutines in the code which gives the AI special tendencies. To prevent this, the team came up with basic templates for each type of AI opponent-like a beast template that would guide the logic of a wild boar. You 'get it' and you become bored because it's no longer surprising you." "You never want your AI to be deterministic-people don't realize it, but they figure it out. Image: Cryptozoic Entertainmentįor Woods, it wasn't good enough to create an AI that was smart and efficient, it also needed to be dynamic. So he decided to create his own unique algorithm instead.Įvery card has text that declares special rules and abilities it has along with green keywords that give it special properties. Though there are methods like "Monte Carlo", which runs a sample size of simulations to approximate probability, or "alpha-beta pruning", which immediately removes a branch of possibility when one of its sub-branches is found to be weaker than a previously examined branch, neither were satisfactory enough for Woods. After evaluating each potential branch, the AI can decide whether or not a move is going to be beneficial or harmful to its chances of winning. The AI can then begin to evaluate possibilities by calculating whether or not a move will increase the value of the "game state", thus tipping the scales in its favor or pushing it to be more negative, presumably benefitting the player.įrom there, the AI begins to calculate theoretical options, a massive tree of branching possibilities that it assigns probabilities to in order to determine what the most likely outcome will be. Essentially, Hex's AI evaluates every card active on the board and in its hand, assigning them a numerical value that is positive for its cards and negative for the human opponent's cards. Understanding how the AI works in Hex is no easy feat. Piranhas swarm the game board and I have few options to defend against them. "I think AIs have been largely created to challenge the player instead of help tell the story of the entire game." We don't want to boil it down to just feeling like a numbers game," Woods says. "Being able to mine that information from your opponent gives such a unique experience to a strategy game. An undead lich, however, is a much more intelligent monster, and players might second-guess a move knowing that the lich could be laying a trap. If a player were to fight a wild boar in Hex, they can assume the boar would attack without much strategy, it might go straight for their health points rather than trying to gain the advantage through careful use of its cards. In those moments, Woods realized that Gandhi was more than just lines of code defining a set of logic, he was a personality capable of evoking an emotional response. "I'd see him appear on my screen and just be like, aw fuck!" He describes how every encounter with Gandhi in Civilization brought out his worst. ![]() "I learned very quickly that, no matter what, Gandhi is going to nuke you," Woods says. In a sense, they cheat.ĭuring the single-player campaign, you'll travel the world by selection locations on a map. Many compensate by loading the AI's deck with powerful cards that aren't accessible to the player or allowing the computer to peek at what cards a player might be holding. ![]() The layers of random chance and complex decision-making are a nightmare for relatively lightweight video game AIs. Historically, TCGs have always struggled with creating clever AI opponents. Just playing other people can be a ton of fun, but going into a dungeon-that puzzle solving and creativity is really gratifying." That's where Hex: Shards of Fate's artificial intelligence is of crucial importance: In order to tell an epic story, you need a great cast of villains." "We were really hungry for a TCG that allowed us to do something different. "It opens up an entirely new way to play," Jones says. It's every bit as much of a role-playing game as it is a card game. Hex: Shards of Fate labels itself as a massively multiplayer online trading card game (MMOTCG), creating a digital space for players to battle while also building a rich world full of characters to meet and quests to complete. But Hex takes things one step further by blending concepts prevalent in games like World of Warcraft. Like Blizzard Entertainment's wildly popular Hearthstone, Hex is a card game where players duel one another with decks constructed from a vast array of different cards. Hex: Shards of Fate looks complicated, but a comprehensive tutorial will get you playing in no time.
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