Artificial intelligence design in games remains one of the perennially popular Game Developers Conference topics, and today we're highlighting a few notable talks on the subject that you must see at GDC 2015 in March.
These talks are part of the GDC AI Summit, one of eight that will take place Monday, March 2nd and Tuesday, March 3rd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of the conference.
Here's an interesting challenge: how do you design a game with artificial intelligence capable of navigating a 3D space that's littered with asteroids, busted-up starships and other floating debris? Lead Digital Extremes AI programmer Dan Brewer will explain how the developers of Warframe (pictured) pulled it off in the AI Summit session "Getting off the NavMesh: Navigating in Fully 3D Environments." If you want to learn how the Warframe space battles work, don't miss it.
Also, Intrinsic Algorithm president Dave Mark and ArenaNet lead gameplay programmer Mike Lewis will run down how Guild Wars 2 uses a one-two combo of a modular AI system and a powerful influence map engine to field large numbers of intelligent creatures at once in an online game environment. Check out their AI Summit talk, "Building A Better Centaur: AI at Massive Scale," for some ideas on how you can better craft your own large-scale system of robust, dynamic AI behavior.
Finally, don't forget to relax and make time to check in with Avalanche (Just Cause 2) lead programmer Jeet Shroff and Ubisoft Montreal's Bobby Anguelov; they'll be contributing a talk on the concrete value of coding relaxed behaviors for all the actors in your game -- both combatants and non-combat NPCs. Expect to walk away from their talk, "Remember to Relax! Realizing Relaxed Behaviors in AAA Games," with some practical tips for giving your AI characters relaxed behaviors without breaking either your production or your animation budgets.
Not enough? No worries; a list of all announced talks is available in the online GDC 2015 Session Scheduler, where you can begin to build your conference week and later export it to the up-to-the-minute GDC Mobile App, coming soon.
Also, conference officials look forward to announcing more GDC 2015 sessions spanning a diverse array of game industry issues in the months ahead.
For now, don't miss the opportunity to save money by registering early -- the deadline to register for passes at a discounted rate is January 21, 2015. GDC 2015 itself will take place March 2-6 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
For more information on GDC 2015, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
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