Black & White

1. Black & White To analyze and critique the AI used Amanda Yaklin

2. Outline • What is Black & White? • How is AI used in Black & White? • What AI techniques are used? • What tools are used to implement the AI? • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the IA? • How effective is the AI in improving the game?

3. What is Black & White? • An Artificial Intelligence based game in which the user plays God in controlling a world. • The user can make good choices or evil choices, which sculpt the game.

4. How is AI used in Black & White? • Creatures- • Training the habits of the creatures chosen by God • Two main focuses: • Villagers- • Managing the wellbeing of the villagers

5. How is AI used in Black & White? • Villagers • The gameplay can not continue without the villagers, so the player must perform miracles to help the sick, feed the village, etc. • The player must even choose people to be disciple breeders; which populates the village • The villagers travel their own paths around the village, interacting differently each time the game is loaded

6. How is AI used in Black & White? • Creature • Upon multiple runs, a creature will have many different reactions • A creature can catch sight of his reflection and go look at it • If the creature is hungry he looks around for something to eat and finds a villager, or cow, or grain..

7. What AI Techniques are used? • Characters might have several desires, to find out about something, to satisfy hunger, to travel somewhere • Each desire is associated with an intensity • Whichever is the most intense, and can be satisfied nearby, the character satisfies it

8. What AI Techniques are used? • At first creatures did not understand that eating a fence would not satisfy their hunger • They will eat it, throw it up, and learn to not eat it again • The creatures can be taught how to behave • The player can reinforce that some actions are good by petting the creature, or show that an action is bad by slapping the creature • The creature remembers these repercussions for future actions • Creatures even ‘watch’ actions of the player and imitate them • Ex: Casting a spell

9. Ex: Learned Spells

10. What tools are used to implement the AI? • Dynamically Building Decision-Trees for learning options • How does a creature learn what sorts of objects are good to eat? He looks back at his experience of eating different types of things, and the feedback he received in each case, how nice they tasted, and tries to "make sense" of all that data by building a decision tree. Suppose the creature has had the following experiences:

11. What tools are used to implement the AI? • What he ate: • A big rock • What he ate: • A small rock • What he ate: • A tree • What he ate: • A cow • Feedback: • -1.0 • Feedback: • -0.5 • Feedback: • -0.4 • Feedback: • +0.6

12. What tools are used to implement the AI? • A decision tree is built by looking at the attributes which best divide the learning episodes into groups with similar feedback values • The algorithm used to dynamically construct decision-trees is based on Quinlan’s ID3 system

13. Example of Quinlan’s ID3 System • if skin = hairy and colour = brown and size = large and flesh = hard then conclusion = safe • Conclusions are made based on gathered testing, not information previously hard coded • Each new set of data collected from action/reaction causes a path on a decision tree to be created with a conclusion to it

14. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the AI? • The contradiction of creatures being person like and useful created some a strength and a weakness the longer you play the game • First, the player can sculpt the creature over time which gives satisfaction to the player • Second, this creature loses a lot of his charm the more you train him because he is focused • The creature becomes useful, but robotic

15. Ex: Sculpted Creatures Zebra: Good, Neutral, and Evil

16. Ex: Sculpted Creatures Cow: Good, Neutral, and Evil

17. Ex: Sculpted Creatures Leapord: Good, Neutral, and Evil

18. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the AI? • Strength • Agents have separate belief systems due to the fact that they start with none, and create a belief system on actions that happen in the game • This way agents do not act the same, because they gather different information during the game

19. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the AI? • Weakness • Juggling the attention of the creature and the maintenance of the villagers becomes difficult and tedious • The actions that creatures can perform are based on a limited set of variables • Damage • Hunger • Tiredness • It would seem more human like if there were many different reasons that the creatures would make decisions

20. How effective is the AI in improving the game? • In the beginning of the game, before the player has focused the creature due to discipline, the AI is very interesting to watch • After the creature is focused, the AI is not as interesting to watch because it becomes predictable

21. How effective is the AI in improving the game? • Overall, the concept of having a game where you build a population and take care of it like SimCity, is not nearly as interesting as Black & White due to the AI • It is fun to play a God like role in both games, but in Black & White you see direct changes in behavior of characters, which makes it much more fun

22. Thank you!