Behavior Authoring in Commercial Games

Behavior Authoring Techniques in Computer Games
and their
Utility in Military Training Simulations

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Sponsored by ONR

Research by BBN

A Systematic Analysis

This effort seeks to determine the applicability of the behavior-authoring techniques of commercial computer games to military training simulations. It is sponsored by the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR), and is undertaken by BBN Technologies.

Specifically, this project seeks to:

Survey and evaluate the capabilities and insights provided by the gaming industry in accordance with their utility for military applications.
Facilitate collaboration between behavior modelers and game developers that will lead to a revolutionary advance in modeling capabilities.
Develop a proof-of-concept behavior modeling tool derived from game techniques and technology.

Sample Areas of Study

Among its objectives, this project seeks to determine the "authorability" of commercial games and the potential for using them in training by examining the state-of-the-art in the following areas:

Synthetic Characters ("Bots")
Modifiable Behaviors
Application-Programmer Interfaces
Other Authoring Tools
Enhancements

The Problem

Developing Human Behavior Models (HBMs) for Military Training Simulations is Difficult and Costly - Developing HBMs is difficult, costly, and requires a high level of expertise.

HBMs Lack Generality - The military has many uses for human behavior models, each with its own requirements.

Budgets Are Limited - Military budgets have many important priorities today.

The Opportunity

Advances in Commercial Games - Today's commercial games have capabilities that outstrip the massive military simulations of just a few years ago. The ability of commercial games to simulate real-life behavior has become sufficient to enable high-quality training.

Low-cost Applications - Networked, multi-player training simulations can be established for nominal cost by adapting commercial games.

[1] S. Woodcock: "Game AI: The state of the industry" Game Developer, Vol. 7, pp. 24-32, 2000.

[2] S. Cass: "Mind Games," IEEE Spectrum. Vol. 39, pp. 28-33, 2002.

Graphic adapted from the BBN-produced, U.S. Department of Defense training simulation DARWARS Ambush! which is based on a commercial game engine from Bohemia Interactive. This engine was chosen for this application in part because of its behavior-authoring capabilities.

Background

Commercial game developers have some of the same goals for the simulation of human behaviors as do the developers of military training applications, such as the need to create an immersive simulated world, and to simulate human behavior. As advanced, high-resolution graphics become commonplace, game developers are increasingly relying on the quality of their "game AI" (i.e., behaviors of synthetic entities) to distinguish their game from competitors [1]. At the same time, game developers have become increasingly concerned with producing realistic and robust behaviors [2].

Game developers are interested in producing entities that are more adaptive to new situations, harder to game, less predictable, and more variable. Currently, the gaming community uses synthetic entities to play a range of roles and makes use of well-crafted scenarios to focus the user experience and highlight appropriate behavioral capabilities while downplaying behavioral imperfections and inadequacies. These needs and intentions for the development of behaviors in synthetic entities are shared with the training community.

A "smart environment," consisting of objects that prescribe behavior, appears in the commercial game The SimsTM. Such an approach could be employed in a military training simulation, for example, whereby a soldier's equipment dictates how the soldier is able to use it.

Copyright © 2005, 2006 BBN Technologies Corp. This project is sponsored by the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research. Operation Flashpoint is a trademark of The Codemasters Software Company Limited. The Sims is a trademark of Electronic Arts Inc. Neverwinter Nights is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast Inc. Other names are copyright and/or trademarked by their respective companies. Site maintained by the Behavior Authoring in Commercial Games team in the Intelligent Distributed Computing department at BBN Technologies. The opinions expressed here are the authors' and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) or the Department of Defense.