Rise of the robots

Improvise, adapt, and overcome! Or at least, tell a computer how to do that. Yes, the 4th Kajam's theme is Artificial Intelligence.

AI has been used in games since at least the early '70s, becoming more popular with classics like Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980). Genres —like RTS and FPS—from the '90s brought the development of AI in games to a new level, and with more recent titles like the Half-Life episodes we started to see quite convincing cooperative AI.

Your mission—should you choose to accept it—is to create a game using AI in some way. It doesn't have to CRUSH ALL HUMANS be particularly complicated: if you're stuck for ideas, try tweaking your path-finding algorithms; creating a novel NPC; or just making a really hard-to-beat opponent. If that doesn't suit you, other takes on the theme are very welcome too! (Edit: In particular if you'd rather make a game where the player has to write the AI, that's also fine!)

Schedule

• March 29th - April 23rd: The jam. Make a small gam, trying to focus on AI in ways you might not have done before. Spend as much or as little time as you want, and work with others or alone. There are no rules, so just try to have fun!
• April 23rd - April 30th: Feedback time! For a whole week, all entrants can play and rate other people's games. Try to give encouragement for things that went well, and useful suggestions on what to improve.
• April 30th: The results!

For inspiration

• How to simplify your AI code with Finite State Machines – an introduction to state machines and how to model simple, deterministic behaviour of AI
• The Monte Carlo Method for Game AI – for finding good-looking moves in a somewhat random fashion, useful when there are just too many things that an AI can do
• What Makes Good AI? – some considerations for what a player could appreciate in enemy AI
• A* search algorithm – extremely popular algorithm for pathfinding, navigation, or even finding "paths" in other kinds of state spaces
• Artificial Intelligence in Games – a summary of various kinds of AIs you might want to use for different game genres
• Artificial Intelligence in Board Games – simple techniques for AI in the board game genre
• Video games where people matter? The strange future of emotional AI – for more story-rich, emotionally-focused games

So the 2nd Kajam is over, and I'm very happy with the result (and we won, sort of)!

This was a very busy month for me, but fortunately I was working with some very talented individuals. They deserve most of the credit as I only managed to push a small amount of code and a couple of level designs.

I think the game is pretty fun, despite the simple gameplay. The music & SFX are great (albeit lodged in my head forever), and everything fits together nicely. There are also some brilliant touches which I would never have thought of myself, like the cat, which give the game character.

Given more time, I think we could have benefited from adding some hazardous items (e.g. spikes) for more varied gameplay, and perhaps some animations for the player in particular. But then, the lack of animation works quite well with the retro theme, and the game doesn't really feel like it's lacking. More probably we just chose a very realistic set of features for a game jam, and executed them quite well.

I learned a few things from working with wan, too: how useful a design document can be; how to pick a simple idea and do a good job (I quite often fail to complete something because it's too complicated); and how to drive something through to completion.

Overall I'm chuffed with the result and proud to have been involved :D

Introducing Cooperoids ("co-op-er-oids"):

Managed to squeeze this in, just in time! I made it for MiniLD 74 (The Coop Jam), using music by @wan. It's a 1-4 player asteroids game with slightly crumbly sound effects. Enjoy! :)