Research On Highly Simulating Extensible Intelligent Agent For FPS Games

First-person shooter games (FPS) is a kind of video games. Players andvirtual characters in games cooperate with each other or attack each other byshooting so that players can have fun from games. In order to provideinteresting and realistic experience for entertainment, virtual characters ingames need to act as human. Therefore, one of the most important problemsin FPS games development is how to create intelligent virtual characters. Onthe other hand, the reality will be increased while the information ofenvironment and the behavior of virtual characters become more and morecomplex. So the model for building virtual characters should have the abilityto extend new functions and new behavior conveniently.This thesis solve the problems how to build realistic behavior of virtualcharacters in FPS games and how to make the characters interact with players.An architecture which has high extensibility for new functions and cansupport reacting to natural commands inputted by players is presented. Thearchitecture provides the possibility to create realistic behavior of virtualcharacters and facilitates the development process.The main research and contributions of this thesis are as follows:(1) Designed an architecture which is highly extensible and can supportsreacting to natural commands from players for the virtual characters in FPSgames. Based on the intelligent agent theory and combined with existingengineering methods, the architecture implemented various modules in thesame way, and used a message mechanism for communication andcoordination. So that the differences among the modules are solved and theextensibility is increased.(2) Studied on the theory of each module in intelligence agent, usingmessage mechanism, designed and implemented the intelligence agent. Instead of calling interface directly, using message to communicate amongmodules (including environment, perception, state management, decisionmaking and effector) makes all of the modules keep the relationship in thetheory among them and at the same time, reduce their dependency to eachother, increase cohesiveness and extensibility.(3) Improved Hierarchical finite state machine algorithm for the decisionmaking in virtual characters in video games. Decompose state and limit thetimes of decomposition. Define the states with different meaning according towhich level the states are. So that the decision making algorithm will providerealistic behavior and is highly extensible for adding new behavior.(4) Designed a model that the behavior of the virtual characters can bedriven by players’ commands. The virtual characters can do actions accordingto the commands and the result will be shown.(5) Implemented and tested the virtual character in a practical FPS game.Verified the design, analyzed the result and the performance.