A Test Bed for Developing Intelligent Synthetic Characters

We are creating an environment in which to investigate the role of advanced AI in computer games. This environment is based on the Unreal Tournament (UT) game engine and the Soar AI engine. Unreal provides a 3D virtual environment, while Soar provides a flexible architecture for developing complex AI characters. This paper describes our progress to date, starting with our game, Haunt 2, which is designed so that complex AI characters will be critical to the success (or failure) of the game. We also describe the extensions we have made to UT to support AI characters with complex physiology so that the AI characters ’ behavior is driven by their interaction with their environment, their internal long-term goals, and any story-based goals. Finally, we describe the overall system design and interfaces between Soar and UT to support flexible development as well as efficient implementation