Smart Areas - A Modular Approach to Simulation of Daily Life in an Open World Video Game

Constructing believable behavior of non-player characters (NPCs) for large open worlds in computer games is a challenging application of AI. One of the greatest obstacles for practical game applications lies in managing the complexity of individual behaviors and in managing their development cycle. We propose the use of “Smart areas” to overcome these obstacles and allow for realistic simulation of NPCs day-to-day life and describe a particular implementation for an upcoming AAA game. For practical applications it is also vital to resolve usability issues and assess the productivity of the technology. We have conducted a qualitative study with 8 subjects that compares the performance of working with Smart Areas to using default AI tools. The study indicates that Smart Areas are not difficult to understand, allow for substantial code reuse, resulting in speedup in modification of existing behaviors, and force good structuring of behavior code.