Introduction
Welcome to the AI Architecture section of the Marvel's Spider-Man documentation! My name is Adam Newnchester, and I'm one of the lead gameplay programmers at Insomniac Games. Over the past 11 years, I've had the privilege of working on eight fantastic games at Insomniac, with a majority of my time spent as an AI programmer.
For Marvel's Spider-Man, I led the team of gameplay programmers responsible for developing the combat system, both stealth and melee. Our team helped create Spider-Man's combat moves, gadgets, enemies, and bosses. In this presentation, I'll share some of the biggest changes and challenges we encountered on the AI side while developing this game.
Fun Fact: Marvel's Spider-Man is the largest game that Insomniac Games has created to date, featuring five major factions, eight archetypes (with variations per faction), several faction-exclusive types, and 11 boss fights. This massive scope required us to create 64 AI classes, most of which needed unique attacks, reactions, or behaviors.
About the Speaker
As a veteran AI programmer at Insomniac Games, I've gained extensive experience in developing complex AI systems for various game genres. My background includes working on popular titles such as Sunset Overdrive and Ratchet & Clank. With Marvel's Spider-Man, our team faced the challenge of transitioning from shooter games to a character-action game, requiring us to rethink our approach to AI development.
Topics Covered
In this presentation, I'll take you through a journey of how we approached AI development for Marvel's Spider-Man. Here's a quick preview of the main topics we'll cover:
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Behavior Authoring: The transition from complex behavior trees to data-driven hierarchical finite state machines, and the advantages of this approach.
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Synced Animations: Achieving a Marvel-esque feel in the game through the use of synced animations, including the host-guest concept, sync joints, and rotation/translation alignment techniques.
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Combat Iteration: An overview of the core problems we faced in combat and how we iterated on melee and ranged combat management systems to create engaging and fair encounters.
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Procedural Animation Techniques: Unique procedural animation solutions we developed specifically for Spider-Man, such as the web blanket and whip simulation systems.
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Challenges and Shortcomings: Areas where we fell short and the challenges we faced, including flying enemies, moving platforms, navigation mesh generation, and performance limitations.
Throughout the presentation, we'll explore the architectural decisions, techniques, and solutions we employed to bring the AI of Marvel's Spider-Man to life. I'll share insights into our iterative development process, the challenges we overcame, and the lessons we learned along the way.
So, let's dive in and explore the AI architecture that powered one of the most acclaimed superhero games of recent times!