Microsoft's AI Tests Build Non-Running Kings for the Runner

Raid bosses are the hardest battles in any multiplayer online game, but in the endThe ly players always find ways to trick them. Now developers are looking at ways to use cloud computing to give hackers a way to fight back.

At the same time The first co-founder of Microsoft Stack & # 39; s Game yesterday, software engineer James Trott said that since developers are able to use cloud resources to refresh and improve their games in real time, the real difficulties will be to make them less complicated.

"We worked on a project managed by Microsoft tech last year for an MMO program such as executives studying the behavior of players when they attack," Trott said. "As the violence continues and people get bigger plans, the managers adapt to the times ahead (and) discover the tactics of the players."

Research groups like OpenAI have been looking at how machine learning can be used to help video game AI improve over time, including strategy games and MMOs, for a few years now. Trott makes it sound like in the next generation of console, developers will have access to enough cloud computing so that their managers and non-player characters automatically sync without a new patch or update that they always need to go live.

"We see a lot of exciting things happening with genetic algorithms, where content comes up based on a few basic principles in something new that the designer may never have thought of," Trott said.

"Now, the challenge for engineers is how to back that machine learning and simulation, considering the amount of compute in the cloud, so that NPCs and monsters aren't perfect," he said. "Because with enough training and enough computer, they will be hitting the player all the time."

We've been hearing promises of the magical effects cloud computing will have on cloud games. Microsoft spend more time talking about how Breakdown 3 use the cloud to deliver complex and intractable environments. When it finally comes out after so many delays, this feature it is limited to multiplayer, where it feels less useful.

However, maybe in this case it will be different. We are accustomed to players pushing video games to their limits and finding all kinds of amazing light and continuous manipulation in the process. Maybe in the next generation of console, we will finally start to see AI-controlled characters do the same.