Model-Based Design of Game AI

The complexity of modern computer games has increased drastically over the last decades. The need for sophisticated game AI, in particular for Non-Player Characters (NPCs) grows with the demand for realistic games. Writing meaningful, consistent, modular, re-useable and efficient AI code is not straightforward. In this article, we suggest to model rather than to code game AI. A variant of Rhapsody Statecharts is proposed as an appropriate modelling formalism. The Tank Wars game by Electronic Arts (EA) is introduced to demonstrate our approach in a concrete setting. By modelling a simple AI, it is demonstrated how the modularity of the Rhapsody Statecharts formalism leads quite naturally to layered modelling of game AI. Finally, our Statechart compiler is used to synthesize efficient C++ code for use in the Tank Wars main game loop.