I thought it would be nice to open up a discussion about Bungie's GDC Presentations . Specifically about Damian Isla's "Building a Better Battle: HALO 3 AI Objectives" presentation. While it would be easy to just say, "wow that is cool, it gives me something to think about". I thought it would be nice to elaborate upon some of these ideas. Trying to figure out what Bungie was trying to get across with the slides is an undertaking on its own. While I have to admit that I have never had any formal training working with Artificial Intelligence,I will try to fill in the blanks the best I know how. The first off would be to go a little more in depth as to some of the terminology used in the slides. From an early slide, they focus on "Encounter Logic". This seems to be an entry point to build upon. Essentially they compare an encounter to a complicated dance with lots of dancers. Depending upon the way the dance is choreographed, it affects the encounters one dancer would have with another. Then the slides build upon the "Encounter Logic" idea and how it relates to strategy and other game design points. Ultimately illuminating how these ideas are implemented within Halo 3. Then it seems that they start to reflect about what was done with Halo 2. "The Imperative Method". Now when I first saw the words "The Imperative Method", my mind went blank. I had no association with these three words. Then something subliminal hit me, like going through a windshield. Wikipedia. Or in my case Google! My google search brought be to a blog that explained what both "The Imperative Method" and "The Declarative Method". If I had not have flunked out of college, I'm sure this would have been a test question for some CIS class.... :| It was the statement "Give the designers an FSM construction tool." that got me thinking, WTF is a FSM. Stupid f'n acronyms. I had to look up FSM, only to find that it meant 'Finite State Machine'. I have ran across this term before. And I knew what it meant. I had previously wrote my own FSM to handle a POP3 server connection. (Pretty much teaching myself to program I find that the simplest of things have the most complex and ambiguous of names.) But I digress, using a FSM as a form of AI is the simplest and most restrictive of methods available. And it poorly scales with the more number of units you add. Then we get to the meat of the presentation. "The Declarative Method". As with "Imperative Method", these were all new vocabulary words for me. But the blog I have previously mentioned explains the "Declarative Method" quite well. .... it is getting late. and my head is starting to explode. I think I will go watch AI, the ending is awesome... I am going to leave it at this for now. But let me tell you that what they are doing with AI now a days. Be afraid, be very afraid. As the robot insurrection is near...... I have more thought that I would like to share about this publication. More will follow when I get my thoughts back.... I am curious to know what exactly is the communities take on the AI slides.