Tight integration of Artificial Intelligence in Game Development Tools

Abstract

In this thesis we aim to narrow some of the gaps that prevent the adoption of declarative tools within highly dynamically changing environments, with a particular focus to the context of game development. Integrating reasoning modules, based on declarative speci cations, within the commercial game development life-cycle, poses a number of unsolved challenges, each with nonobvious solution. It is necessary to cope with strict time performance requirements; the duality between procedural code and declarative speci cations prevents easy integration; the concurrent execution of reasoning tasks and game updates requires proper information passing strategies between the two involved sides. In this context, we propose a framework that can be deployed within the well-known Unity game development engine. The so-called ThinkEngine framework allows to embed reasoning modules, based on knowledge representation techniques, within the game logic. ThinkEngine respects the Unity development philosophy, and is properly integrated both at design-time and at run-time. A use case is reported about, showing the potential of the proposed infrastructure.