Intelligent Agents...
by Jason Della Rocca (June 2001)
As the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter was getting ready for their first chapter gathering (with guest speaker Will Wright of The Sims fame (I am so jealous)), the Montreal Chapter welcomed about 60 area developers for the last meeting before heading into the summer "break". With the gorgeous weather and start of the Montreal Jazz Fest, it was a surprisingly strong turn-out and fun was had by all!
The night got underway with the usual welcome from Jean Francois William. He passed the microphone to Jean Carrieres, the lead designer from Vircom, who did a Game Developer Magazine-style postmortem on their MMORPG, "The 4th Coming". Interestingly, it was a sparse what-went-right-list, with "at least we shipped" topping the short list of positives ;-)
The second, and final, presentation was by Dr. Paul Kruszewski (aka The Tree Guy) of BioGraphic Technologies. Paul gave an insightful presentation on artificial intelligence and the creation of believable game characters. Several cool tech demos showcased what they've been working on for SIGGRAPH. Paul finished off with some predications on AI, including the growing importance of the designer in the AI pipeline and the increasing power of off-the-shelf solutions.
Big thanks to our sponsors for the June gathering:
June gathering - Pictorial
...here are some shots I took during the June gathering of the Montreal
Chapter. (all persons are identified from left to right)
Francois Dominic Laramee, always with a smirk on his face, is working
on a game design book for Charles River Media, among other cool projects...
The T4C postmortem: Jean Carrieres, lead designer at Vircom, discusses
what went right and wrong with the development of their massively multiplayer
online game, The 4th Coming.
Zzz Zzz!: Isabelle Marazzani, who simply works too hard for the NAD Centre,
is caught napping during the presentations...
JF William (center with hat) sitting with other developer buddies and
taking in the lessons from the T4C postmortem.
BioGraphic Technologies was on hand to demo their AI tools. This was a
demo of intelligent race car drivers...
The tree guy: Dr. Paul Kruszewski (at right with glasses) of BioGraphic
Technologies lectured the audience on the impending revolution in AI,
and demoed his company's solutions.
Enjoy the summer break and hope to see you all back in the Fall!