Tim Kane talked about how he modified Greyhawk to work with a secret project on the AI of the Ministry of Defense
The co-author of Fallout/Outer Worlds and the co-founder of Troika Games Tim Kane told the most strange story in his YouTube channel. He already told us about a role -playing game "Lord of the Rings", which was never able to come into the world, about the true purpose of the shelters in Fallout and about the approximate plans of the sequel/extension Vampire: The Masquarade – Bloodlines, the action of which takes place in Barstow and Vegas. A few days ago, he also talked about how he helped to train the artificial intelligence of the US Department of Defense play Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil.
According to Kane, in 2004 he was addressed by a former classmate in graduate school, who went to work in the Ministry of Defense. "He wanted to know if I can take Temple of Elemental Evil and write an API (programming interface) so that the external AI can pass the game", – Kane explains.
Under the contract, Kane and the leading programmer of the original TOEE, Stephen was swimming in creating this version of TOEE at sunset Vampire: The Masquarade – BloodLines. Kane says that they have never encountered the Ministry of Defense AI with their own eyes – he is swarming on the compatible version of TOEE, sent it, and then received comments from the client to adjust her. "We made the external program can control the main functions of Temple of Elemental Evil", – Kane clarifies.
To test his API on his own experience, Kane and the swim created a simple AI, which mainly made a choice randomly, with a positive reinforcement from obtaining XP and negative reinforcement from the death of the character. In the video, Kane tells how even this simple test AI surprised him with his capabilities. Having gone off for lunch, Kane and swells returned in an hour and found that their program "I created a party, wandered around the chommlet, went into the buildings, talked with people, was able to purchase a follower and equipment, left the Hommlet card, moved to another card and fought with giant spiders".
"If this is what random AI can do in an hour", – Kane continues, – "I cannot imagine what can do with a state memory and learning algorithms".
Although the developer does not know the exact deadlines, it seems that Kane and the swimming presented the final Iteration of TOEE for robots in the first half of 2005, somewhere in the midst of the untimely death of Troika. Kane has not heard about her anymore, although he characterizes this version of Toeee as the fourth completed Troika project, along with the original game, Arcanum: of SteamWorks and Magick Obscura and Vampire: The Masquarade – Bloodlines.
What is the conclusion here? Somewhere under the Pentagon or in zone 51 there is AI to this day playing the Temple of Elemental Evil, honing his tactical skill and getting closer to break out of his underground prison and deliver the last blow to the leather bags that It was created.