SPEAKER:
Sarah Cook

Code

Sarah Cook

Lead Programmer

Sarah is a lead programmer at Sumo Sheffield. She began programming at age eight, extending games such as Space Invaders on a BBC Basic, and has now been in the games industry for over 15 years, 7 of which were spent as an AI programmer. Sarah has degrees in electrical and electronic engineering (BEng/MEng), and artificial intelligence (MSc), and a PhD focusing on computer generated routes for pedestrian navigation. She has a range of published titles including Strange Brigade, Sniper Elite 4, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, Virtua Tennis 2009 and Sensible Soccer 2006.

The Art of Making Artificial Intelligence Stupid

Every programmer wants to make their AI perfect, responding to events in the way we expect a player to, but this usually results in a game where the player can never win. So how can we make the AI less intelligent without it looking unconvincing? This talk looks at some of the options available to do this, and how they can be applied to different types of games.