Making the Game: AI Plus Maneuvers

Making the Game is back! Starting today we will be looking at a large number of documents and other types of material relating to Wing Commander Prophecy. We hope that future game designers - as well as historians - can someday use this material to understand exactly how one of the greatest games of all time was created.

Today's update is a nine page plan for the artificial intelligence system in 'Wing Commander Armageddon' (Prophecy's original title). This is a particularly fascinating thing to study because AI is such a mystery. It's so often (and easily -- and, in my mind, cheaply) criticized. We picture programmers trying to grow a living Kilrathi pilot or Halo robot in a lab, when in reality the true success isn't in creating an AI that is especially stupid or especially invincible. Rather, it's in creating one that doesn't feel like a selected number of routines being called in some predictable fashion.

These updates are thanks to John "Captain Johnny" Guentzel, who provided several CD image archives of material used by the Wing Commander Prophecy development team!

AI Plus Maneuvers Download (47 kb) Date: March 25, 1997 Project: Wing Commander Prophecy Donated By: John Guentzel Pages: 8