Advanced AI combat via neural networks

[gfever]

Long time lurker and I've never modded on FO4.

 

If you don't know what neural networks are, here is a quick intro.

Basically, we train this network showing it examples of good and bad scenarios and what is considered good output.

After many iterations of different data sets, the network will be able to decide on outputs to a decent extent, even when it sees a scenario it has never seen before.

 

I'd like to create this NN for Fallout 4. To try to improve the AI not based on better damage or rules, but to give the AI system the ability to learn from you, your movements, tactics, positioning and over time, to be able to be a formidable opponent for each encounter.

 

Before I start my preparation, I'd like to see what the interest level is and maybe get a concept build out first and check on the interest level again. I'd like this to be a pet project of mine to finally get some decent AI into the game. Yes its advanced stuff, but I think I can do it, I just need to learn the FO4 modding portion.

[montky]

@gfever

an excellent idea framework, and it is awesome

to see more AGI and DNN folks emerging by the day!

this could make things from ambient quests through to

back end and mod integration - a whole lot of things,

so much easier for a lot of folks.

 

in the past 8 days,

there have been more discussions threads on Nexus, opencog and elsewhere

about AGIXML, AGI, D.N.N. and other automation approaches

than in the whole past 2 years. This is a promising sign...

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4988215-moonshot-deep-neural-nexus/

Above: a thread which discusses different AGI and DNN approaches, as they can be applied to areas of the game,

as well as to back-end of the game etc...

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4988205-moonshot-deep-neural-nexus/

Above: a thread which discusses potential applications for different automation approaches

to different aspects of the FO4 game...

 

-----

I am hopeful that we can get

'many hands make light work' happening -

AGI and DNN folks can team up with some great Geck and FO4CK modders,

to make some really awesome stuff.

already, around 20+ persons are looking into this from all different approaches,

so if we can team up at the outset, it will save

a lot of duplications of efforts etc. :smile:

 

If we can get folks in the same thread, rather than many threads,

it will help a lot towards that. feel free to mosey there and to other places such as;

code-stack exchange,

opencog,

ThisWeekInTech,

googler forums,

basically anywhere you know of that AGI and DNN folks would be interested,

and put the feelers out there too :smile:

 

this thread is of course entirely your own,

and hopefully some of the interested people on those other threads,

will have set a keyword alert on their custom UI/HUD interface, and will

"avengers assemble" here, if they're interested on this side of DNN things.

 

My own FO4 code-fu is not particularly strong,

nor is much of my code-fu... I dabble hehe,

though I can assist in other ways I am sure.

 

good luck gfever,

and thanks for posting this awesome ideas thread

I am very intrigued to see how this develops.

Edited November 3, 2016 by montky

[gfever]

Hey montky thanks for the post. Yeah, I'd like to team up with anyone interested to speed up the learning process on modding or split the workload so I can spend most of my time working on the NN side of things. I plan to make this modular enough to pivot to other ideas people have with NN.

[ElPolloAzul]

Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of scripting access to the NPC/Actor AI portion of the game. By my recollection, there is even less programmatic access to the NPC scheduling and behavior "package" system than there used to be in the Oblivion and Fallout 3 + NV days. What you are left with is some functions which can start and stop combat, change weapons, and alter some very basic temperament values.

If you are interested in learning some of the relevant modding aspects here so that you can likely come to a similar conclusion, take a look at the following:

Papyrus's FO4 Function Reference (pay attention to the Actor ones):
http://www.creationkit.com/fallout4/index.php?title=Category:Papyrus

The "Radiant AI" wiki pages for Skyrim:
(they were not really moved over for the FO4 CK, and who knows what was updated)
http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?search=ai&title=Special%3ASearch&fulltext=Search

Surely you could do some interesting toy things with detection and turning combat and other "AI" on and off at a coarse grain (weapon selection and target selection problems probably being a starting point), but even if you were very proficient and motivated with neural networks and had some really concrete ideas about your input and output features, you would likely find yourself limited by the interoperation options available -- if your goal was to make "advanced AI combat" as most people envision it. If the situation were otherwise, I am guessing that many of those of us who are into this kind of subsymbolic AI / ML stuff on a hobbyist or career basis would have put out quite a few little experiments on this front.

Heck, this applies to all "advanced" concepts, if just the input/output functions to ingame terminals were better, you'd probably see a dozen or more interpreter mods for programmable terminals and settlement automation and music programming etc. - getting the internals to work involves a lot less compromise than coming to grips with the limitations of frightfully ad-hoc and poorly designed subsystems for player interface within the game.

If you just want to implement a neural network in the scripting language, pretty much everything you need mathematically (for an MLP, deep or otherwise) is there, but it is a question of doing something interesting with what's available, and secondarily finding a use case that also gives you enough relevant data points and facility to capture and integrate them. You could almost certainly make a mod using linked references and so forth which would let you build a custom neural network physically in the world (and for humor purposes, please please please use the "neurons" from the Kellogg lounger sequence) for circuit play purposes, but the appeal may be limited.

Finally, neural networks are exceedingly hyped these days to the point that everyone and their mother wants to get in on them, and although even those with next to no knowledge (even programming experience) can these days easily enough come up with or find something that works out-of-the-box and maintain their state of ignorance, these things are not magic. And talk of AGI and this kind of thing (neural network pathfinding, aiming, weapon selection etc. has been a mainstay of engine-provided game AI for years? decades?) should not be in the same breath -- but I will admit that something like general, par-human, "AI complete", "intelligence" would have been needed for the full realization of the application in the other thread.

So: this is philosophically completely reasonable, but we may find a lot more success if the folks who work on injecting or exposing new functions with the script extender are aware of these specialist ambitions.