Madden 10 Feature - Adaptive AI

here's the blog:
http://insideblog.easports.com/archive/2009/04/10/adaptive-ai-in-madden-nfl-10.aspx#Comments


heres the article:

Adaptive AI in Madden NFL 10




Posted On:
Apr. 10, 2009 8:31 AM EST

By:
EA_IanCummings

21 Comments







Ever felt like you needed more of a challenge?

As we creep closer and closer to the NFL draft and our cover
athlete announcement (as well as many other events), it’s getting to
that time in the year where our features are getting locked down and we
can start talking about some bigger ticket items. We’ve been doing
these weekly blogs for quite a while now, so I’d encourage you to take
a look back and give them all a read if you have a chance.
This week though, we wanted to really dive into a new feature that we are really excited about – Adaptive AI.

Why Adaptive AI?
In nearly every sports game that you’ve ever played, there usually
comes a time where someone discovers some sort of gameplay strategy
that is extremely successful (in an unbalanced way). Often times these
are considered ‘exploits’ because they are either impossible or
extremely hard to stop. You may find it on your own, or you may learn
it from someone abusing you with it online, or you may even pay to find
it on a shady website. Regardless, these exploits can often extremely
hamper the replay value of a game because at some point, nearly
everyone gets tired of doing the same thing over and over again and
beating up the CPU by 100 points…and at this point the game typically
comes out of the tray. Whether it’s an exploit or a “money play”, it’s
all frustrating…so from the start of the cycle we knew that we wanted
to create an Adaptive AI infrastructure in our football games. Two of
our most experienced gameplay / AI engineers – Daniel White and Ryan
Burnsides – took the reigns with designing and implementing the
majority of this system so I hope this blog does it justice.

What does it do?
The adaptive AI framework that we’ve built for Madden NFL 10 is
rather simple at its base, but its power is in its ease of use and
integration to the game. Any designer or engineer can use a tool to set
up any number of inputs (variables that come in from the game), as well
as outputs (how the AI should react to those variables), and save them
off and quickly preview how those changes come out in game. That may
sound really technical, so here’s a good example.
Input: QB scramble outside tackles 3+ times for 5+ yards
Output 1: Defensive hot route: defensive end to flats
Output 2: Defensive play call: Boost to QB spy plays
Output 3: Defensive hot route: corner blitz on scrambling side


Simple right? At its basic core, it means that we as a team can add
some ‘success’ parameters to our tool, and give the defense some simple
commands that they can try to use to stop them. The cool part is that
we basically create these rule sets by collecting data on how we
actually play. If someone is burning you with constant passes to the
flats, then you call plays with more flat zones. If someone is burning
you with dives up the middle, then you pinch your line and crash them.
If someone is burning you with corner routes, then maybe you’ll double
cover the receiver or drop back more into a cover 3. All of these
situations are extremely easy to add, and we can add these types of
decisions into the CPU (coaches and defenders) to help them react with
whatever is happening to them in the game. When we dictate what
‘success’ actually means (which is often the toughest thing to judge),
we can choose that based on total yardage gained, average yards gained,
percentage of total plays run, or other factors.
Another really cool part of this system is actually the ability to
directly modify attributes under the hood, simulating true on the fly
“learning” of a defender. For example, if an offense is running the
exact same play over and over again for big gains, we would boost the
defense’s play recognition ratings to emulate them learning for their
mistakes to have a better chance to react when they see the same look
again. Same goes for something like continuous out routes…a defender
will get better and better at man coverage if you keep running the same
route over and over again, but would drop back down to his original
rating if you keep mixing it up. It should also be said that were
keeping some integrity by not modifying physical attributes like speed,
jumping, or acceleration.
Having individual defenders make realtime adjustments meant that we
could implement Adaptive AI for online and head-to-head play as well
(i.e. not just for the CPU players). So if your opponent starts running
something that is becoming overly effective, and you don’t feel like
you can’t stop it with your play calling, then at least your teammates
will start learning how to stop it on their own.
One key detail is that we can also change the ‘output’ numbers per
skill level. So for example on rookie or pro mode, the defense may
actually know what you’re doing and have a solution for it, but we
might actually have them wait a little longer and let you run the same
thing a few more times before they start stopping it.
We have added a ton of inputs and outputs that allow us to really
tweak the AI in a relatively simple manner. Here are some examples:
Play Types
- Play Action
- Screens
- Counter
- Draw
- Pitch / Toss
- etc

Play Style
- Scramble
- No Huddle

Route
- Entire Route Tree (i.e. in, out, comeback, streak, etc)

We don’t have everything covered here, so this is an area we are really looking forward to continue developing out in the future.
Summary
First and foremost, we hope that our Adaptive AI will add a ton of
replay value to our games this year by forcing you as a gamer to
continue to mix up the way you play to have success. Football is a very
complex game of chess – and this is a great first step towards
re-creating that. Secondly, we hope this feature will continue to show
our commitment at the Tiburon studio to creating a realistic simulation
of football, as it exists in both NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10.
That’s all for this week – please feel free to leave feedback in the comments section or discuss in the forums!
- Ian Cummings
Lead Designer, Madden NFL 10

1. do you believe the hype? will this work?

2. damnnn you mean the offensive AI won't be adaptive? if someone starts using the same blitz all game, im hoping my lineman figure it out and make the proper adjustment.

It'll prolly have flaws like everything else, meaning, that calling a playaction pass, then hot routing the HB to run a slant means that the D will get burned by bringing a blitz that doesn't get to the QB, or the QB has all day in the pocket. Also, will this even help online play, cuz I mean, come on, who listens to madden anymore? So, IDK wats gunna happen, cuz won't having plays in ur audibles break the tendency of this?

It'll definetely have flaws, everything has flaws when it's first implemented. I just hope they make the adjustments to the game on the fly like like they're talking about the defenders being able to do.... and i think this should be on both sides of the ball like eggz said.

i amm sooooooooooo glad they added this feature!!!!! FINALLY!!!!!! A REALISTIC MADDEN FOR NEXT GEN!