A T. rex named George successfully found, tracked, pursued and attacked an Edmontosaurus named Julie. Click to enlarge.

It has been said that nobody wants to see how politics or sausages are made. Artificial Intelligence (AI), for some, may also be added to that list. Today’s blog topic is about achieving an important milestone in the AI behind Dinosaur Island: a T. rex ‘looked’ around his virtual world (using a 3D line of sight algorithm), spotted potential prey (an Edmontosaurus regalis named Donna) pursued it using an optimized A* least weighted path algorithm that avoided steep slopes and boggy terrain (the attack was up hill) , then saw a more attractive target (an Edmontosaurus regalis named Julie), changed his pursuit and successfully overtook the prey.

This AI is unique and probably the first time such a series of events has been demonstrated in a 3D virtual world environment. Below are step by step screen captures showing the events:

Screen capture with all AI tracing turned on. There are three dinosaurs in this image. George sees Donna (dark red line), Donna is looking almost due east (dark red line) at the forest of Araucaria trees where she wants to go to eat, the cloud of yellow is the AI looking at alternative paths for Donna to climb up a hill, Julie is also looking at the same forest of Araucaria trees to her northeast and the AI (yellow path) has plotted the best route for her to climb the hill. (Click to enlarge).

This screen capture taken 10 seconds later shows Donna approaching the Araucaria forest to the east and Julie climbing the hill towards the same forest to the northeast. George now sees that Julie is the closest prey and switches his attack to her (dark red line) and races toward her. (Click to enlarge).

Ten seconds later, George has closed the distance and has attacked Julie from the flank. (Click to enlarge).

It’s important to remember that Dinosaur Island will ship in full 3D; these screen shots are of the AI testing environment which is in 2D.

Now that we have created a ‘perfect killing’ AI we will have to make it ‘stupider’ by adding distractions and imperfections.