Game AI Pro 3

6

Debugging AI with Instant In-Game Scrubbing

David Young

6.1    Introduction

6.2    In-Game Recorder

6.3    Recording Data Primitives

6.4    Recording Simulation Frames

6.5    Frame Playback

6.6    Debugging AI

6.7    Conclusion

References

6.1  Introduction

Catching AI in the act of making a wrong decision is vital in understanding what logic error occurred and what the root cause of the problem was. Unfortunately, the time between seeing a decision acted out and the actual act of making that decision can mean that all relevant information has already been discarded. Ideally if the entire game simulation could be rewound to the exact moment in time when the error occurred, it would make notoriously difficult problems to debug, trivial to understand ...