AI or Artificial Intelligence is that which makes it possible for a player to play single player games. A player plays against the game and the AI decides the opponent's moves.

Paradox Wireless team lead Amit Suri

The AI is majorly responsible for the kind of gameplay and challenge that a player experiences in a single player game. It deals with a lot of parameters such as amount of strength, speed, manouvrebility, reflexes that the opponent would have in proportion to the player etc.

To repeat from a previous section within this study,:The toughest part in the game is creating the AI, Wherein the enemy has to be tough enough to create challenging & fun gameplay while at the same time making sure that the AI is not so tough that the enemy becomes unbeatable. The game has to offer re-playability wherein there is a challenge, a learning curve that makes it possible to overcome the challenge (possibly in a few attempts) followed by a greater challenge with yet another learning curve.

Smart & Dumb
Amit Suri, the BREW lead at Paradox shared,"AI is the most important module of this game. In Van Damme Kickboxing, factors like health and special moves were clearly defined. There were three levels of AI – Aggressive, Moderate and Defensive. An important milestone was creating a perfect AI that would always win and then scaling it using probability and factors. The nature of each enemy was defined as either smart or dumb. Dumb enemies were aggressive in their attack whereas smart enemies worked out each move.

"The complexity of AI increases with the complexity of a game. While Van Damme Kickboxing when ported to a low end device may involve scaling down the amount of levels, graphics and sound, the AI will not change, thus ensuring a great gameplay for users with all kinds of devices" quipped Suri

Combo Keys
He further elaborated that,"AI is based on the strength of the characters. It also enables special moves after a pre defined amount of gametime or action. Additionally there are secret moves or combo keys that are enabled. For Van Damme Kickboxing an average of 3 combo key moves has been enabled per character across a period of action and time passage within a particular game session"

Tricking the game

Sharing a trick Amit stated,"We always trick the game. AI is matched on relative stregths and proportions rather than the absolute values. Since the max amount of AI toughness we give an opponent is 9 on a scale of 0 to 10, there are instances when Van Damme is on a high and has 10 (toughness), at such times rather than give 10 to the opponent which would make him invincible, we tweak Van Damme lower"

"The rule is to look at proportionate strengths rather than just the values" he smugly stated.

"Luckily with Van Damme Kickboxing we managed to get the AI perfectly right. Also the curiosity and challenge of the subsequent levels offered by the game increased its replay value dramatically” shared Game Design lead Chirag. 

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The Development Life Cycle
	1. Ideation & Pitch	2. Game Design	3. Characters/Styling
	4. Animation Pre Pro	5. Pixel Art	6. Optimization Techniques
	7. Coding	8. AI	9. Testing & Porting
	Back to intro		Credits & Team Pics

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