A recent thread got me thinking about the Shadows AI system in KI. This is something that I really think would make for an interesting retrospective discussion panel or article. I don’t know if MS or IG have the appetite to do this kind of thing considering where we are in the game’s life cycle, but I would really like to know more about this. @TempusChaoti any possibility of this happening?
Where did the idea come from? How long were they working on it? What were the biggest challenges? What would they do differently. What sort of data does the system collect and how does it process that data? What could they not do that they would like to see in the future? Is this something that other developers could try to implement?
I really enjoy playing against Shadows WAY more than any other AI. The only thing wrong with it is that the Shadow doesn’t have any ability to adapt to you, while the human player can rather quickly adapt to the Shadow’s patterns. This made Shadows much easier to beat than their real human counterparts who could more easily adapt to what you were doing to counter their preferred strategies. But it is still by far the best fighting game AI experience I am aware of.
Regardless of what people think about KI as a fighting game in and of itself, the netcode/online experience and shadow AI are two things that really should be the standard for all games going forward in my opinion.
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Sorry, not a whole lot to add but I was thinking about this a few weeks ago while playing Soul Calibur. Having top players’ shadows to practice with would be such a cool thing, imho, especially if online is dodgy at times… It’s a real nifty idea and was hoping it would catch on in other fighting games.
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I have a feeling most 3D fighters would be incredibly hard to make shadows for because of the number of a available moves and spacing options. VF used to do something like this though, with real players arcade avatars available in the Kumite mode. The played differently but I don’t know how much of that was really based on player behavior and how much was just a few different attack patterns.
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Anyway, I would love the hear more about how this shadow AI and the Shadow Lab mode came about.
One thing that I felt is how ppl still mention vf4evo practice mode, but KI shadows and S-Lab are definitely worthy of being mentioned too for their innovative nature. And I enjoyed going into the lab to watch replays a lot as well so the fun factor was there.
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The only complaint I have about the shadows is that they are all purple. Purple everywhere.
The day IG made them purple was one of the saddest days of my life.
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As someone who is currently studying neural networks and machine learning I would be very interested in an article related to the creation of shadows as well.
Here’s a video you guys should give a watch,
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That’s a great video. Thanks for posting.