1.3 Hacks

1.3 Hacks

What is a hack in gaming AI? Well a hack or also known to be called lazy code, is code that forces the AI to respond in a predictable way. In other words we know what the AI is going to do before the instance is triggered. Lets say we are playing a zombie game and you, the payer character is about to enter a room but before you enter the room you know a load of zombie AI is going to come chasing after you. Well that's what a hack is, its the same code applied to all AI in that sequence of play. Now a more experience coder or maybe someone with more time could apply each AI character its own sequence but with a hack that's not the case, so because of the hack all the zombie AI would just come chasing after the player character.

Another form of hacking is that of a person using cheat codes or cheat hacks to disrupt the flow of a game by disobeying  the initial intent of the games structure, this happens a lot in older games where the code to reduce hacking is less effective. "hackers are already in a position to use AI for their nefarious ends. And in fact, they're probably already using it"(14) Dvorsky has made the point that hacking is already apart of the AI world, this can result to games not working as they should, especially when a game goes online and this can effect the final outcome of a game, the score and overall game satisfaction of the user.

Now hacks that have been put in on purpose and implemented into the game for the satisfactions of the players is a totally new kettle of fish and that can come with pro's and some massive con's. Now the advantages of hacks is that developers will use them to emulate zombies which only really have one goal and that's to chase the user character and and kill him, so in this situation applying a hack to a load of zombies which you know full well are going to chase you down does work. Now a disadvantage would be in places of a game where there shouldn't be hacks at all, now a bad hack would be where we can predict what the AI character will do before it already happens, this is not good if the developers goal is realism and user experience.  

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Now your probable wondering why I have inserted a image from the PlayStation 2 game Lord of the Rings, well I remember playing this game and when you the play character ran to this location in the screenshot above, an AI character would take over and in this case the AI would then run of the edge of the cliff. An ideal con of a bad hack in a game, this takes away the realism and also killing the main character in the game.