Empire’s Racing Game Gets Emotional
Posted by Ben on Tuesday, August 20 2002

Jon Hare from Sensible once said “90% of the game is programmed in the last 10% of time.” and so right he was. Game balancing and artificial intelligence is always the part of development that takes the most work and so has been the case with Total Immersion Racing’s Emotion AI – nick named “AI-TUDE”. But as expected Razorworks have finished implementing the Emotion AI in time for the scheduled release and it’s proved everything we’d hoped for.

Far too many racing games have promised intuitive AI but this AI has always been focused on the driving alone and has never had a human feel. The main objective for TIR is to create a racing game that incorporates a true emotional and personal response from the computer controlled drivers. Each opponent has individual strengths and weakness for qualities such as stamina, judgement, composure and track knowledge. In addition to these the drivers also have an emotional reaction which as well as effecting the their other skills will also dictate how they react to you.

If you keep cutting them up or driving recklessly they start to get annoyed with you. Keep it up and they’ll really lose their temper, hold grudges and go out of their way to be a pain back.

The main hurdle to achieve the unique emotional responses within Total Immersion Racing was presenting them visually so the player would be aware of them. After much input from numerous experienced games journalists within the industry we’ve finally reached a graphical option that works (see attached pics). While playing the game gamers will be able to see how a competitor is feeling towards them via coloured arrow indicators on the oppositions cars. Green symbolises they are fine with you and don’t have a problem. Showing yellow and they’re a bit wary. Red and you know you’ve really wound them up – if you can see an exclamation mark – they have a grudge to bear – so watch yourself son.

Preview samples with the Emotional AI implemented will be sent out imminently for you to test for yourselves and hopefully you’ll be as happy with it as us.

Platform: PlayStation® 2, PC CD-ROM, Xbox™
Release: NOV 1st 2002
Age Rating: ELSPA 3+ (TBC)
Developer: Razorworks

Total Immersion Racing© 2002 Empire Interactive Europe Ltd. Game development by Razorworks Ltd. Total Immersion Racing, Empire Interactive and the E logo are trademarks of Empire Interactive Europe Ltd. All Rights Reserved. “ ” and “PlayStation” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved. Microsoft, Xbox, and the Xbox logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the US and/or other countries and are used with permission
from Microsoft.

Founded in 1987, Empire Interactive (London: EMP) is a leading publisher of interactive entertainment software. The company is publicly traded on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. Headquartered in the UK, Empire Interactive also has offices in the Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States of America. The company develops and publishes a varied range of titles for the PlayStation computer entertainment system, PlayStation2 computer entertainment system, and other next generation console systems, handheld systems, and multimedia PC markets in the Europe, the USA and Asia. Further information about Empire Interactive and its products can be found at: http://www.empireinteractive.com.