The Secret of Into the Breach's AI: Power in Simplicity | AI and Games #72

Sometimes you just don't need super flashy AI in your game. You just need something that is 'good enough' for what your game is trying to do. With that in mind, we dive behind the scenes of Subset Games 2018 release 'Into the Breach', and find out that keeping it simple can not only result in something smart and scalable but also make players think it's much smarter than it really is.
[00:00] Introduction
[01:27] About the Game
[03:03] How it Actually Works
[07:41] Misconceptions and Balancing
[10:52] Keep it Simple Stupid
[12:35] Closing
[14:07] Credits
You can read this episode on our dedicated ‪@substackinc‬ site:
aiandgames.com/p/into-the-breach
This episode is sourced from Matthew Davis' own blog post on the AI of 'Into the Breach'. Special thanks to ‪@AlanZucconi‬ for sending us the link earlier this year!
docs.google.com/document/d/1O...
Music in this episode is lifted from the 'Into the Breach' soundtrack by Ben Prunty
benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/...
Credit music is by our own wonderful ‪@BenRidgeMusic‬
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[@AIandGames]

A special thanks to friend of the channel Alan Zucconi for sharing with me the link to the original blog post by Matthew Davis. It's nice to have friends who share game development blog posts with you. 😄

[@GameDevYal]

Apart from balance, randomly picking one of the best options also makes the AI less predictable - if players can engineer optimal conditions to trick the AI into doing what they want 100% of the time, it becomes too easy to cheese the game.

[@timbus2]

Exactly. I was kind of hoping for more secret tips that would help me be better at the game, but at least this one does not help much. 😅

[@jasonyesmarc309]

One of the greatest bits of advice (which I think I've learned from this channel) is that the opponent AI does not need to be competent in the game; it just needs to be fun and engaging.

[@merthyr1831]

At university I made a pacman clone with custom levels. I didn't know much about implementing A* or even Pacman-like pathfinding and just made the ghosts move randomly every time they came to an intersection or corner. That, along with the fact I had to run pathfinding twice per frame because for some reason running it once led to ghosts ignoring the walls meant the "AI" was actually quite fun to play against, and my tutor thought it was way more complex than in reality :^)

[@GMTK]

Killer thumbnail 🫡

[@mkrichey1]

There is an unreasonable amount of power in simplicity, I like that the devs chose not to over complicate things :)

[@jaha9329]

Oh no, you gonna make me play it again!

[@AIandGames]

Mwa ha ha ha

[@beesi4932]

Yup, just seeing this video is giving me the itch for it as well.😆

[@Spyder638]

I've been working on a grid based puzzle game lately, and the video feels perfectly timed. Even though the video is AI-focused, the concept can apply well to lots of different systems and gameplay decisions. Weirdly enough, I made this realisation through Zachtronics, who's games are known to be quite complex to play, but some of his puzzles like Dungeons & Diagrams can be entirely played on paper. With the game I'm creating, I'm very much always reeling it back in to "good enough", and the gain is that I get to keep things simple.

[@christopherbennett1173]

Into the breach needs more love in the gaming community. Such an amazing game

[@machelul]

Never thought of Into the Breach's scenarios as a puzzle to be solved. Really interesting.

[@BrunoHenrique-gi1wd]

every task you ever try to do is, or was at some point a puzzle :P Even things that now come with instructions, at one point someone had to figure it out.

[@michaelcalvin42]

I've always felt Into the Breach was best described as "Kaiju Chess." It definitely always felt like a puzzle game to me. A puzzle game with a lot of variables, but a puzzle game nonetheless.

[@machelul]

@@michaelcalvin42 Smart of your part, I guess to a certain extend I was using puzzle solving skills but from a more reactionary place. I'm thinking of approaching the game again but with this kind of mindset.

[@AlexOrtiz-iv7tn]

lol I figured that out after playing Into the Breach and having to pause my podcast so I could 'think" about how to win a level, and suddenly I realized I never had to do that during FTL. In FTL it was always just instinctual reaction, but Into the breach makes me stare at a screen in silence for 10 minutes.

[@dyciefisk2535]

I've definately pitched this game to friends as "Pacific Rim, but a highly stressful puzzle game"

[@philrod1]

Balancing is something that "the doc" and I often talk about. Basically, how good is too good? If a player cannot win, that's gonna suck. But it also kinda sucks if the AI is obviously doing dumb moves. I feel like there's a whole research field on making really good "bad" AI

[@AIandGames]

Yeah it's something you don't really hear discussed in academic circles, and I suspect there's a lot of 'dark arts' hidden throughout the industry on how to do this.

[@BaddeJimme]

Smart AI is not the same as having a difficult game. You can have an easy game with smart AI, or a hard game with stupid AI. Generally you should just make the AI fun to play against and balance the difficulty through other means.

[@ash_dies_alone1940]

i'd love to see a video on rain world's AI on this channel, while not the most complex nor the most simple, the interactions it has with the player, the environment and other creatures' AI is astounding

[@juergenkern6763]

I thought rain world had one of the most complex ai ...

[@fiszu4075]

I discovered Into the Breach before FTL and was allways puzzled why it was less popular than FTL. It is such a good game.

[@MurioSa]

This game showed me that there are no inescapable situations in life

[@EmyN]

Great video! Very clear and concise explanation, and overall polished video, subscribed

[@greedy_onigiri]

Wow I had great time eating lunch and watching you explain the power of simple AI on one of my favorite games. Definitely going to check more videos out!

[@AIandGames]

Thanks for watching and commenting. Much appreciated! 😁

[@MrGreenTabasco]

Tbh I wished for a bit more indepth discussion. Most of what was said I could gleen when the game releasedy but was very, very interested in the more intricate "small balance decisions" that make sure the levels stay solvable. Unfortunately these detaiks were handwaived, which makes me question of the author thinks of the viewers not interested/capable of understanding, or that they just don't know either, and are just regurgitating what they have read in a recent interview.

[@Rainmaker1O]

Great episode! :D

[@diegonorambuena507]

Thanks for sharing the source, it's really interesting but difficult to find good articles about videogame AI that implements Utility AI

[@AIandGames]

So I linked to my AI 101 video on Utility AI in the episode, and in that video I point to some book chapters that cover it. Plus my recent episode on Halo Infinite also discusses utility AI applications.

[@AlanZucconi]

Thank *YOU* so much! 🙏

[@LoLoercaust]

one of my favorite games and a great video while the AI may be simple if definitely feels like they know your next move sometimes😅

[@JM_Traslo]

It would be very interesting to see you break down traditional turn-based DungeonRPG AI, e.g. Wizardry games, or Etrian Odyssey (now that it has PC/Switch remasters instead of being on the DS.)

[@rei1789]

Easily one of my favorite games of all time.

[@dwighttheislander7369]

Now that I think about it, there are a bunch of in game dialogue that just straight up calls the Veks stupid

[@xq10xa]

This video changed the way I Look at the game

[@jamesbrincefield9879]

Does anyone know what Subset Games has been working on since AE released?

[@notgate2624]

sooo how did he prevent them from making moves that result in an unsolvable state? I'm guessing it can still happen then?

[@tanael]

I really, _really_ wanted to like this game, but something, some deficiency in my brain, leaves me hilariously and utterly unable to understand strategy games, even ones distilled to their essence, like ITB. For another example of how bad I am, there's a scenario in one of the Advance Wars games that places you and the AI on a small, roughly symmetrical island with choke points on the top and bottom of the map; the closest I have ever gotten to beating that scenario is a stalemate. By contrast, Doom Eternal on Nightmare difficulty Extra Lives mode (I am not nearly good enough for Ultra Nightmare) was very much a surmountable challenge for me, so I don't think I'm a *total* idiot. I just wish I could get strategy :(

[@svperuzer]

Can anyone recommend any good game developer blogs?

[@BlueDog15391]

I wish I knew more examples, but Factorio devs have a very nice blog.

[@svperuzer]

@@BlueDog15391 cool

[@dongbeng]

Hmm. I never got the hang if this game. I'll try again with a puzzle game approach.

[@restlessfrager]

Winning reliably seems like it depends on RNG until you realize how the bug AI works and bait them into artacking your own mechs, which you can simply move to negate the attack, instead of letting them target buildings which are much more expensive action-wise to save.

[@jocamar15]

Good video but I don't really see the point in categorizing this as a "utility AI system". Basically every kind of AI out there is a "utility AI system" in that it almost always uses some form of heuristic or scoring system to make its choices. It seems like a very broad category that doesn't actually say anything about the AI.

[@bcn1gh7h4wk]

19% defense: _whoosh!_ *PING!* "Blocked!" _whoosh!_ *PING!* "YES!" _whoosh!_ *PING!* "OMG. HOW." 27% defense: _whoosh!_ *CRASH* "Dammit." _whoosh!_ *CRASH!* "FUCK!" _whoosh!_ *CRASH!* "...bruh."

[@soloshottie]

that "unsolveable" state is why I hate turn based games. few devs even consider such a situation, and even when handled at best it's unreasonable to expect it to be completely gone. RTS' almost have a similar issue, but not to the extent turn based games do

[@dyciefisk2535]

I've come to appreciate that, while some turns may be actually unsolvable, it's not the end and mission turns to damage mitigation. The Kobiashi Maru was an apt comparison. I've had missions where I could barely complete one mission and lost 3 grid, but went on to finish the island.

[@aymacaymacunt814]

Really annoying how the game title keeps jumping to different corners during the various clips.

[@wanttobeprivate7466]

I feel like there's at least a small amount of Myopia around ITB, it's a fun game but it neither draws me back to play it nor even really left any memorable moments. The AI wasn't terribly challenging beyond the first few attempts when I was still getting used to it, the terrain was far more of a gameplay affecting element.

[@CaptainJeoy]

Occam's razor

[@parthenocarpySA]

Into The Breach is a problem solving game, not a puzzle game. Puzzles have one solution.

[@Thisisthegreatestatofalltime]

Keep it simple stupid isn’t great for writing though, despite what a certain Bethesda head writer may say. I miss when the writing in Bethesda games was actually good. Like the amount of depth to the lore of Elder Scrolls is insane but then you play Skyrim and it just felt like they never tried to add any depth to the main story or most of the side quests. Don’t even get me started about the awful writing of the 3d Fallout games not named New Vegas (different dev). I know this is completely unrelated but Bethesda just made me despise that phrase.

[@j.d.4697]

I disagree. Simplicity is what makes game AI feel so dead. Of course complexity doesn't necessarily translate into more varied responses.

[@whannabi]

Trying to put chat gpt or whatever overcomplicated thing into your game doesn't make it better. You gotta know when to stay simple.

[@mariofun21]

thankfully the AI is not pulled out often enough to notice it like you don't have to make moves at the same time the AI is also doing it and thus learning the AI would help, but for turn-based with relatively few moving parts, it is perfect also doesn't help that you are probably holding your head because sometimes it's wtf there are 4 threats and 3 of you

[@EugenijusKrenis]

Ngl it pains me to watch the game footage because there's so many cool moves you could have pulled but you're just meandering ;_;

[@AIandGames]

Professionally meandering thank you very much. 😉

[@Guron90]

chess simulator pretending to be battletech game. thumbs down.

[@lufasumafalu5069]

failed game , compared to FTL this is a joke of a game

[@derpfrog5625]

Ftl?

[@Fluxquark]

This video is 90% padding and has 2 intros before you even begin explaining something. And then you don't even explain how the developers actually managed to keep the game solvable, which is the real question I have about the AI.