Vehicle AI in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate – An Interview with Eric Martel

As a child, Lead AI Programmer Eric Martel remembers being fascinated by robots. As an adult, he took his passion to the next level, joining Ubisoft and eventually working on vehicle AI in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Eric, who will be heading to GDC to talk about his team’s work on NPC interactions with vehicles in the game, tells us a little bit more about AI programming at Ubisoft.

Why did you become an AI programmer?

Eric Martel: I grew up watching movies like Short Circuit, Terminator, and cartoons like Transformers. As a child, I started dreaming of building intelligent agents that could interact, think, and feel. That’s what I love about my job. Whenever you build flexible AI, you enable situations that even we, as programmers, can’t predict – that’s what we call systemic gameplay. For example, on Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, we had a policeman that took a player out of his own vehicle and used it to chase some bad guys. It was particularly rewarding and fun to see that we had created a real ecosystem.

You worked on the vehicles in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, which are an innovative gameplay feature for the series. Can you talk about developing this mechanic?

EM: Mobility is an important part of ACS, and we knew early on that vehicle AI would require significant development. We wanted to challenge the player – having NPCs randomly pull out guns and take shots just wasn’t enough. So we integrated a loop to enable NPCs to climb onto carriages and fight hand-to-hand with the player. To make this even more fun and unpredictable, we developed specific gameplay that would encourage NPCs to board enemy vehicles travelling at full speed and take control of them – sometimes even the players’ carriages – a super-cool feature I’ve never seen anywhere else.

Can you tell us a little bit more about GDC and your conference?

EM: GDC is a really important event for knowledge-sharing with peers from other companies. It’s that one time of the year when we can share in-depth information, and it’s very important for the growth of the gaming industry in general.

At my conference, I’ll focus on two aspects. First, I’ll discuss the changes we made to the navigation mesh system, the steering of NPCs around people, and how we improved NPC decision-making to enable them to use vehicles properly. In a second part of my conference, I’ll talk about the changes we made to the combat loops to support the new vehicle features, such as boarding, blocking players, ramming into carts, or destroying other vehicles.

Where do you see vehicle AI technology 10 years from now?

EM: Overall, I think vehicles will be more and more present in video games, as we can afford them in terms of CPU and memory. In the future, we’ll have better path planning, which will allow us to gain a better understanding of movement through AI.

What is it like to work at Ubisoft as an AI programmer?

EM: When you work with four or five studios at the same time, and with such a diverse bunch of people, it’s easier to come up with new creative solutions when a problem arises: you can then rely on so many different ways of thinking. That’s a real advantage when trying to innovate and create new types of gameplay. Working at Ubisoft is also very fun: with great achievements come pride and parties. We aim to make top-notch games, and we celebrate them accordingly. You can feel this pride at the studio: people are invested in their work, and you can tell how much they enjoy what they’re doing.

Can you share an achievement that made you and your team feel proud?

EM: I worked on the first Assassin’s Creed, which challenged the way games were built back then by offering the player a high level of flexibility in a massive open world. I was really proud when we released this game, and it felt really great to see how much players enjoyed it.

Eric Martel speaks at GDC on Monday, March 14. GDC attendees can also join him at the Ubisoft Lounge on Tuesday, March 15, to discuss AI in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.

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