AI Courses

[Anonymous]

Hey,

Over the last few months i’ve been looking at AI related courses (MSc), does anyone know of a AI course that’s game related (but not predominantly).

I’ve looked at the MSc In Informatics in Edinburgh.

The gaming ones in Abertay, Hull, Teeside etc are hard to get information on, which is annoying.

The NEAT crowd from the University Of Texas in Austin would be a nice place to go but afaik they are heading to Florida next year.

I got in contact with the University Of Alberta, the Games and AI people, but they have ungodly entry requirements so i reckon i need an MSc under my belt before getting in with them. :shock:

I have a notion i’ve missed out on some place to check out…

I’d really appreciate any info or whatever people could suggest!

Cheers :D

[Anonymous]

The gaming ones in Abertay, Hull, Teeside etc are hard to get information on, which is annoying. [/quote:6e434234a7]Have you asked the departments involved for information?

I know the course head in Hull is very approachable if you want information beyond what’s in the prospectus.

The course definitely focusses more on programming skills, graphics and physical simulation over AI though.

[Anonymous]

I sent off mails on friday from work.

have to wait and see what i get back.

i had woeful trouble trying to get information from edinburgh, had to email about 3 different people before they sent me back a generic email.

if the guy from Hull is approachable then i’ll certainly make a point of being more specific with my questions.

thanks!

[Anonymous]

Alberta is hard to get into, but if you apply to do one by research in ireland you can easily get 6 months working with alberta. Send an email to the director head of 4C (www.4c.ucc.ie), and tell him your plan. you want to do a msc in ai by research, at the centre with the possibility of going to alberta to work with them. 4C has good links with most of these groups.
Already one of the student here went to alberta for a while to work with that group.

As for a games AI msc’s, the reason why these dont exist yet is because at present the majority of AI in games are finite state machines or if-else statements. So it doesnt take a year long msc to teach you FSMs. (could be taught in a 1 hour tutorial :-) ).

In fact you probably encounter them in some form or another in an undergrad degree, in an algorithms course. Also the majority of so called “ai books for games” spend a mass amount of pages going on about FSM..

Alberta specialise more in classical games such as go, chess etc. Although they due have industrial programs with bioware and EA Canada. But its unlikely you would be let near any of the industrial work because this is extremely cloak and dagger work, reams of paper work\nda’s\red tape are signed by both parties before EA will give alberta the source code to just fifa99. (6 years after its release) and limited people are allowed to view this code. This fact I have on 100% solid info.

For games in the future i think you need to do a solid msc or some course in AI which gives you a flavour of true ai; neural networks,genetic algorithms, first order predicate logic, nlp, pathfinding etc..
After which you adapt these to a games domain. Because these techniques will all be used in future next gen games.

This is a “game ai” in the true sense of ai, is a very new area of AI so few people know how to do it well enough, not alone write a cirriculum. The bright side is, since its so new there is no wrong way or right way, only the way you did it.. Cool thing is your combining traditional ai in ways people never thought it could be used.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information, really appreciate it.

i just came across this course a few minutes ago…

http://studiegids.uva.nl/web/sgs/en/p/177_86039.html

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information, really appreciate it.

i just came across this course a few minutes ago…

http://studiegids.uva.nl/web/sgs/en/p/177_86039.html%5B/quote:a38fe004af%5D

yeah again this is a half and half msc. I think thats about as good as you’ll get (3d games programming and ai).

Also amsterdam is a great city..

[Anonymous]

I know this isn’t Game related but i found this MSc in Sussex:

Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/1-3-2-2-7-1-2.html

they have a lot of A-Life simulations and things like that, and also have a lovely option where you can write essays for assignments OR write programs (which appeals to the code monkey inside me!)

Brighton is meant to be a nice enough place, a mate of mine lives an hour from there said its great and then mumbled something like “gay-capital-of-England” but who cares, as long as they play computer games!

anyone been to brighton?

[Anonymous]

sounds alot like derek bridges ai course in final year computer science in u.c.c.

Could be good though. Went to brighton years ago (was 5-6 years old :) ), as far as i can remember i enjoyed it. They had argos, when no one else had argos!

Also you might want to look into the intelligent systems msc in u.c.c. Probably contains alot of this stuff.

[Anonymous]

I had no idea UCC had an MSc in Intelligent Systems!!!

I know of an Applied Science MSc that’s for Intelligent Systems Business and Manufacturing – is that the same one?

sounds alot like derek bridges ai course in final year computer science in u.c.c.
[/quote:91a8add5a0]

he did a whole MSc course in one module in a final year? woah! :o

[Anonymous]

I had no idea UCC had an MSc in Intelligent Systems!!!

I know of an Applied Science MSc that’s for Intelligent Systems Business and Manufacturing – is that the same one?

sounds alot like derek bridges ai course in final year computer science in u.c.c.
[/quote:d6dd36a52c]

he did a whole MSc course in one module in a final year? woah! :o[/quote:d6dd36a52c]

well was 10 credits so 3 hours a week i think.

well what you have to remember that alot of that msc, is course work. We did all assignments by hand, so no dedicated lab times. Also an msc consists of a dissertation. (he presumed everyone knew how to code by final year, so the theory was more important).

But he does cover alot,
http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~dgb/courses/ai/lectures.html

yes thats the msc in u.c.c alright. Probably not geared towards games, but in fairness what a.i. msc is. If it was it would be a pretty short msc (finite state machines and switch statements).

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