Game AI Pro 2

Chapter 6

Preventing Animation Twinning Using a Simple Blackboard

Michael Dawe

6.1 Introduction

Arguably, the most important aspect of an artificial agent in a game is the player perception of that agent. An agent acting intelligently can break the illusion of intelligence by looking awkward, silly, or robotic to the player. When a realistic game has many similar characters, as is frequently the case in open-world games, it can become quite likely for two or more characters visible to the player to begin playing the same animation simultaneously, a problem known as animation twinning. However, avoiding animation twinning is a relatively easy problem to solve, even for large character populations.

6.2 Animation Twinning

Animation twinning occurs ...