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R.E.A.L. AI in FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 4

By Ian Szufnara, Software Engineer

Hey everyone, I’m the AI Lead for Fight Night Round 4, and I’d like to take you on a tour of the work my team has done and give you a glimpse of what you’ll be enjoying come June 25th!  A few months ago, when our producers started taking the stage and unveiling massive feature sets and unprecedented visuals, one of the announcements was that we’re going to be featuring REAL AI.  I’d like to give you a glimpse of how this new technology will bring our extensive boxer roster, past and present, to life in Fight Night 4.

Styles make fights

One of our biggest features for Round 4 has got to be the addition of in-fighting through the use of physics, not just because we’re able to give our fans the most realistic boxing experience ever, but it gives my AI team a bigger canvas to work on.  It gives us the opportunity to use contrasting styles to highlight what boxing strategy is all about.  With the addition of the inside fighter, we can challenge the user to stay at jab’s length if they’re playing as Ali, or challenge them to get in past the jab if they’re fighting against him.  You really do need to play differently based on your reach and your opponents reach. 

Positioning in the ring is also very important as a boxer.  Working an outside fighter AI into a corner can take some skill, you have to learn to cut off the ring and use your punches to overwhelm the opponent, while avoiding the jab flurry.  Once you have him in the corner, make your shots count or else the tables could turn and the hunter can become the hunted!
We feature 7 main boxing styles: Conventional, Boxer Puncher, Brawler, Inside, Outside, Counter Puncher and Unconventional.   But the differentiation doesn’t end there, our team watched a lot of classic footage over the entire project, and we’ve been adjusting the AI to represent the uniqueness of each boxer style and punch output. 

R.E.A.L. AI   

R.E.A.L. stands for Record, Evaluate, Adapt and Learn.   These actions are the key to the AI Technology that has been developed over the past few years and is really on the cutting edge of how AI in games is made.  One of the major differences in the AI in Fight Night is that it is now completely data driven.  In Round 3, each boxer style actually had hard coded punch combinations which made the game very repetitive.  Using R.E.A.L. AI technology, our production and testing teams taught the AI System how to move, punch, block and counter by playing the game as the boxer they wanted to create.  We’re able to reproduce all the fluid movements available to us from the Physics engine.  In Round 4, each boxer has thousands and thousands of individually recorded sequences, making sure no two fights are ever the same! 

If that wasn’t enough, the R.E.A.L. AI technology allows us to adjust the specific boxer styles for specific boxers, because even within boxing styles boxers are unique.  Ali hardly throws to the body, Frazier’s sweeping hook combinations, Roy Jones Jr’s tendencies to throw leading rights and the list goes on and on. 

Difficulty Levels

Fight Night 4 features 4 different difficulty levels that have been tuned to fit all player styles.  Amateur is great for new users wanting to experience Fight Night for the first time, Pro satisfies most of our regular gamers.  For those users that have been playing Fight Night for a while, Champion difficulty level will give you a good run for your money.  During production we looked at all of our user feedback and we wanted to give those who love the series something to keep them challenged. We added a fourth difficulty level just for them!  If you’re looking for the fight of your life, challenge Tyson to a heavyweight fight on G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time), you might just be able to get an achievement or trophy out of it, (just watch out for that uppercut!!).

Data Driven

The change to use a fully data driven system allows us to do things on a scale never before possible.  Traditionally, AI is typically a set of rules that the CPU follows based on a set of conditions.  IF this, THEN do this.  You can imagine that then the AI is limited to only the conditions listed by the programmer.  When you move to a data driven system, like REAL AI, you’re able to make connections from game states to actions that is difficult to comprehend.  I made the image above a few months ago of what Mike Tyson’s AI ‘Brain’ looks like as trained by our experts.  Each connection represents the relationships between actions and game situations, tens of thousands in total.  Isn’t that so cool?

A closer look at Graphics - Art Director Blog

By Jen Freeman

At the beginning of FNR4, when we were planning the visual priorities, a crucial feature was ‘authenticity’.  To us this meant being true to the sport, and making every boxer unique and accurate.

Height, weight and reach, every boxer is unique – every boxer in our game has his own unique body.  What we did was created 7 different body types that your boxer could be, and combined that with non-uniform scaling. So this means that your reach is independent of your height, and also your weight. As reach is so important in boxing, and essential to the gameplay in Fight Night, we created a system where 2 boxers who were roughly the same height could have very different lengths of arms. Take George Foreman and Tomasz Adamek for example; there is only one inch in height between them and 10lbs in weight, but a difference of 7 inches in their reach. Getting this non-uniform scaling system in the game was one of our top priorities, and one that we’ve managed put in our create player feature. Now you can create any boxer you like accurate to the inch and the pound.

For the complete blog, check it out on the Inside EA SPORTS blog:  A closer look at Graphics

Boxer Styles in Fight Night Round 4

Mike Mahar, producer   Styles make fights. It’s an old boxing adage that succinctly describes how the boxing styles of two combatants determines the type of fight they will have. If you put two cutesy southpaw counter-punchers in against each other and  you’re probably not looking forward to a barnburning slugfest. If you put to face-first, take-two-to-give-one sluggers in against each other and you probably won’t have an exhibition of outstanding defensive technique on your hands. Creating a diverse set of boxing styles for the AI in Fight Night Round 4 has been a focus since the early stages of development.

There are a lot of things that make up a boxer’s style. First off, you have the stance: orthodox or southpaw. An interesting twist in Fight Night Round 4 is the addition of independent power ratings for each hand. This allows you to make a southpaw boxer with a dominant right hand, or vice versa. The boxing world is full of natural southpaws that were converted to fight right-handed by trainers early in their career. In Fight Night Round 4 you can simulate that effect with created boxers and you can expect licensed boxers that fought this way to have their attributes reflect that.

The way a boxer positions their feet and holds their hands is probably one of the most recognizable facets of their boxing style. It’s the kind of thing that you can look at for one or two seconds and get a sense for what kind of boxer they are. Boxers like Roy Jones Jr, George Foreman and Emanuel Augustus are very distinct from one another. Roy holds his lead hand low baiting his opponents to throw something so he can  use his speed and reflexes to defend and counter. George Foreman held his hands high and stalked towards his opponents waiting to unleash the fury the moment their backs touched the ropes. Emanuel Augustus, well, I don’t think anybody has really figured that guy out just yet. Fight Night Round 4 features a wide variety of different ways for boxers to stand and hold their hands that allows us to recreate the style of all the licensed boxers and allows you, the user, to create a huge variety of virtual opponents.

On top of the boxer’s stance and hand position there are a 3 different base punch styles and 3 different base block styles to choose from. With the new physics system, the different punches and block styles have subtle differences in how the punches contact the target or how the blocks cover against incoming punches. Another interesting addition in Fight Night Round 4 is the ability to select your boxer’s best punch and give it a boost. This doesn’t make it a crazy animation. Joe Frazier’s left hook didn’t look really different than other left hooks – until it landed. No more Sinister Cross or Judge Jab. The system is more balanced but it still allows us to customize fighters to match their real life counterparts.

But a boxer’s style really comes down to their strategic approach when they step inside the ropes. For Fight Night Round 4 we developed 8 base boxing styles that we assigned to every licensed boxer. Then we tweaked and tuned these base styles to make them each boxer’s strengths and mimic the way they fight (or fought) in real life. The 8 base styles include:

    Conventional Boxer: A boxer that sticks to the fundamentals and tries to set things up with the jab.
    Unconventional Boxer: A boxer that eschews the fundamentals for a more dynamic approach.
    Slugger: A roughhouse power puncher that likes to throw bombs, thinks the best defense is a good offense.
    Brawler: Another power puncher, but one that shows more defensive ability.
    Counter Puncher: A slippery, in-the-pocket defensive style fighter.  
    Boxer Puncher: A boxer that takes a conventional approach to setting up his big punches at medium distance.
    Inside Fighter: A close range boxer-puncher that moves his head and tries to control the ring and work the body.
    Outside Fighter: A stick and move fighter that focuses on keeping the opponent at the end of their punches.

One of the really great things it that using the Create Boxer feature, you can assign one of these 8 base styles to any boxer you create, which allows you to ensure that when you create one of your favorite legends and import him into your Legacy Mode as an opponent, he won’t end up dancing around the ring when you want him to be an aggressive puncher. When it all comes together and you combine the different animations, boxer styles and boxer attributes with the differences in height and reach, you can really see big diversity between the boxers you face inside the ropes in Fight Night Round 4.