Microsoft releases AI-generated Quake II demo, but admits ‘limitations’
Microsoft has released a browser-based, playable level of the classic video game Quake II. This functions as a technical demo for the gaming possibilities of the Copilot AI platform from Microsoft, although the experience through the company’s own recognition is not entirely the same as playing a well-made game.
You can Try it yourselfThe use of your keyboard to navigate a single level of Quake II for a few minutes before touching the time limit.
In A blog post describing their workMicrosoft researchers said that their Muse Family or AI models for video games enables users to “communicate with the model via keyboard/controller actions and the effects of your actions immediately, essentially so that you can play in the model.”
To show off these possibilities, the researchers trained their model at a Quake II level (which Microsoft owns through the acquisition of Zenimax).
“To our first pleasure we were able to play in the world that the model simulated,” they wrote. “We can wander around, move the camera, jump, squat, shoot and even blow up barrels similar to the original game.”
At the same time, the researchers emphasized that this is intended as “a research investigation” and should be considered “Model Unlike playing the game. “
More specifically, they recognized ‘limitations and shortcomings’, such as the fact that enemies are blurry, the damage and health can be inaccurate, and the most striking, the model struggles with object duration, forgetting things that are 0.9 seconds or longer.
According to the image of the researchers, “this can also be a source of pleasure, where you can beat enemies or spawn by looking at the floor and then look back”, or even “teleport around the card by looking at the air and then looking back.”
Writer and Game designer Austin Walker was less impressed by this approach and placed a gameplay video in which he spent most of his time Trapped in a dark room. (This also happened to me both times that I tried to play the demo, although I will admit that I am extreme Bad at first-person shooters.)
Referring to recent explanations from a Microsoft -Gaming -CEO by Phil Spencer that AI models can help with the preservation of games By making classic games “portable to every platform”, Walker argued that this reveals “a fundamental misunderstanding of not only this technology, but also how games work.”
“The internal operation of games such as quake – code, design, 3D art, audio – produce specific cases of games, including surprising edge cases,” Walker wrote. “That is a large part of what makes games good. If you are unable to rebuild the most important inner operation, you lose access to those unpredictable edge cases.”
