Intelligent Adaptive Lighting

The game industry is currently exploring the development of designs that can appeal to a wide market with users exhibiting different tastes, tenancies, behaviors, abilities, and life styles. This problem requires the industry to look for innovative design solutions and tools. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can be used to adapt the game experience to players’ skills, behaviors, and abilities. Recently, several adaptive systems have been proposed including adaptive character AI and game design. In this chapter, we discuss an intelligent adaptive system that adapts lighting in a 3D game to enhance the users’ experience. Lighting design is well known among designers, directors, and visual artists for its vital role in influencing viewers’ perception by evoking moods, directing gaze to important areas (i.e., providing visual focus), and conveying visual tension. The intelligent lighting systems discussed in this chapter adapt lighting qualities, in terms of visual attention and affective properties, by integrating a constraint optimization system built based on cinematic and theatric techniques. The system has been in development and refinement for 9 years. In this chapter, we will discuss the systems as well as their evaluation through different game prototypes, specifically highlighting their effect on the users’ experience.