As part of the Game Developers Conference 2024, the most important conference for game developers in the video game industry, Nvidia has shown a new technological demo in which video game characters created by artificial intelligence are seen with speech and animation powered by the Nvidia Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE).
Created in collaboration with the AI video game startup Inworld AI, and built on Unreal Engine 5, the playable demo incorporates Nvidia’s ACE technology combined with the Inworld Engine to allow developers to implement AI-driven animated non-playable characters (NPCs) that react dynamically and realistically to player decisions.
In the demo, titled Covert Protocol, players take on the role of a private detective and complete objectives based on the conversations they have with AI-controlled NPCs. Nvidia claims that each game is “unique” as real-time player interactions lead to different outcomes.
John Spitzer, Vice President of Development and Performance Technologies at Nvidia, states that the company’s AI technology “can power the complex animations and conversations necessary to make digital interactions seem real“.
Some parts of the demo can be seen in a recently published video by Nvidia, which also shows some interesting images of the software development kit behind the scenes. This includes a screen with some details about the characters, where the developer explains what a specific character knows in the universe, outlines some of their background, and provides more information regarding their current mood and personality.
All this information determines how the character will interact with players in the game. The CEO of Inworld AI, Kylan Gibbs, states that “the combination of Nvidia Ace microservices and the Inworld Engine allows developers to create digital characters that can drive dynamic narratives, opening new possibilities for how players can decipher, deduce, and play.”
