Tencent Releases Game AI Engine “GiiNEX” to Power the Next-Generation of Games

The GiiNEX Game AI Engine empowers professional developers to build new, vibrant, and detailed 3D scenes while also giving gamers the ability to design new levels and generate enhanced content.

Tencent released the GiiNEX Game AI Engine, its self-developed game AI engine that will power the next generation of games, at the 2024 Global Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.

GiiNEX uses generative AI tools, particularly innovations in 3D city generation and tools for User Generated Content (UGC) related to level design, reducing the time required for creating content and enabling engaging experiences for both professional developers and game players. With generative AI, GiiNEX can now support Non-Player Content (NPC) and in-game scene generation, from 2D images, animations, 3D cities, narratives, dialogue, and level design to music creation. Additionally, GiiNEX uses decision-making AI for game development testing, simulated gameplay and other scenarios to accelerate game innovation while quickly adapting to players’ personalized needs and changing market trends.

GiiNEX is comprised of three core elements: the cutting-edge unified algorithm model, efficient AI training platform, and online inference engine – tools that can address the needs of the entire life cycle of a game from research and development to operation. The unified algorithm underlying model is built on reinforcement learning, natural language processing, and other basic AI research capabilities that can support more than ten types of games like Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games, First-Person Shooters (FPS), and party games. The high-performance AI training platform has also been customized to meet the sophisticated needs of developing decision-making and generative AI, while the online inference engine has been optimized to synchronize communication between mobile devices and the cloud, ensuring seamless interaction across devices.

Enabling Photorealistic 3D Cities

Creating immersive 3D city scenes requires blending game mechanics with urban planning, which can be time consuming. GiiNEX’s upgraded toolkit offers the ability to enhance the creation of city layouts, buildings, and interior mapping.

For instance, with the GiiNEX city layout tool, developers now only require 25 minutes instead of the usual five or more days to create a city of 25 square kilometers. A complete vector road network can also be quickly generated by drawing the main features of the city, such as main roads and mountains, and by adjusting individual parameters. Additionally, designers can set up special building zones, delineate the functions of city blocks, and control the height of buildings, creating a realistic city blueprint.

To make cities look realistic and less repetitive, the GiiNEX building facade tool also enables modelling of buildings, and large-scale building generation thanks to machine learning. Modeling a unique building can now be done in under 18 minutes, which is 50-times more efficient than current manual construction methods.

The interior mapping tool further enriches the virtual city’s realism by adding detailed exteriors. By uploading room photos from multiple angles, it can create a 3D visual representation of an interior in under an hour, greatly enhancing the game’s immersive experience.

Boosting User Generated Content Creation and Engagement

User-generated content (UGC) is essential to enriching the game world and can even extend a product’s life cycle and ensure its sustainability. With GiiNEX’s user-friendly design tools, players can now create new models like vehicles, furniture, and animals using basic 3D components. From inspiration to architectural construction, including adding color to the design, AI tools help players improve creation efficiency, easily transforming creativity and gameplay ideas into personalized game levels. Moreover, GiiNEX’s NPC Action Generator tool links players’ actions in a video to game characters by capturing the movement of the players and allowing the resizing of characters to fit to scale and create natural movements.

“The use of decision-making AI helps provide intelligent teaching scenarios for MOBA games by performing real-time game analysis. This includes scenarios such as human-computer command interactions, which simulates the strength of each level and multiple playing styles and provides targeted operation guides and tactical advice to players during the game. These features help new players quickly master the gameplay and support the game’s development of new markets globally,” said Will Yang, General Manager of Tencent AI Lab.

Looking Into The Future: Creating Vibrant Gaming Worlds With AI

The launch of GiiNEX at GDC cements Tencent’s continued commitment to expanding its gaming AI solutions, accelerates the integration of AI and the gaming industry, and supports developers by providing tools that inspire them and enables them to bring their ideas to life, fostering a more vibrant world of games.

“The world of gaming is constantly evolving, and we’re excited to see how generative AI and decision-making AI are driving innovation in the industry. These technologies are bringing games closer to reality, creating dynamic environments and characters that respond to player interactions. As games become more personalized, players will experience richer emotional resonance and a truly unique gaming experience. We believe that the future of gaming is in creating realistic, diverse, and engaging worlds that players can explore and shape,” added Yang.

About GiiNEX

GiiNEX is built by Tencent AI Lab Game AI team. In the direction of decision-making AI, the team has developed “FineArt AI” (绝艺), a chess AI that has won many international awards, as well as “Wukong AI” (绝悟), a decision-making AI that has conquered the scenarios of MOBAs, FPSs, RTSs, 3D open worlds, and other types of games. In the direction of generative AI, we focus on improving engineering efficiency and expanding game content and have independently developed technologies such as 2D image generation, 3D virtual scene generation, AI NPC creation, intelligent interaction, and are able to assist in the generation of game experience content such as levels and narratives. In terms of academic cooperation, we have jointly created the “Tencent AI Arena” (腾讯开悟) AI open research platform with Honor of Kings to promote the cultivation of young AI talents and industrial development through tournaments, courses, and co-research projects.