Playing Doom with AI Technology

A group of Google researchers has developed an AI-powered game engine capable of producing a playable version of Doom in real-time.

Each day, both modders and innovative engineers discover fresh methods to experience Doom or other games without using their original hardware. Even certain unconventional devices and gut bacteria have been able to run the iconic shooter.

The logical progression appears to be the development of an AI-powered game engine. This engine, called GameNGen, was created by researchers utilizing a “diffusion model”that bears some resemblance to Stable Diffusion.

Using their AI-driven engine, scientists Dani Valevski, Yaniv Leviathan, Moab Arar, and Shlomi Fruchter successfully simulated Doom in real-time without the need for manually written game software.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3616ZFGpqw

Generally, game engines, such as the id Tech 1 used to create the original Doom (also called the Doom engine), rely on a large amount of code in order to function.

Despite this, GenNGen relies solely on a neural model that allows for real-time interaction with a sophisticated environment, producing high-quality results over extended trajectories.

This model operates by creating fresh frames within the simulated environment, utilizing the player’s input and previously processed frames as a basis.

To acquire the necessary information for GameNGen to effectively operate its own rendition of Doom, the researchers utilized an AI agent to play the original Doom at all levels of difficulty.

This allowed GameNGen to accurately replicate various levels of player skill.

In Doom, players were rewarded for completing levels, while being penalized for taking damage and dying.

As a result, GameNGen received a large amount of training data from AI agents that were able to play the game.

Screenshot of Doom running in GameNGen. — GameNGen

Based on the team’s published paper, the researchers achieved a frame rate of 20 FPS and were able to replicate the visual quality of the original Doom game.

The Doom version of GameNGen was also capable of monitoring the remaining health and ammo, and keeping a record of game state changes such as defeated enemies and damaged objects.

However, it is unlikely that an AI will be able to generate and play modern titles in the near future. Even getting Doom to run was a challenging task, so it is difficult to imagine how AI could produce games like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Elden Ring.