Its more a complex Heuristic system in most games, which is arguably not AI, however most AI definitions generally focus more on the apparence of intelligence rather than actual intelligence.
I thought in the UT games they had bots based on certain "things" they did. Like, the Bunny hopper, the sniper, etc.
That would mean that all those traits are pre-defined, in some way, as opposed to learning on the fly, or assimilating the information from fighting you and learning from every fight they lose.
Xenocide Geek on
i wanted love, i needed love
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
The little known RTS Perimeter actually has some rather sneaky AI. Unlike most RTS AI that periodically discards a few units (pah! these are hopelessly out of fashion!) against your defenses, the perimeter AI would actually skirmish and pick at you. They'd select whichever unit you had the weakest defenses against (air, land, subterranian) attack the weakest point in your set up (sometimes driving in a sneaky circle all the way around your base to attack by burrowing under some mountains or something crazy like that), and they'd always hit high priority strucutures to mess with your powergrid. If you did finally respond with units, they'd just retreat. If you switched on your giant base-covering energy shield, they'd wait just outside so you'd be forced to drain your energy maintaining your perimeter.
Maybe in the original, though I don't remember those exact archetypes in UT2k4. In any case, in both games you could set the bots to "general" play (instead of affinities for staying put and using certain weapons) and they would improve or get worse depending on how successful you were. I think, probably even moreso in UT than 2k4, that the AI was ahead of its time as far as being competent and difficult, yet fair, opponents for offline play. UT itself set the high water mark for bots at the time.
In fact, I change mine from UT2k4 to UT.
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KorKnown to detonate from time to timeRegistered Userregular
edited March 2007
I've never trusted RTS A.I. as usually Hard mode in an RTS just means you've approved for them to cheat.
I'd have to say Resident Evil 4. The enemies are, for the most part, quite adept at moving around their environment. Furthermore, Ashley is quite well-programmed, though I'm not sure how much of this can be considered AI, since she mostly just stands right behind you. But she does try to avoid getting shot or grabbed by a Ganado, and she never has trouble finding you when you leave her behind and then tell her to follow you, no matter how far away you are or how convoluted the path. (The only issue she has is that, for some reason, she can't climb down ladders.)
At any rate, she's certainly smarter than the average escorted character.
The UT AI was actually really nice at scaling. At easy levels they would make some pretty common mistakes, and at expert they had some devestating predicition routines for tracking and hitting you with missiles and projectiles. It's easy to make an aimbot for instant-hit weapons, but weapons that fire slow projectiles are far more difficult for the AI to lead.
Apparently at least some of the UT AI was done through an evolutionary process, where they had bots assigned randomized behavioural quirks and twitchiness, and then made them fight one another. The successful bots lived and had their code passed on to new bots, the bots that didn't got fragged and were removed from the process. According to Sweeny, over several iteration the bots had learned how to wall jump, dodge and even rocketjump effectively.
the games everyone has mentioned are very good in terms of AI behaviour,
I'm currently looking to the newer games like Assassins Creed and Bioshock for their version of AI. AC for the crowds, and Bioshock for the non-routine script behavior of the big daddy/little girl scenarios.
As soon as I read the title, I thought F.E.A.R. too. What got me the most was they were so smart, they were prone to making human errors and mistakes, if you know what I mean. For example, or should that be examples-
- I snuck around a corner to notice a sniper and his buddy standing in the hallway in front of me, peering into a courtyard. I keep crouched and kill the two in a breif firefight. I stand up and turn to my left to look out of a window to see another sniper across the courtyard, who, instead of attacking me, ducks behind cover when we see each other and shout to his (already dead) comerades "He's coming up behind you! Get out of there!". The best part of that was that I'v done that part at least 6 times and never heard him shout that again.
- I was doing my 'melle only run' and was running around a warehouse, trying to avoid the troopers who were chasing me. I hid for a while and decided to peek out. I noticed that they had spotted that I ran down this hallway, but didn't know I'd stopped. They shouted "He's trying to flank!", assuming I was about to keep running down the hallway and come out at the other end to jump them from behind, which I wasn't, but they assumed that was my plan. So, they turn around and decide to try cover their backs because they assumed I was trying to sneak up behind them. Now, I didn't see all of this, I only heard what they were saying and had to guess where they were, but, sure enough, I doubled back and ended up behind their backs as they started to clear the hallway. Now, if they didn't think I was trying to flank them, they probably would of not had their backs to me at that point. I just love how they made that goof giving me the chance to take them all out from behind.
- I threw a grenade at a tropper who was hiding in a corner behind an upturned desk. This grenade was sailing towards him at a perfect angle towards his head. The trooper looks up, and instead of trying to run for cover, simply shouts "OH SHIT!" and feebly tried to cover his head from the explosion. Now, the best part of this was that he KNEW he had no chance of escape as he couldn't of possibly dove out of the way in either direction in time to avoid it. I found it mindblowing that this dude KNEW he was going to die.
- Not so spectacular, but I spotted a group of 3 troopers through a gap in a wall through a section of piping, and at the same time they spotted me. Two ran in opposite directions around wall between us, as to come around at the same time and box me in. I had run towards the corner as to try and catch one as soon as he popped his head around and I simply assumed the third guy had followed the other guy around the corner, so I was expecting to meet one head on and for the other two to jump out at me from behind. The third guy had decided to run directly towards the piping that was embedded in the wall and slide through a small gap at the base of the piping/wall. I hadn't noticed this gap, but the next thing I saw when running towards the corner was a dude slide-kicking through the piping right in front of me and dive at me head on, me shouting "Holy shit!" as I didn't know where the hell he had come from. Only later I realised that there was infact, a small gap in the piping/wall. Certianly surprised me.
- I was walking through an office and a trooper, who is hiding behind a receptionist's desk at the other side of the office decides to take a few shots at me. He ducks back as I return fire, then I see something popping over the edge of the desk. The guy had decided to put his gun over the desk and fire wildly at me while still ducking, causing me to duck back into cover. Still firing, he stood up and made a dash from the desk. I pegged him before he got to another source of cover, but I admire his spirit and tenacity.
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ZephosClimbin in yo ski lifts, snatchin your people up.MichiganRegistered Userregular
edited March 2007
F.E.A.R.
i guess a lot of it was tricks with the actual level design to make the enemies seem smarter, but holy shit.
it was the first time i've ever seen enemies jump over a railing on a short ramp staircase instead of path down the ramp stairs. i just about shit my pants.
they were unrelentless too. very atmospheric game, i loved it.
The last time was probably with Gears of War. At first I thought I could take cover forever, but those Locusts started running some pretty good tactics to drive me out. It made me crazy at times. If I had to hear "Look at all that juice" one more time, I was going to kill someone.
Goddamn. I almost went back to PC gaming because of that particular scene.
quoted for truth. When i realised they were flanking me and trying to flush me out of corners and stuff, or you hear their conversations when you've disappeared ("go look for him" and stuff), i realised it was something pretty smart. Very impressed.
The first time this happened to me I was floored. I remember thinking to myself right when I realized that someone had gotten behind me, "No... AI isn't clever enough to pull that off."
Also, the AI in oblivion was pure crap. I could be out in the middle of no where, stalking an innocent farmer and the AI would "miraculously" find me the instant I killed him. Alternatively, I could be in someone's house just talking to them and then on a whim decide to kill them. All of a sudden I am greeted by a knocking on the door, "Castle Guards! Random dead body search!" Bah...
I dont know what Oblivion you played, but that never happened to me. Ever.
1upYours talked about how they didn't program the AI for the game they just let it learn how to race. After a while it started break checking people without even being told how to do it.
i wonder how long before it starts racing round the wrong way to cause crashes..
Damn you Darleysam, getting to the joke before me.
Also, i have never seen a learning racing game. I have seen lots of racing games say they learn, but i have never seen one actualy do it. I call bullshit on this extraordinary claim.
quoted for truth. When i realised they were flanking me and trying to flush me out of corners and stuff, or you hear their conversations when you've disappeared ("go look for him" and stuff), i realised it was something pretty smart. Very impressed.
The first time this happened to me I was floored. I remember thinking to myself right when I realized that someone had gotten behind me, "No... AI isn't clever enough to pull that off."
Also, the AI in oblivion was pure crap. I could be out in the middle of no where, stalking an innocent farmer and the AI would "miraculously" find me the instant I killed him. Alternatively, I could be in someone's house just talking to them and then on a whim decide to kill them. All of a sudden I am greeted by a knocking on the door, "Castle Guards! Random dead body search!" Bah...
I dont know what Oblivion you played, but that never happened to me. Ever.
Besides, how I understand it, whenever you attack someone, there's a certain range outside the area that the guard has to be in to "hear" your crime.
Playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live against human players.
I've never been impressed with artificially-intelligent humans. That might be why I don't play Halo or Counterstrike.
Uh your kidding right? i've seen the stupidest stuff from halo 2 players. They are much more enjoyable to play with, but an AI decently programmed is far more consistent, responsive and accurate. They ALWAYS suffer from predictability, its one of those when you figure out a pattern, not IF.
There has not yet been an AI that has impressed me yet. I haven't played fear though, It sounds like i should.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
edited March 2007
The very first time in half life when you run outside and there is the helicopter with the marines repelling down and firing at you.
I was pinned down under some cover firing at about three of them for about a minute (yes I suck with kb/m) when I heard a thunk looked to my right saw one of the fuckers had flanked and blew up from the grenade that he threw.
I was mighty impressed.
F.E.A.R. seems to be getting respect I may consider this for the 360, how good is it on there and how long does it go for?
The thing about almost all AI is that it isn't clever.
It's just not, so anyone saying that "Eh, it was just scripted well" is missing hte point.
If it was, it would take fucking ages to process. They have a robot-controlled football game each year. One team entered with some amazing tactical simulations. It lost. Why? Because by the time it had processed which one to pass the ball too, it was already taken by the other team.
The magic is giving the impression of AI. Half-Life's commandos (who were the only ones that have impressed me) were pretty dumb. If I remember how it was relayed to me by someone doing a thesis in AI... they gave the impression of team-work by only letting one commando do anything at any one time. Each squad shared an action slot, and each one commando would fight to use it. Whichever got the lock got to move; throw a grenade; whatever. The only thing that wasn't limited was firing. This gave the impression that they were working together for some higher purpose, when they honestly weren't.
People almost always bring up Halo as well, which was very dumb. That really was just all a variation of running and firing at you. What they did was make the level design a bit clever, so it appeared the enemy was trying to flank you, when all it was doing was some randomised path-finding and ending up going down a corridor, which led out to you.
I expect next-gen AI to fall by the wayside for physics and graphics improvements. The real question is not if we should have impressive AI, but if we want it. I think the answer, for a lot of games, is no. They're shooting galleries, you don't want the tin-cans taking away from your feeling of superiority.
Also, in Half-Life it may not have been actual A.I. that shouted "Grenade!" when I threw one at them, then they THREW IT BACK but it felt like A.I. and it impressed me.
Also in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I know now it's entirely predictable what the opponents are going to do in response to any given action, but when they first starting stalking and hunting down my healers, proceeding then to lay waste to my entire team in a systematic and brutal fashion. I was impressed. Pissed, but impressed.
Also, in Half-Life it may not have been actual A.I. that shouted "Grenade!" when I threw one at them, then they THREW IT BACK but it felt like A.I. and it impressed me.
Yes, this is the trick. Giving the impression of humanity and intelligence is vastly different to saying "Man, I got outsmarted by a machine" in the same context as something like Deep Blue.
i'll still never forget an Elite in Halo that hid from me. It was on the Silent Cartographer, and i'd taken out everyone else around him, and knew there was one left, but he wasn't showing on my motion-tracker. So i was carefully creeping round a rock and he was like OH NOES YOU FOUND ME, ROARRRR!
*shoot*
Playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live against human players.
I've never been impressed with artificially-intelligent humans. That might be why I don't play Halo or Counterstrike.
Uh your kidding right? i've seen the stupidest stuff from halo 2 players. They are much more enjoyable to play with, but an AI decently programmed is far more consistent, responsive and accurate. They ALWAYS suffer from predictability, its one of those when you figure out a pattern, not IF.
I dunno, every online shooter I've played I always end up winning if I stay on a server more than half an hour just by learning the other guys' patterns, both the enemy team and my own where teams are applicable. I don't think the majority of people are even as clever as the AI in the Gundam arcade games (Fed vs Zeon or Gundam vs Z-Gundam). So then it comes down to which one I have more fun beating, and it usually ends up being AI because AI tends to be more likely to behave like either real soldiers or people in movies/comic-books, so I have more fun with that because I'm being an action-hero rather than just killing everyone by learning a pattern. Or in the case of Halo 1, quitting because I need competent team-mates to get past the "block up both entrances to the flag-house with vehicles" pattern for CTF on Blood Gultch. Fuck that noise, and no a grenade doesn't cut it unless you put it in exactly the right place which you don't have time to do when your team-mates are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The fucking UT bots are more helpful.
(I'm a Comp Sci grad student but I'm no AI expert. One "Intro to AI" class as an undergrad does not an expert make.)
Yes this is being needlessly geeky and pedantic, but I'll do it anyway. The last time I've been impressed by a game's AI I was playing Façade. The time before that I was playing with Creatures, Creatures 2, or Creatures 3. The time before that I was playing chess.
None of the above are things I actually consider fun. I don't play any of those any more.
This doesn't mean I've stopped believing that strong AI doesn't have a place in fun modern games -- I just don't think strong AI is within the capabilities of our current mainstream game industry. I don't think I can defend that position though, so I'll come back to it.
From what I could tell when studying AI, AI doesn't really obsess over the idea of intelligence. When we're talking about humans playing against machine-controlled agents (enemy soldiers, monsters, chess pieces, whatever) then we care about an autonomous agent. The computer is running some kind of code that is sensing the world, tracking an internal model of the world, and making decisions that affect the world.
The typical deterministic algorithms we consider "bad AI" still count as AI, even though each individual part of the agent is very simple. Maybe the agent is only capable of simple internal models of the world: resting, enemy in sight, enemy seen recently at this location, etc. Maybe it can only perform simple actions: rest, approach, evade, shoot, throw grenade at last known position. That's still AI.
Granted, that kind of AI is very traditional and predictable. The enemy starts life in his starting area and never moves until activated. He's only ever activated when you cross a threshhold or trigger placed by the level designer. Very boring -- my inner geek is not impressed, even if your enemy is very good at killing my character.
I think the next advances in game AI will come not from practical applications of new theory -- they will come from people starting to apply the same technologies we've had for decades in sane ways. If you're responsible for AI code that's supposed to help a set of enemies act like armed security, go learn how real security departments work first. How do security people sound when they talk on the radio? Where are dispatch centers usually located, and what kind of radio traffic is common during normal day-to-day operations? How do guards relieve each other from their posts? When do they go on break? Where is the break room? (And if your level is designed such that nobody can get from one room to another without passing every single room in between, something's wrong with your level designer.) And isn't at least one person usually assigned to be a 'rover'?
Let's stay with this example, designing a security department to defend against an assaulting player in an FPS game. Should every computer-controlled character really be armed security? Shouldn't there also be some regular employees milling about? What would they do if they encounter the player? Do they think he's a friendly SWAT team member? Do they think he's there to rob the place, so they should be cooperative? Do they think he's there to murder everyone he sees, so fleeing, pleading, or attacking are the only wise options? Might the player overhear an employee hiding, trying to quietly call security?
More than that, are all security people necessarily armed? If a guy has a nightstick and a radio, mostly a radio, how will HE behave when he sees the player? The answer is probably not "run at the player in a straight line and attempt to whack the player with the nightstick."
Above all, a security department is part of a business, and they have a job to do and a certain amount of money and manpower to do it with. They should be well trained for handling mundane things, and they should have drilled extensively on emergency procedures for reasonable, forseeable emergencies. Having a single armed intruder kill the dispatcher and half of your security team is outside the scope of "reasonable, forseeable emergencies." When the department is still relatively unhurt but they know they have a Serious Problem, they should be visiting offices and evacuating employees, focusing efforts on keeping themselves safe and protecting the most valuable assets. Maybe the player is really interested in data from the data center, but security is dedicated to protecting the vault.
What about when security involves armed and competent responders, like a SWAT team or a military fireteam? Not everyone is carrying the same weapons or equipment. Someone should be carrying some stun and smoke grenades, and they should know when to use them. They should know how to carry out an ambush -- the player opens a door and gets a 40mm grenade in the face, plus lots of gunfire, before the player can react. Security responders should form a well-oiled machine, more than capable of dealing with any forseeable armed threat with high effectiveness and low casualties.
Of course, the player is far, far more capable than anything the AI might have trained for. There should be MANY instances where the player thinks "wow, good job AI -- that would have killed me for sure, if I wasn't a walking juggernaut carrying tons of ammunition."
And while all this violent stuff is happening, there should never be a rogue security officer somewhere with no clue of what's happening. In the middle of all the killing, nobody should be calling control looking for someone to relieve him for a lunch break.
The above is easily within our current game industry's technical capabilities, but I believe it's not within budget. I could see a system like that costing a few hundred thousand dollars to develop: security and military consultants, lots of voice work for lots of unique NPC's, and thousands of game tester hours.
I think that kind of system can elevate an already good title to 'must-buy' status, though. I could see that kind of investment paying off. I don't have a lot of confidence that the people who control the purse strings would agree, though.
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Black and White is my favorite game. I wasn't around for the hype and picked it up 3 years ago, fell in love with it.
It really got me when I was teaching my pet sheep how to shoot lightning. I put on the learning leash and began casting lightning on nearby trees. Every so often the sheep would point at the flaming trees, look at me, and I'd pet it. So I'd done it enough so that sheepy could shoot lightning himself, and I decided I didn't like the village just beyond my reach, so I turned on the aggressive leash and leashed my pet to the enemy town. Expecting him to call down the thunder, he scampered into town, walked out a bit, blasted a nearby tree with lightning, and hurled the flaming tree through the village, spreading flames to people and buildings. He did this until all that was left was charred corpses.
To bad they turned the pet into "feed town? yes feed town. Throw fireball? yes throw fireball." In black and white 2. Might as well have been a text adventure
I'm replaying Oblivion again and the AI seems at least a little bit brighter. I cranked up the difficulty a bit but also included a companion mod and its pretty cool to have like a tag-team thing going on. I sneak attack, and immediately switch to my sword and shield while the bot just pegs enemies with arrows.
I find it is a lot more fun than compared to OOO because OOO's difficulty makes it more challenging but also ramps up the bull shit factor. I was stuck at a quest where two bad ass motherfuckers with full warhammers hit me once and half life would be gone and I would be staggering... and this was in close quarters. Fucking pissed me off.
The first time a character from animal crossing asked me," Where have you been? I haven't seen you for six weeks!" I was kind of creeped out. I know exactly how it worked after the fact but I honestly never expected it.
Also there's this one 20 questions game that floored a couple of people I showed it too. (It got dragon in 16 questions and manticore in 14.)
F.E.A.R. is not scripted. It uses an agent planning algorithm remarkably similar to something I remember reading about in my A.I. textbook. Check out the A.I. programmer's website at http://www.jorkin.com. There is some good reading material if you are interested in how it works.
Also there's this one 20 questions game that floored a couple of people I showed it too. (It got dragon in 16 questions and manticore in 14.)
When I played Obsidian for the first time, the computer beat me in 2 questions (I was thinking of iguana).
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ViscountalphaThe pen is mightier than the swordhttp://youtu.be/G_sBOsh-vyIRegistered Userregular
edited March 2007
I take back there is only 1 game that boggles me in the AI field. Animal crossing DS. I know theres a script there but the way they interact with each other is just.. odd? its really weird how they interact though it feels almost organic in a personality sense. AI's in games like Animal crossing is definitly welcomed.
It's not exactly "impressive", but maybe the most fun I've had with AI is with the flood in Halo. If you shoot both there arms off, they can't attack you, but they're keep following you around. Once you get good at it you can have a little army of harmless flood following you.
I have never been impressed by any game's A.I. Ever. I suppose I just don't look for those kinds of things to start with, but even when I play a game after hearing about its A.I., I'm entirely underwhelmed.
Oh, I don't think anybody remembered this, and I don't think it quite counts as AI, but there was also something to be said for the host in the You Don't Know Jack games.
The way he would respond to certain things you did, while scripted of course, was a little on the eerie side sometimes. And when I played "The Ride" for a first time, and it said my name after I typed it in... I freaked out a little bit.
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I am a freaking nerd.
That would mean that all those traits are pre-defined, in some way, as opposed to learning on the fly, or assimilating the information from fighting you and learning from every fight they lose.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
they were real dicks.
In fact, I change mine from UT2k4 to UT.
Pokemon Safari - Sneasel, Pawniard, ????
At any rate, she's certainly smarter than the average escorted character.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Apparently at least some of the UT AI was done through an evolutionary process, where they had bots assigned randomized behavioural quirks and twitchiness, and then made them fight one another. The successful bots lived and had their code passed on to new bots, the bots that didn't got fragged and were removed from the process. According to Sweeny, over several iteration the bots had learned how to wall jump, dodge and even rocketjump effectively.
I'm currently looking to the newer games like Assassins Creed and Bioshock for their version of AI. AC for the crowds, and Bioshock for the non-routine script behavior of the big daddy/little girl scenarios.
You believe in evolution?!?!
(I kid, I kid)
I really liked UT, but I felt that the bots went in staccato steps from "they can't aim for shit" to "eight rockets up my ass every time I spawn."
Wait-
- I snuck around a corner to notice a sniper and his buddy standing in the hallway in front of me, peering into a courtyard. I keep crouched and kill the two in a breif firefight. I stand up and turn to my left to look out of a window to see another sniper across the courtyard, who, instead of attacking me, ducks behind cover when we see each other and shout to his (already dead) comerades "He's coming up behind you! Get out of there!". The best part of that was that I'v done that part at least 6 times and never heard him shout that again.
- I was doing my 'melle only run' and was running around a warehouse, trying to avoid the troopers who were chasing me. I hid for a while and decided to peek out. I noticed that they had spotted that I ran down this hallway, but didn't know I'd stopped. They shouted "He's trying to flank!", assuming I was about to keep running down the hallway and come out at the other end to jump them from behind, which I wasn't, but they assumed that was my plan. So, they turn around and decide to try cover their backs because they assumed I was trying to sneak up behind them. Now, I didn't see all of this, I only heard what they were saying and had to guess where they were, but, sure enough, I doubled back and ended up behind their backs as they started to clear the hallway. Now, if they didn't think I was trying to flank them, they probably would of not had their backs to me at that point. I just love how they made that goof giving me the chance to take them all out from behind.
- I threw a grenade at a tropper who was hiding in a corner behind an upturned desk. This grenade was sailing towards him at a perfect angle towards his head. The trooper looks up, and instead of trying to run for cover, simply shouts "OH SHIT!" and feebly tried to cover his head from the explosion. Now, the best part of this was that he KNEW he had no chance of escape as he couldn't of possibly dove out of the way in either direction in time to avoid it. I found it mindblowing that this dude KNEW he was going to die.
- Not so spectacular, but I spotted a group of 3 troopers through a gap in a wall through a section of piping, and at the same time they spotted me. Two ran in opposite directions around wall between us, as to come around at the same time and box me in. I had run towards the corner as to try and catch one as soon as he popped his head around and I simply assumed the third guy had followed the other guy around the corner, so I was expecting to meet one head on and for the other two to jump out at me from behind. The third guy had decided to run directly towards the piping that was embedded in the wall and slide through a small gap at the base of the piping/wall. I hadn't noticed this gap, but the next thing I saw when running towards the corner was a dude slide-kicking through the piping right in front of me and dive at me head on, me shouting "Holy shit!" as I didn't know where the hell he had come from. Only later I realised that there was infact, a small gap in the piping/wall. Certianly surprised me.
- I was walking through an office and a trooper, who is hiding behind a receptionist's desk at the other side of the office decides to take a few shots at me. He ducks back as I return fire, then I see something popping over the edge of the desk. The guy had decided to put his gun over the desk and fire wildly at me while still ducking, causing me to duck back into cover. Still firing, he stood up and made a dash from the desk. I pegged him before he got to another source of cover, but I admire his spirit and tenacity.
i guess a lot of it was tricks with the actual level design to make the enemies seem smarter, but holy shit.
it was the first time i've ever seen enemies jump over a railing on a short ramp staircase instead of path down the ramp stairs. i just about shit my pants.
they were unrelentless too. very atmospheric game, i loved it.
FUCK CHECKPOINT SAVING.
I dont know what Oblivion you played, but that never happened to me. Ever.
Damn you Darleysam, getting to the joke before me.
Also, i have never seen a learning racing game. I have seen lots of racing games say they learn, but i have never seen one actualy do it. I call bullshit on this extraordinary claim.
Both are truth, but I haven't played as much FEAR as I'd like to.
I don't think I ever won a game.
Steam ID: Good Life
Besides, how I understand it, whenever you attack someone, there's a certain range outside the area that the guard has to be in to "hear" your crime.
There's a few mods that shorten that range.
Uh your kidding right? i've seen the stupidest stuff from halo 2 players. They are much more enjoyable to play with, but an AI decently programmed is far more consistent, responsive and accurate. They ALWAYS suffer from predictability, its one of those when you figure out a pattern, not IF.
There has not yet been an AI that has impressed me yet. I haven't played fear though, It sounds like i should.
I was pinned down under some cover firing at about three of them for about a minute (yes I suck with kb/m) when I heard a thunk looked to my right saw one of the fuckers had flanked and blew up from the grenade that he threw.
I was mighty impressed.
F.E.A.R. seems to be getting respect I may consider this for the 360, how good is it on there and how long does it go for?
Satans..... hints.....
It's just not, so anyone saying that "Eh, it was just scripted well" is missing hte point.
If it was, it would take fucking ages to process. They have a robot-controlled football game each year. One team entered with some amazing tactical simulations. It lost. Why? Because by the time it had processed which one to pass the ball too, it was already taken by the other team.
The magic is giving the impression of AI. Half-Life's commandos (who were the only ones that have impressed me) were pretty dumb. If I remember how it was relayed to me by someone doing a thesis in AI... they gave the impression of team-work by only letting one commando do anything at any one time. Each squad shared an action slot, and each one commando would fight to use it. Whichever got the lock got to move; throw a grenade; whatever. The only thing that wasn't limited was firing. This gave the impression that they were working together for some higher purpose, when they honestly weren't.
People almost always bring up Halo as well, which was very dumb. That really was just all a variation of running and firing at you. What they did was make the level design a bit clever, so it appeared the enemy was trying to flank you, when all it was doing was some randomised path-finding and ending up going down a corridor, which led out to you.
I expect next-gen AI to fall by the wayside for physics and graphics improvements. The real question is not if we should have impressive AI, but if we want it. I think the answer, for a lot of games, is no. They're shooting galleries, you don't want the tin-cans taking away from your feeling of superiority.
Also, in Half-Life it may not have been actual A.I. that shouted "Grenade!" when I threw one at them, then they THREW IT BACK but it felt like A.I. and it impressed me.
Also in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I know now it's entirely predictable what the opponents are going to do in response to any given action, but when they first starting stalking and hunting down my healers, proceeding then to lay waste to my entire team in a systematic and brutal fashion. I was impressed. Pissed, but impressed.
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Yes, this is the trick. Giving the impression of humanity and intelligence is vastly different to saying "Man, I got outsmarted by a machine" in the same context as something like Deep Blue.
*shoot*
I dunno, every online shooter I've played I always end up winning if I stay on a server more than half an hour just by learning the other guys' patterns, both the enemy team and my own where teams are applicable. I don't think the majority of people are even as clever as the AI in the Gundam arcade games (Fed vs Zeon or Gundam vs Z-Gundam). So then it comes down to which one I have more fun beating, and it usually ends up being AI because AI tends to be more likely to behave like either real soldiers or people in movies/comic-books, so I have more fun with that because I'm being an action-hero rather than just killing everyone by learning a pattern. Or in the case of Halo 1, quitting because I need competent team-mates to get past the "block up both entrances to the flag-house with vehicles" pattern for CTF on Blood Gultch. Fuck that noise, and no a grenade doesn't cut it unless you put it in exactly the right place which you don't have time to do when your team-mates are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The fucking UT bots are more helpful.
Yes this is being needlessly geeky and pedantic, but I'll do it anyway. The last time I've been impressed by a game's AI I was playing Façade. The time before that I was playing with Creatures, Creatures 2, or Creatures 3. The time before that I was playing chess.
None of the above are things I actually consider fun. I don't play any of those any more.
This doesn't mean I've stopped believing that strong AI doesn't have a place in fun modern games -- I just don't think strong AI is within the capabilities of our current mainstream game industry. I don't think I can defend that position though, so I'll come back to it.
From what I could tell when studying AI, AI doesn't really obsess over the idea of intelligence. When we're talking about humans playing against machine-controlled agents (enemy soldiers, monsters, chess pieces, whatever) then we care about an autonomous agent. The computer is running some kind of code that is sensing the world, tracking an internal model of the world, and making decisions that affect the world.
The typical deterministic algorithms we consider "bad AI" still count as AI, even though each individual part of the agent is very simple. Maybe the agent is only capable of simple internal models of the world: resting, enemy in sight, enemy seen recently at this location, etc. Maybe it can only perform simple actions: rest, approach, evade, shoot, throw grenade at last known position. That's still AI.
Granted, that kind of AI is very traditional and predictable. The enemy starts life in his starting area and never moves until activated. He's only ever activated when you cross a threshhold or trigger placed by the level designer. Very boring -- my inner geek is not impressed, even if your enemy is very good at killing my character.
I think the next advances in game AI will come not from practical applications of new theory -- they will come from people starting to apply the same technologies we've had for decades in sane ways. If you're responsible for AI code that's supposed to help a set of enemies act like armed security, go learn how real security departments work first. How do security people sound when they talk on the radio? Where are dispatch centers usually located, and what kind of radio traffic is common during normal day-to-day operations? How do guards relieve each other from their posts? When do they go on break? Where is the break room? (And if your level is designed such that nobody can get from one room to another without passing every single room in between, something's wrong with your level designer.) And isn't at least one person usually assigned to be a 'rover'?
Let's stay with this example, designing a security department to defend against an assaulting player in an FPS game. Should every computer-controlled character really be armed security? Shouldn't there also be some regular employees milling about? What would they do if they encounter the player? Do they think he's a friendly SWAT team member? Do they think he's there to rob the place, so they should be cooperative? Do they think he's there to murder everyone he sees, so fleeing, pleading, or attacking are the only wise options? Might the player overhear an employee hiding, trying to quietly call security?
More than that, are all security people necessarily armed? If a guy has a nightstick and a radio, mostly a radio, how will HE behave when he sees the player? The answer is probably not "run at the player in a straight line and attempt to whack the player with the nightstick."
Above all, a security department is part of a business, and they have a job to do and a certain amount of money and manpower to do it with. They should be well trained for handling mundane things, and they should have drilled extensively on emergency procedures for reasonable, forseeable emergencies. Having a single armed intruder kill the dispatcher and half of your security team is outside the scope of "reasonable, forseeable emergencies." When the department is still relatively unhurt but they know they have a Serious Problem, they should be visiting offices and evacuating employees, focusing efforts on keeping themselves safe and protecting the most valuable assets. Maybe the player is really interested in data from the data center, but security is dedicated to protecting the vault.
What about when security involves armed and competent responders, like a SWAT team or a military fireteam? Not everyone is carrying the same weapons or equipment. Someone should be carrying some stun and smoke grenades, and they should know when to use them. They should know how to carry out an ambush -- the player opens a door and gets a 40mm grenade in the face, plus lots of gunfire, before the player can react. Security responders should form a well-oiled machine, more than capable of dealing with any forseeable armed threat with high effectiveness and low casualties.
Of course, the player is far, far more capable than anything the AI might have trained for. There should be MANY instances where the player thinks "wow, good job AI -- that would have killed me for sure, if I wasn't a walking juggernaut carrying tons of ammunition."
And while all this violent stuff is happening, there should never be a rogue security officer somewhere with no clue of what's happening. In the middle of all the killing, nobody should be calling control looking for someone to relieve him for a lunch break.
The above is easily within our current game industry's technical capabilities, but I believe it's not within budget. I could see a system like that costing a few hundred thousand dollars to develop: security and military consultants, lots of voice work for lots of unique NPC's, and thousands of game tester hours.
I think that kind of system can elevate an already good title to 'must-buy' status, though. I could see that kind of investment paying off. I don't have a lot of confidence that the people who control the purse strings would agree, though.
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It really got me when I was teaching my pet sheep how to shoot lightning. I put on the learning leash and began casting lightning on nearby trees. Every so often the sheep would point at the flaming trees, look at me, and I'd pet it. So I'd done it enough so that sheepy could shoot lightning himself, and I decided I didn't like the village just beyond my reach, so I turned on the aggressive leash and leashed my pet to the enemy town. Expecting him to call down the thunder, he scampered into town, walked out a bit, blasted a nearby tree with lightning, and hurled the flaming tree through the village, spreading flames to people and buildings. He did this until all that was left was charred corpses.
To bad they turned the pet into "feed town? yes feed town. Throw fireball? yes throw fireball." In black and white 2. Might as well have been a text adventure
Yes, I have one. Why does the enemy get better AI than my partners? :P
I find it is a lot more fun than compared to OOO because OOO's difficulty makes it more challenging but also ramps up the bull shit factor. I was stuck at a quest where two bad ass motherfuckers with full warhammers hit me once and half life would be gone and I would be staggering... and this was in close quarters. Fucking pissed me off.
Also there's this one 20 questions game that floored a couple of people I showed it too. (It got dragon in 16 questions and manticore in 14.)
When I played Obsidian for the first time, the computer beat me in 2 questions (I was thinking of iguana).
First game of the NBA Finals against the Lakers. Amazing!
Every fights a food fight when you're a cannibal.
The way he would respond to certain things you did, while scripted of course, was a little on the eerie side sometimes. And when I played "The Ride" for a first time, and it said my name after I typed it in... I freaked out a little bit.
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