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Dynamic, Interesting Enemies
Sueve
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
After playing a slew of new games recently, I've been thinking alot about enemy design, and how it needs to be improved in todays video games. We are in a remarkable moment, I think, in the evolution of video games, with graphics increasing in quality exponentially, multiplayer networks becoming more and more stable, and overall production values are through the roof.
But there seems to be one thing missing.
There seems to be a lack of dynamic enemies.
What I mean by that is that I want enemies that run away, get scared, commit suicide, have multiple steps to be killed, and are just on the whole more interesting to fight.
One key example are the enemies in the HL2 series. They are well designed and smart, but all seem to be walking health bars, that through a number of means just soak up any type of damage until they become a sack of potatoes. If you shoot them with a SMG vs. a Hi-Tech alien machine gun, theres no difference except for how fast they die. Shooting them in the head works faster, but other than that, there bodies are not dynamic in any way.
I can't wait for enemies that if shot in the leg, fall to the ground and drag themselves to cover. I want enemies that *jump* over shit, enemies that go crazy and hurt there own.
This is one of my main problems with fighting "monsters" in games. They are never, ever, (in my experience) more interesting to fight than humanoid enemies. They seem to always run straight at you, and just bash there arms/bite you until you shoot them in the head. Far Cry monsters, Stalker dogs/mutant things (except for controllers), HL2 monsters... the list goes on...
What do you want to see realized in Enemy AI in the next few years, and has sueve just not played the right games?
But there seems to be one thing missing.
There seems to be a lack of dynamic enemies.
What I mean by that is that I want enemies that run away, get scared, commit suicide, have multiple steps to be killed, and are just on the whole more interesting to fight.
One key example are the enemies in the HL2 series. They are well designed and smart, but all seem to be walking health bars, that through a number of means just soak up any type of damage until they become a sack of potatoes. If you shoot them with a SMG vs. a Hi-Tech alien machine gun, theres no difference except for how fast they die. Shooting them in the head works faster, but other than that, there bodies are not dynamic in any way.
I can't wait for enemies that if shot in the leg, fall to the ground and drag themselves to cover. I want enemies that *jump* over shit, enemies that go crazy and hurt there own.
This is one of my main problems with fighting "monsters" in games. They are never, ever, (in my experience) more interesting to fight than humanoid enemies. They seem to always run straight at you, and just bash there arms/bite you until you shoot them in the head. Far Cry monsters, Stalker dogs/mutant things (except for controllers), HL2 monsters... the list goes on...
What do you want to see realized in Enemy AI in the next few years, and has sueve just not played the right games?
Sueve on
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I think a good example of a challenging AI remains to be seen. Every game I've played so far has still given my the distinct impression that I am, unfortunately, matching wits with a machine. There's only story that can really mask that element, providing an environment so engrossing that it doesn't really matter what you're doing in between fights.
Mass Effect comes to mind, where the AI is absolutely predictable but where an immersive world takes you through the motions of actually becoming someone important to that story line.
To answer your question what I'd like to see in an AI:
-Manages to take alternate routes to flank your position.
-Shows some line of intuition as where, if an opposing force uses a certain approach to overcome a current obstacle and succeeds, it learns and applies countermeasures.
-Has the ability to run away when outnumbered to regroup with others
-Applies varied tactics and sticks to one that appears to be working.
I'd like to see what I see in TF2 every day basically.
Enemies communicate with each other, they will coordinate flanking maneuvers on you. They leap over barriers, they knock shelves down for cover. And if you slaughter a large portion of their group, the remainder will get scared and instead of flanking you and being gung ho, they will cower in their spots and fight you only if you get near.
90% of the time though, you don't notice this stuff because you're too busy gunning down dudes left and right. That's the problem right there: Enemies need to be weak and inferior in order for the player to have a chance. (In the course of any FPS, you kill what, like 1000 enemies all by yourself?) Being weak though, makes it difficult for the AI to do all the cool stuff that everyone supposedly wants to see AI do because they're too busy being your cannon fodder.
Case and point: Lots of people praised FEAR's AI, and what I wrote at the start of my post sure makes it sound really badass, but that whole example comes from like 5 or so instances I remember while playing the game. 8 hours of game, and I only remember 5 or so instances where the AI proved itself to be different and unique. The rest of the time they were just fodder, I killed them way to fast for them to do anything vaguely intelligent.
Ninja Gaiden 2 will nail you.
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I love it when the AI actually flanks me, cause then I get to say, "Clever girl."
Also, wasn't there a game coming out in which people on your friends list can take control of a random grunt at any time? That sounds cool, if a bit gimmicky I suppose.
The old classic, Perfect Dark had this mode, it was called counter-operative mode.
Whenever the grunt was killed you would swap bodies to another. It was incredibly hard to deal with a good human enemy while trying to complete your objectives.
This should be in alot more games.
As for general enemies though, I'd say the colossi in Shadow of the colossus were the most difficult to kill the first time through. It took so much work to bring down those things.
Another nod goes to those dastardly Space Pirates of Metroid Prime. Sure they were not very smart when it came down to it, but they tried their hardest to match Samus by developing similar technology in their armor and weapons getting some nice results in their experiments. They were pretty difficult enemies to take down, since they had a ton of moves, like taking cover, and flanking, and jet packs, and mounted energy blades, and phazon armor plating, and etc, and etc, and etc.
Oh... hi there... I did not see you come in...
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You may want to check out Left 4 Dead.
Also the most evil
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Well in Perfect Dark, the counter operatives had the life bar of the enemy they inhabited. It was usually like 30% of Agent Dark's. But still, being a human enemy, if they got to take their shots, they were usually headshots and usually painful.
This is very true. My buddy and I played that mode several times, but it always ended up with the counter operative blitzing straight for the other player and killing him right quick. Perfect Dark did a lot of things that modern FPS games are finally catching up to.
all reachin' self awareness, realizing the emptyness and futility of existence as a complex algorithm created for entertainment
Thats just what we need, making video game NPCs Emo.
Skynet just wanted to be loved.
There's a reason that so many games include some kind of mindless zombie character -- it's an archetype that's recognized, that's easy to program, and that's fun to kill. You don't think "man these zombies should flank me, this is stupid," you think "of course, they just want brains."
Most games that involve some sort of brutal AI are essentially just sneaking games. Try walking around in the open in most any Metal Gear Solid game. You're spotted, the enemies converge on you with superior numbers, and you're dead. So you have to avoid them all. But a lot of people don't like stealth games because they just want to kill dudes. You can't kill bad guys if they're thinking of ways to keep themselves alive while trying to kill you, because you end up with only one or two enemies (anything else is certain death for the player).
Then I played COD4 and preferred it as a game immeasurably.
Even then, they have to come with pre-programmed "limitations" otherwise in order to prevent the game from being tedious. So the guards in MGS have a vision range of maybe 15 feet on a good day. The soldiers in Crysis might call for some pre-scripted help if they spot you, but if the enemy knows you're in a given area they won't send help from nearby bases and locations. In Commando's you could silently take down everyone in a base and there'd still be a lone guard wandering around on his own, not noticing that suddenly he's the only one left. If you find yourself getting swamped in Resident Evil 4, just run up a ladder that's the only route to your position, and leisurely strike away at anyone trying to climb it.
Some of this can be chalked up to having necessary limitations on the AI just to be able to program it (in the end, you can't account for all situations that the player will create), some are deliberately hobbled to give the player some kind of chance. In the end if all soldiers in games were actually as intelligently adaptive and lethal as real life soldiers you'd be doing a whole lot of dying, even if you did have a ginormous health bar. They would figure out ways to counteract you, not the other way around.
In the end part of having "believable" AI in a game isn't just down to the AI itself. It's also about limiting the possibility space so that the AI can act intelligently within it. So the player might not be able to do certain things, like call in fake radio messages or prop up a sleeping guard on a stool. The level design will be such that the AI probably won't have a hard time reaching where you are (You never saw a usable ladder in Halo. Even if you could generally jump up a load of boxes, the AI usually couldn't, there had to be a separate path for them). AI's will spawn in and spawn in with no regard for their own lives and the 20 other corpses piled by the door (about the only exception I can think of here is FEAR, where they would avoid going the same route if they saw team mates get felled along it, and say as much). The AI will shout out it's intentions at all times so that you're aware that it's aware of the situation, so that you know it's doing something clever. They don't just keep quiet and use hand signals. All so that you know what they're doing and that they're doing it "smart".
Believable AI in games is largely just a magic trick, little tricks to give a grander illusion. Believable and realistic AI are related, but still separate things, and game devs tend to prefer the former. Honestly, so do I. Realistic AI, truly realistic AI, wouldn't be as much fun to fight against as AI that gives the impression of intelligence whilst still being beatable. In some games and styles, realism is the core gameplay. I don't want my enemies with health bars in ArmA for example, or for enemies in SWAT 4 to be thoroughly predictable. In the more mainstream games though, the AI has to be just smart enough but not too smart.