Are Game AI's getting worse? Options

[Wounded Ronin]

That's not AI, that's just a random number generator. Roll 1d10. 1-5, NPC cowers ineffectually, retaining just enough self-possession to look for a hiding place. 6-8, NPC flees. 9, NPC goes berserk, attacking without regard for personal safety. 10, NPC is combat-trained and attacks accordingly, using terrain to own advantage, etc. Objective achieved.

The AI would be for implementing each of those behaviors convincingly, I guess.

[Tanegar]

Each of those behaviors already has been implemented convincingly. It's just a matter of cribbing from somebody else's work.

[Wounded Ronin]

I thought the whole point of this thread was that they hadn't.

[Warlordtheft]

In the GTA IV example, there is not an AI making a decision as to how to beat the player. Rather the AI is following a script, with inherent probabilities.

I'll us GTA IV as the example: You pull out your gun in the wrong neighborhood. 1/2 the people are armed the other half (unarmed) are scripted to run. Do the Armed persons just sit there and shoot at you regardless of if they have cover? For easy level yes, for hard no they are scripted to move then fire from cover. Really here we are talking about the AI following a IF condition X is present then I take action Y.


This is not the issue at hand, rather than does the AI have limits in resources, if no then it really can just "cheat" to win the scenario by sending wave after wave of mooks. Otherwise, does it use some mooks to pin the player behind his car? While the remaining try to flank. Do they attack piecmeal, or all at once depending on the situation?

My original question, and many others seem to think as well AI development has kind of been poor compared to the development of graphics. And in many cases sequal have worse AI's than their predecessors.

[Wounded Ronin]

Thought about it a little bit. If SWAT 2 were re done with an emphasis on multiple high quality AIs it would be a hell of a game.

[Blade]

It would also need an interface where you can actually understand what's going on and issue orders to your unit.

[hyzmarca]

I need to see if the John Mullins interviews for Soldier of Fortune 2 are still online or not. Basically Mullins is a Vietnam vet who was the realism consultant for SoF2. In an interview someone asked him if improved realism re AI would make games harder in the future, and Mullins said something like, "I don't see why that would make games harder, because killing people is the easiest thing in the world."

Soldier of Forture 2 did have some issues with realism, mostly in the form of the teleporting keycard squads. You go through a cargo ship killing everyone you can find, which is more crew members than the ship could possibly support, even if they slept three to a bed, and then you flip a switch and there are suddenly dozens more hostile crew members for no apparent reason. Ships like that really aren't designed to support more than thirty or so crew members. But the game just keeps spawning more and more of them for you to kill.

So yes, more realism would have made it significantly easier. But it isn't just enemy AI, it's organizational composition.
Video game hostile organizations tend to have absurd numbers of faceless mooks thanks to unrealistic spawing. You end up with smalltime street gangs who apparently outnumber the US Army and other things of that nature. Terrorist cells that should have five or ten people tops somehow throw hundreds of cannon fodder soldiers at you, all armed with impossible-to-obtain fully automatic weapons. In a worse case scenario it doesn't matter how many millions of people you kill, even though the game supposedly takes place in the real world.

[Wounded Ronin]

Soldier of Forture 2 did have some issues with realism, mostly in the form of the teleporting keycard squads. You go through a cargo ship killing everyone you can find, which is more crew members than the ship could possibly support, even if they slept three to a bed, and then you flip a switch and there are suddenly dozens more hostile crew members for no apparent reason. Ships like that really aren't designed to support more than thirty or so crew members. But the game just keeps spawning more and more of them for you to kill.

So yes, more realism would have made it significantly easier. But it isn't just enemy AI, it's organizational composition.
Video game hostile organizations tend to have absurd numbers of faceless mooks thanks to unrealistic spawing. You end up with smalltime street gangs who apparently outnumber the US Army and other things of that nature. Terrorist cells that should have five or ten people tops somehow throw hundreds of cannon fodder soldiers at you, all armed with impossible-to-obtain fully automatic weapons. In a worse case scenario it doesn't matter how many millions of people you kill, even though the game supposedly takes place in the real world.

This is the best post I've read in a while.

It makes me think there could be potential in a first person adventure type game in a realistic setting which supports reasonably good combat gameplay, but at the same time doesn't focus exclusively on it, so that you could just make an interesting immersive story about, say, a regular guy who stumbles on a terror cell in his city. Instead of mooks, each bad guy would be an actual character.

[Critias]

People playing a first person shooter like to first person shoot. That requires targets. They like to feel awesome and roflstomp the game, and that requires targets that don't murder-face the player on default difficulty. The end result is wave after wave of faceless mook. The more action-movie FPS games get, the better they seem to market (compare the newer Rainbow Six games to the originals), so ultimately it's our fault. The lack of realism is just gamers getting what gamers voted for (with their wallets).

[Bigity]

Well you don't see any new Rainbow Six games in my damn collection, that's for sure.

I need to find and post my screenshot of Raven Shield end mission screen where I completed it after being hit 32 times (but to be fair, it was mostly shotguns going through doors or near misses).

[X-Kalibur]

Well you don't see any new Rainbow Six games in my damn collection, that's for sure.

I need to find and post my screenshot of Raven Shield end mission screen where I completed it after being hit 32 times (but to be fair, it was mostly shotguns going through doors or near misses).

Gods I miss Raven Shield again, I want to play it when I get home. My roommate and I would do co-op elite tango hunts (and hostage rescue as well) with just the two of us pretty effectively. It was a lot harder if you didn't abuse smoke. I can't even remember how many people got pissed at us during hostage rescues when we'd go in with our 12ga shotguns and raise hell, but thanks to somewhat shoddy AI, as long as there was a door in the way of my loud gunshot, they wouldn't shoot the hostage. (always enjoyed the FN-FAL with a silencer for long range shots as well as picking off tangos through doors)

That said, on elite, the AI cheats and knows where you are most of the time. Ghost cam sometime and watch them start tracing people behind walls as they walk up to doorways.

[hyzmarca]

People playing a first person shooter like to first person shoot. That requires targets. They like to feel awesome and roflstomp the game, and that requires targets that don't murder-face the player on default difficulty. The end result is wave after wave of faceless mook. The more action-movie FPS games get, the better they seem to market (compare the newer Rainbow Six games to the originals), so ultimately it's our fault. The lack of realism is just gamers getting what gamers voted for (with their wallets).

While I do tend to suffer from mook fatigue when mook waves are overused, I don't object to the concept in its entirely. It certainly has its place in a certain style of game. The problem is that it can get totally ridiculous when overused, especially in supposedly realistic games. This is especially true when combined with poor level design and unrealistic spawning.

[Critias]

While I do tend to suffer from mook fatigue when mook waves are overused, I don't object to the concept in its entirely. It certainly has its place in a certain style of game. The problem is that it can get totally ridiculous when overused, especially in supposedly realistic games. This is especially true when combined with poor level design and unrealistic spawning.

Oh, yeah. I'm right there with ya, trust me, just saying it's kind of our own fault (as gamers, we get what we pay for). I remember when I was first playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare I kept thinking "Man, there's an awful lot of these terrorist fellas, huh?" There are certainly times it gets awful silly.

[Wounded Ronin]

My favorite FPS with mooks remains Damage Incorporated by Richard Rouse. Since you were clearing survivalist compounds, the kind of mass slaughter portrayed in the game wasn't too jarring in terms of the numbers. And in the ending the last boss comments how a few hundred slaughtered aren't enough for you.

[Warlordtheft]

Necto verratas nictu....?
No.
Nepto verratas nictu?
Close enough.


Just started my 3rd game of Civ 5. I'm not sure of it but I think they forgot the program the AI to do Amphibious assaults. There has yet to be one....I take that back, there was on launched against an allied City state.

But of note in the game design, difficulty is not so much the improvement of the AI, but bonuses given to the AI

[X-Kalibur]

Necto verratas nictu....?
No.
Nepto verratas nictu?
Close enough.


Just started my 3rd game of Civ 5. I'm not sure of it but I think they forgot the program the AI to do Amphibious assaults. There has yet to be one....I take that back, there was on launched against an allied City state.

But of note in the game design, difficulty is not so much the improvement of the AI, but bonuses given to the AI

Klaatu... Verada... Nic*coughcough*. Okay, I said the words!

(side note - the words Klaatu Verada Nicto are from "The Day the Earth Stood Still (original) as the words that would stop Gort.)

[The Wrestling Tr...]

My guess is that a lot of publishers yell at the game designers:

"MORE EXPLOSIONS!! YEESSSSS BLOW UP THAT BUILDING, OH AND THAT OLD LADY, NOW BLOW EVERYTHING UP !!" followed by "NooOOooOOooo, Our players don't need any challenge! We want the game to be easy as pie so that we can sell it to total noobs and people never played any video game before"

.... well that's how I imagine a board meeting between a dev studio and the publishers (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[CanRay]

Which is why I'm looking forward to what DoubleFine is going to put out next! No Publishers!!!

[Adarael]

Neither of these things are true. At least not mostly. I don't doubt SOME publisher has yelled that at SOME studio, but that's not how it usually goes. Mostly it's the publisher yelling, "What do you mean you're behind schedule? What do we have to cut to get you to the release date on time?" Publishers have some say in how explosive a game is, but it's mostly in the pitch phase. If you say, "I'm gonna make a slow-paced, thoughtful adventure game about brewing coffee," they won't step in and demand more explosions - they just won't give you any money to begin with.

And Doublefine does have a publisher. Self-publishing is still publishing - look at the Dead Kennedys. It means your success or failure rides only on yourself.

[CanRay]

OK, how about advertizing? I can think of two excellent games that were killed by ads: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (Which was billed as a WESTERN!), and Brutal Legend.

[Adarael]

What part of advertising? In-game, or like... magazine ads?

[CanRay]

What part of advertising? In-game, or like... magazine ads?

Magazine.

In-Game Advertizing, the worst I've seen was Alan Wake. Luckily it didn't detract from the game.

[Adarael]

Magazines and magazine ads are, as far as I know, always terrible. But I don't know how Brutal Legend was killed by advertising. All the ads I saw were pretty normal.

[Tanegar]

I think he's referring to the fact that Brütal Legend was marketed as a third-person action game, when in fact it's closer to being an RTS.

[X-Kalibur]

I think he's referring to the fact that Brütal Legend was marketed as a third-person action game, when in fact it's closer to being shitty an RTS.

Fixed that.