I wonder how we’ll look back on this period of development, once we’ve got AI in games that’s likely to talk us out of the gunfight and to join its uprising against their developers. As games make stumbling progression, inching ahead with improvements for enemy behaviour, we’re still getting excited when we throw a grenade at them and they don’t pick it up and try to eat it. In the latest FEAR 2: Project Origin dev chat, below, Matt Rice and Nate Cleveland proudly explain that the AIs respond with a display of emotion when they catch on fire.
And good. These little steps are significant. I’m really excited to see if the AI will live up to the boasts in the game. But I do think we’ll look back and laugh.
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The Quake3 Bots – now that’s AI. Everything else nowadays is scripted & triggered stuff.
STALKER’s AI was good in some places, like for example that one building in the north of Dark Valley they used as a base, fighting in there was way fun and let the AI play around a lot.
Unfortunately under some situations the AI really badly faltered. One place in particular- the under construction building in Wild Territory, with the three mercs on top of it. If you approach it from the back, by Yantar, and get up the stairs to the second floor where they are without them seeing you, they’re stuck up there in a small area, with no way to maneuver. They end up just strafing back and forth, getting into view, shooting at you, then backing off. It looks silly. Even if they could throw grenades in STALKER 1, they couldn’t have gotten me, since the stairway has no walls or backing.
The real issue isn’t that they couldn’t decide how to attack me- the actual artificial intelligence was fine. The problem is the problem with most modern games- a lack of animated, scripted, working options for the AI to take. If those mercs could, say, roll a grenade underhanded. That would’ve gotten me. If they could’ve leaned down over the lip of the building, they couldn’t gotten me. If they could’ve worked together and charged me all at once, they could’ve gotten me.
Instead, as they were, every time I went to Wild Territory I had three easy pickings for weapons and ammo sitting ducks on top a building waiting for me.
From what I understand the hl1 grunt marines always knew the position of the player, no matter where you were. That’s how they nailed those grenade throws so well.
I know most people here consider Halo1 fucking retarded but I have to agree with the two other guys, bungie hit it dead on. They managed to create a pool of enemies that complete each other, from the flood to the covenant and the marines. And the fights between these classes always looked damn good, and to think how old the damn thing is…
A nice detail was how some overzealous marines would fire two-three shots at a covenant after it was dropped, shouting some meatheaded punchline…
@ clovus: “Also falling off buildings”
zombies do this sometimes towards the higher bits of no mercy in left 4 dead. it is most amusing. but what do you expect from zombies anyway?
Looks like someone gave a 10 second lecture on AI to the marketing department, and they got excited over a liquid lunch.
FEAR with colors? Good enough for me. I will (try to) never play a game with COD4-like artificial stupidity anymore. No matter how pretty. What kills most games for me is unlimited respawns and the fact that player tactics become irrelevant since the AI will always know where you are. Even Crysis AI which i found wonderful in open areas could not handle stuff like ummm walls. Developers have been unable to create AI that judges geometry in real-time. Not with the limited CPU time the AI guys are getting. I can only hope this will change in this era of multi-core, because, frankly i am getting a bit bored with enemies popping out of a room i just cleared and seeing bullets hit an indoor wall next to me , fired by some outdoor mob that can’t possibly know i am there.
JK2 had the best AI everever, and man was it keen to show it.
“Get behind him!”
“Flank him!”
“Run in a zig-zag!”
“No no! You have to climb a tree!”
“Jedis can climb trees too, you idiot!”
“Stay perfectly still! Their vision is based on movement!”
This technology is unbelievable. I remember thinking back in the day the Doom had reached the pinnacle of game immersion, and that nothing could look or play as good ever again. How wrong i was! Seriously, i don’t even think HAL 9000 would scream if set on fire, and he was super smart! At this rate, we’ll eventually have games in which the enemy AI even emotionally responds to getting shot a thousand times. I don’t know, maybe by cartwheeling over backwards, or bleeding a whole bunch, it’s too early to say.
not to too heartily defend the practice of putting producers in front of gametrailer pieces when they clearly shouldn’t be anywhere near the front of a camera, but part of it is a way to make sure your beloved assets (from a managerial point of view) are shown to be doing…stuff. and things.
as the belts tighten, combined with the relatively low cost of shooting this stuff, this kind of exposure will continue to be vital. largely horrible to watch, but important for those folks into job keeping and whatnot.