5 ms·

Truly intelligent enemies could change the face of gaming

28 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

terminado 9y ago
...or more to the point, intelligent enemies unbound by human reaction time, common grade school intellect, and the requisite hand-eye-coordination of rival human opponents in multiplayer games.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zkms 9y ago
  > unbound by human reaction time > requisite hand-eye-coordination of rival human opponents it's totally possible to force an AI enemy to "play" through a harness that simulates human reaction time, limits in human visual processing (a human can't perfectly focus on all the screen at once -- check out eye-tracking data taken on people who are playing an FPS!), and the latency/error that happens when a human uses a mouse to aim in a game. The whole point of AI enemies isn't to expose them to all the game's state and let them input commands with zero latency -- that's not an AI opponent, that's just a cheat engine. It's only fun if the AI has no more information from the game than a human player would have and can control the game with no better control authority than a human can.
  - FooHentai 9y ago
    Yup, this is key to keeping things fun. Like the term 'harness' as well, that illustrates it well.
  - CM30 9y ago
    Yeah, this. We've already got opponents unbound by human reaction and with abilities far better than normal humans. They're basically a mainstay of the fighting game genre: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PerfectPlayAI http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PerfectPlayAI And they're not that fun to fight, because they're too 'good'.
msoad 9y ago
If you play FIFA you'll know how dumb computer is. Sure it's faster but it doesn't do any "novel" tricks and it becomes super predictable after you play against it enough times. I'm looking forward to deep learning based FIFA opponents
- jacobwilliamroy 9y ago
  There is a team at Carnegie Mellon who build little toaster-sized automatons that play soccer. Their end goal is for the AI to eventually be good enough to win the world cup. Their site: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robosoccer/small/#Overview http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robosoccer/small/#Overview
codeulike 9y ago
If you believe in the philosophical position known as Strong AI, then at some point in the perhaps quite distant future, when the AI gets good enough, the use of advanced AIs in computer games will become a civil rights issue. That is, we might need to have limits on how accurately NPCs can be simulated. Because at some point the simulations will be indistinguishable from reality including by the simulations themselves.
- problems 9y ago
  Bits are bits, regardless of how "advanced" they are, they're still bits. "Killing" them (if you can call it that) is fine. If your life depends on someone else's hardware, their rights trump yours. Of course, no sane developer would ever use something at that level for a game, it'd just be emulating way too much useless stuff. Clever game bots are much simpler than that - simply picking a less than "optimal" path sometimes and giving them the ability to cheat in some ways makes things a lot more interesting.
  - codeulike 9y ago
    OK, lets assume that its possible to simulate a human mind well enough that the difference is indistinguishable (this is a very familiar idea in a lot of sci-fi, uploading consciousness and all that sort of thing). If you accept that assumption, things very quickly get complicated. Would it be OK to kill a virtual copy of a person? If so, on what basis? That people running in biological brains are somehow more real than digital ones? Why? How do you know you're not running in a simulation right now, etc etc.
    - problems 9y ago
      It's always okay to kill a virtual copy of any person on the basis that they're not real as they can simply be duplicated and manipulated in the same way as any other data or software on a machine - a machine which I own. Because I own the machine which houses them, if I can create them, copy them, etc, I can decide to kill them at my will. > How do you know you're not running in a simulation right now, etc etc. Ultimately, I don't care. If I'm running on someone's console and they can hit ctrl+c on me, then they can do that, there's nothing morally wrong with them doing that because they own me at a much deeper level, I run on their hardware. In the same way that I'm okay with abortion, I'm okay with this - your dependence on someone or something else is a defining factor of your rights as an individual. If you depend on a machine that someone else is free to control, their rights trump yours.
CM30 9y ago
Not just enemies either. Strong AI with standard NPCs could make for some interesting game experiences too. Like say, virtual villagers or townspeople who have their own lives seperate from the player and their actions and react in realistic ways in regards to events going on around them. We can already see elements of that in games now (Zelda Breath of the Wild puts a lot of thought into giving NPCs realistic behaviours for damn near any possible interaction), but it could get a lot better in the future. As for enemies, there are definitely ways intelligent enemy AI could change games there. However, you have to be careful about one thing when implementing these systems and randomness and what not. Games generally have to be enjoyable to the player, and making your enemies too realistic can hinder that. They draw on this a bit in the article: > If you're playing a game and the AI's always completely unpredictable, it just turns into a frustrating experience for the player because they can't learn a good strategy to actually succeed at the game But it goes further than that. A smart enemy with a good battle strategy might be overly defensive, and that itself might not be all too fun for the person fighting against them. Look at the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword for example. The motion controlled combat was a big part of the game's setup, but the enemies countering and being careful to block your attacks and what not may have actually made the fighting less exciting for the player. They came across as rather unaggressive as a result. It's sometimes more exciting to have your basic enemies act like Leeroy Jenkins esque cannon fodder. Either way, it's an interesting area to think about.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tonmoy 9y ago
  I'm looking forward to the day games like Civilization will have such a good AI that they wouldn't need to buff the AI with multipliers to make the game challenging
- smhost 9y ago
  > Games generally have to be enjoyable to the player, and making your enemies too realistic can hinder that. If you're talking about inducing gambling addiction in the player, it shouldn't matter whether the enemies are too realistic or not. It has to do with rewarding the player in such a way that the player's brain believes that there is a pattern to the rewards when there really isn't. You should be able to do that with realistic AI.
keithnz 9y ago
future of violence is in MultiPlayer games, something about virtually killing real people that's quite popular. from the tame'ish Dota2, to war games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, through to open survival games like Rust which really demonstrate how brutal people can be :)
joosters 9y ago
For me, the interesting problem, as mentioned in the article, is that developers still need to make the AI opponents suck. We want FPS games where the enemies 'feel' real, but we can't make them too clever. Most shooter games put you in control of a lone fighter battling against countless foes. If the enemies were clever, then you'd have absolutely no chance of surviving! You could improve the AI so that your opponents do smarter things (flanking you, working as a team, etc) and less dumb things (repeatedly popping up out of cover, for instance), but then the game would be immensely harder. To balance that out, you'd have to handicap the enemies in other ways, like make them even worse at aiming, or giving them weaker weapons, but that might make the game less fun. Perhaps improved AI may lead to different gaming styles? Fewer 'you vs an entire army' scenarios, instead more nuanced challenges with lower numbers of bad guys...
- barrkel 9y ago
  Generally the only way I enjoy playing FPS games is using a stealth approach, or failing that, a plan involving mines, distractions, sniping, etc. If an enemy spots me and starts attacking, it's a bit of a failure. If I get hit, it's a total failure. Think base takeovers in the more recent Far Cry series games. All time favourite was the Thief series; Dishonoured didn't quite do it for me. Games that require or force a Rambo situation with enemies on all sides are just ridiculous. I like to observe, plan and execute, in that order. Randomness can't be controlled; you're just lucky, or your enemy has been hobbled and it's not a fair fight, otherwise.
  - joosters 9y ago
    Me too - thief was a fantastic game and stealth is an entertaining way to play. But even here, the AI is dumb and deliberately so. If the guards in Far Cry were more realistic, they'd spot you far more easily, or would notice things like half their buddies have gone missing, perhaps they should investigate?
  - nine_k 9y ago
    Deus Ex (released 18 years ago) was great in this regard. You could try to fight an army (well, a regiment) in open combat and have a chance to survive. You could build a tank out of yourself for that. Or you could stealth your way through without killing anyone, or even being seen by anyone, being physically feeble but fast and good at hacking things. The game did not force you to use any particular approach; it just put you into a situation to tackle. Regarding shooting. the game had the best difficulty level menu I've ever seen: * Easy * Medium * Hard * Realistic
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

28 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

...or more to the point, intelligent enemies unbound by human reaction time, common grade school intellect, and the requisite hand-eye-coordination of rival human opponents in multiplayer games.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zkms 9y ago
> unbound by human reaction time > requisite hand-eye-coordination of rival human opponents it's totally possible to force an AI enemy to "play" through a harness that simulates human reaction time, limits in human visual processing (a human can't perfectly focus on all the screen at once -- check out eye-tracking data taken on people who are playing an FPS!), and the latency/error that happens when a human uses a mouse to aim in a game. The whole point of AI enemies isn't to expose them to all the game's state and let them input commands with zero latency -- that's not an AI opponent, that's just a cheat engine. It's only fun if the AI has no more information from the game than a human player would have and can control the game with no better control authority than a human can.
- FooHentai 9y ago
  Yup, this is key to keeping things fun. Like the term 'harness' as well, that illustrates it well.
- CM30 9y ago
  Yeah, this. We've already got opponents unbound by human reaction and with abilities far better than normal humans. They're basically a mainstay of the fighting game genre: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PerfectPlayAI http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PerfectPlayAI And they're not that fun to fight, because they're too 'good'.

msoad 9y ago

If you play FIFA you'll know how dumb computer is. Sure it's faster but it doesn't do any "novel" tricks and it becomes super predictable after you play against it enough times. I'm looking forward to deep learning based FIFA opponents

jacobwilliamroy 9y ago
There is a team at Carnegie Mellon who build little toaster-sized automatons that play soccer. Their end goal is for the AI to eventually be good enough to win the world cup. Their site: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robosoccer/small/#Overview http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robosoccer/small/#Overview

codeulike 9y ago

If you believe in the philosophical position known as Strong AI, then at some point in the perhaps quite distant future, when the AI gets good enough, the use of advanced AIs in computer games will become a civil rights issue. That is, we might need to have limits on how accurately NPCs can be simulated. Because at some point the simulations will be indistinguishable from reality including by the simulations themselves.

problems 9y ago
Bits are bits, regardless of how "advanced" they are, they're still bits. "Killing" them (if you can call it that) is fine. If your life depends on someone else's hardware, their rights trump yours. Of course, no sane developer would ever use something at that level for a game, it'd just be emulating way too much useless stuff. Clever game bots are much simpler than that - simply picking a less than "optimal" path sometimes and giving them the ability to cheat in some ways makes things a lot more interesting.
- codeulike 9y ago
  OK, lets assume that its possible to simulate a human mind well enough that the difference is indistinguishable (this is a very familiar idea in a lot of sci-fi, uploading consciousness and all that sort of thing). If you accept that assumption, things very quickly get complicated. Would it be OK to kill a virtual copy of a person? If so, on what basis? That people running in biological brains are somehow more real than digital ones? Why? How do you know you're not running in a simulation right now, etc etc.
  - problems 9y ago
    It's always okay to kill a virtual copy of any person on the basis that they're not real as they can simply be duplicated and manipulated in the same way as any other data or software on a machine - a machine which I own. Because I own the machine which houses them, if I can create them, copy them, etc, I can decide to kill them at my will. > How do you know you're not running in a simulation right now, etc etc. Ultimately, I don't care. If I'm running on someone's console and they can hit ctrl+c on me, then they can do that, there's nothing morally wrong with them doing that because they own me at a much deeper level, I run on their hardware. In the same way that I'm okay with abortion, I'm okay with this - your dependence on someone or something else is a defining factor of your rights as an individual. If you depend on a machine that someone else is free to control, their rights trump yours.

CM30 9y ago

Not just enemies either. Strong AI with standard NPCs could make for some interesting game experiences too. Like say, virtual villagers or townspeople who have their own lives seperate from the player and their actions and react in realistic ways in regards to events going on around them. We can already see elements of that in games now (Zelda Breath of the Wild puts a lot of thought into giving NPCs realistic behaviours for damn near any possible interaction), but it could get a lot better in the future. As for enemies, there are definitely ways intelligent enemy AI could change games there. However, you have to be careful about one thing when implementing these systems and randomness and what not. Games generally have to be enjoyable to the player, and making your enemies too realistic can hinder that. They draw on this a bit in the article: > If you're playing a game and the AI's always completely unpredictable, it just turns into a frustrating experience for the player because they can't learn a good strategy to actually succeed at the game But it goes further than that. A smart enemy with a good battle strategy might be overly defensive, and that itself might not be all too fun for the person fighting against them. Look at the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword for example. The motion controlled combat was a big part of the game's setup, but the enemies countering and being careful to block your attacks and what not may have actually made the fighting less exciting for the player. They came across as rather unaggressive as a result. It's sometimes more exciting to have your basic enemies act like Leeroy Jenkins esque cannon fodder. Either way, it's an interesting area to think about.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tonmoy 9y ago
I'm looking forward to the day games like Civilization will have such a good AI that they wouldn't need to buff the AI with multipliers to make the game challenging
smhost 9y ago
> Games generally have to be enjoyable to the player, and making your enemies too realistic can hinder that. If you're talking about inducing gambling addiction in the player, it shouldn't matter whether the enemies are too realistic or not. It has to do with rewarding the player in such a way that the player's brain believes that there is a pattern to the rewards when there really isn't. You should be able to do that with realistic AI.

keithnz 9y ago

future of violence is in MultiPlayer games, something about virtually killing real people that's quite popular. from the tame'ish Dota2, to war games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, through to open survival games like Rust which really demonstrate how brutal people can be :)

joosters 9y ago

For me, the interesting problem, as mentioned in the article, is that developers still need to make the AI opponents suck. We want FPS games where the enemies 'feel' real, but we can't make them too clever. Most shooter games put you in control of a lone fighter battling against countless foes. If the enemies were clever, then you'd have absolutely no chance of surviving! You could improve the AI so that your opponents do smarter things (flanking you, working as a team, etc) and less dumb things (repeatedly popping up out of cover, for instance), but then the game would be immensely harder. To balance that out, you'd have to handicap the enemies in other ways, like make them even worse at aiming, or giving them weaker weapons, but that might make the game less fun. Perhaps improved AI may lead to different gaming styles? Fewer 'you vs an entire army' scenarios, instead more nuanced challenges with lower numbers of bad guys...

barrkel 9y ago
Generally the only way I enjoy playing FPS games is using a stealth approach, or failing that, a plan involving mines, distractions, sniping, etc. If an enemy spots me and starts attacking, it's a bit of a failure. If I get hit, it's a total failure. Think base takeovers in the more recent Far Cry series games. All time favourite was the Thief series; Dishonoured didn't quite do it for me. Games that require or force a Rambo situation with enemies on all sides are just ridiculous. I like to observe, plan and execute, in that order. Randomness can't be controlled; you're just lucky, or your enemy has been hobbled and it's not a fair fight, otherwise.
- joosters 9y ago
  Me too - thief was a fantastic game and stealth is an entertaining way to play. But even here, the AI is dumb and deliberately so. If the guards in Far Cry were more realistic, they'd spot you far more easily, or would notice things like half their buddies have gone missing, perhaps they should investigate?
- nine_k 9y ago
  Deus Ex (released 18 years ago) was great in this regard. You could try to fight an army (well, a regiment) in open combat and have a chance to survive. You could build a tank out of yourself for that. Or you could stealth your way through without killing anyone, or even being seen by anyone, being physically feeble but fast and good at hacking things. The game did not force you to use any particular approach; it just put you into a situation to tackle. Regarding shooting. the game had the best difficulty level menu I've ever seen: * Easy * Medium * Hard * Realistic

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]