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Game AI is mostly pathfinding (which basically falls down to creating navigation meshes for levels), and very basic decision making skills, which is usually a w

• xg15 8y ago
  I'm curious about that. Keeping it dumb of course makes sense for adversarial uses - if the AI is you enemy. But I could imagine there are scenarios where the AI is on your side - e.g., as a support player, NPC or pet. Would a smarter approach be more useful in such a game?
  • nkrisc 8y ago
    Even if the AI is friendly being able to predict their behavior is still desirable. Nothing worse than friendly AI ruining your game because it went off and did something you couldn't anticipate.
    • c0nducktr 8y ago
      What if the friendly AI called out it's plan, and the player then could have an agree/disagree option with the proposed strategy? If done well, it could feel much more like you're playing with a human partner.
      • nkrisc 8y ago
        Then, sure, because it is now predictable. Alternatively, I don't think it would be an issue if the AI was good enough that it could do unpredictable things that were actually intelligent (which would pleasantly surprise the player) or if the unpredictability and occasional awfulness of the AI were somehow an intentional challenge of the game.
  • jolmg 8y ago
    If it's too smart on your side, wouldn't it do all the playing for you? For example, you enter a room full of enemies and your AI partner kills them all the second they come into view. What's the point of playing, then?
    • xg15 8y ago
      True - but that would require that would require that the AI partner is both overpowered (they can kill the whole room without risking to take damage) and completely ignores me. maybe an alternative appraoch could be to have an AI that tries to figure out what you're trying to do - and then help you with it. E.g., if the two of you have frequently witnessed a certain enemy launching an attack that can only be deflected by a particular shield spell, an AI healer could "learn" to cast that spell in advance when they see such an enemy.
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• dx87 8y ago
  That reminds me of a lesson developer's learned when making a stealth game, Splinter Cell. Originally, when you were spotted the enemies would just try to shoot you, but tester feedback said that players didn't like getting shot out of nowhere. The devs added audible cues that you'd been found, like the guard yelling "Hey you!" before they started shooting. It turns out realistic AI behaviors aren't necessarily fun AI behaviors in a video game.
  • heyyyouu 8y ago
    Thanks for sharing this. It's a great illustration of why playtesting (and testing in general) what we think will work is always a good idea.
  • blattimwind 8y ago
    Splinter Cell also has cooldowns in some/most levels (like most stealth games), which is of course an absurd notion. A guard on a military base wouldn't back out of "DEFCON1" after two minutes just because the invader didn't show herself for that long.
    • mcv 8y ago
      There's a cool isometric stealth game called Robin of Sherwood, where you can follow what the guards are doing. A guard might accidentally stumble upon someone you killed, be alarmed, look around, run off to warn their commander, then the commander organises a search for the culprit, with lots of guards explicitly looking for you everywhere. Eventually if they can't find you, the whole thing dies down and everybody resumes their original duties, assuming the dead body was just a fluke or something. Also, if they find someone you merely knocked unconscious, they assume they'd been sleeping on the job. If you tied them up, they free them, but I forgot if they search for you or if they just assume they got accidentally tied up somehow. Also, you'd think they might raise the alarm if they find less and less guards present at their assigned post.
  • izacus 8y ago
    Gaming is full of tricks - e.g. I liked how Bioshock developers said that they made enemies deliberately miss their first shot so the player has time to react. Or how many shooters lower incoming damage and increase outgoing damage as you come close to dying to create those "I survived with 1HP left!" moments.
• KineticLensman 8y ago
  You should also prioritise credible behaviour that will keep a gamer immersed. If you can achieve this with simple rules / tables etc that might be better than a full-blown AI.
• bryondowd 8y ago
  Depends on the game. The entire genre of strategy games could probably benefit from smarter AI. More so for 4X style games. Mostly, the current AIs act like players, but make terribly inefficient decisions that get 'balanced' at various difficulty levels by throwing more resources at them or other advantages. So the games vary between being absurdly easy, to being difficult simply because the AI cheats, and even then, it doesn't usually leverage its advantage well. As an alternative, people play against other players, but with long-running strategy games, this adds real life logistical problems. An AI that plays like a human, and can be adjusted for stronger or weaker play would be amazing for the 4X genre. Perhaps difficulty adjustments could even be reverse to giving the player 'cheats' or free resources on lower difficulties if that's easier than throttling the AI. Outside of those games, I'd say any game with competitive multiplayer could benefit from smart human-like AI. Some people play games for a challenge. The unpredictability of other humans is most of the fun, whereas playing against a typical game AI is just a matter of figuring out how it works, where it fails, and then taking advantage of that failure repeatedly. Considering the market for competitive online games, there's likely a similar market for competitive AI games. I suspect the real barrier that is that it's a lot cheaper and easier to sick players on one another than to make a challenging human-like AI.
  • scarejunba 8y ago
    TA:Spring had these AIs that would exploit shit in a terribly annoying way. Like, you had ballistic projectiles that would take a while to arrive at the target, and your units would fire them. Well, the enemies had them too, except the AI would exploit its superior micro by firing off the projectiles at maximum range and maximum inbound velocity and then immediately shifting outbound. You can't move your bloody units as fast as them so your units would fire at the place where they were 'going to be' within the range or at the place they were at the limit of the range. Utterly infuriating as a player. I know it doesn't have to be that way, and the path could be closer to strategic decision making, but it's a funny example of one of those AI decisions that wasn't constrained in one way.
    • PetahNZ 8y ago
      Which Spring AI was this? I don't remember any of them being any good. I made a Spring AI back in the day (it wasn't very good either).
• lainga 8y ago
  Do you think there is a class of players who don't want to feel clever for outsmarting a predictable AI?
  • Someone1234 8y ago
    All players want to win. The level of difficulty is equal to the level of accomplishment, but games have to be made for the average rather than the exceptional, so many better than average players won't be challenged by the difficulty. Nobody is going to invest the resources into a real AI just for the hardest difficulty modes. If it cannot be used on Easy/Normal, it simply isn't happening.
    • bryondowd 8y ago
      Considering how many successful games are released targeting a niche market, there's probably a pretty sizable niche market of 'better than average players' that some studio could take advantage of. Market size is only half the equation, the other half is the cost to develop the feature. As methods and technology improve, the cost to make a smart AI for a complex game system should decrease. As the cost decreases, you need less of the overall gaming market to make a return. Might just be a matter of time before somebody takes a gamble on a tough AI, has a huge success, and then everyone starts to emulate it.
      • trexmix 8y ago
        But smart AI isn't fun to play against. Take Chess- AI is smart to the point of domination against players. In a FPS setting you just have an aimbot. In a RTS game you would have an AI with passable macro and insane micro. I think the only real chance of a smart AI being fun is in a pure strategy game (I believe it's GalCiv 2 with the epic story about a backstabbing, scheming AI). Smart AI is easier to make than a mediocre, fun AI. Optimality is is a clear goal. Fun AI is less clear and requires a unique blend of technical and design expertise.
        • wst_ 8y ago
• blattimwind 8y ago
  There are actually various anecdotes about game developers playtesting "smart AI" where playtesters came back with very negative impressions, because e.g. a couple NPCs giving suppressive fire while another group flanks you quietly felt to players like the NPCs were cheating. I believe one of these anecdotes was about the AI in F.E.A.R. and their solution was to add very clear callouts to the NPCs whenever the NPC made a decision ("Flanking, cover me!"). I think FEAR also had the concept of a director AI which handed out "tickets" to NPCs for attacking the player; an NPC without a ticket couldn't attack the player, so this limited how many NPCs engaged simultaneously. I remember AI in Jagged Alliance 2 frequently flanking you and at first that was very frustrating; the stock (1999) JA2 AI is much better than every newbie to the game. You really had to think tactically and think about your moves and approach to be successful in that game. If you just go in "guns blazing" the AI will outmaneuver and outgun you. AI in that game was sometimes quite adept with grenades and such as well. Edit: Talk about FEAR AI, might/might not be related https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmOOrh5lq7o#t=1m44s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmOOrh5lq7o#t=1m44s
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  • muzani 8y ago
    Honestly the main reason I enjoyed XCOM (the new one) over X-Com (the old one) was that AI felt a lot smarter than me. I found it entertaining in how clever it was. You'd think you set up a clever perimeter and all and oops, got flanked by a little Sectoid hiding behind a post box.
• ddebernardy 8y ago
  Please... head over to Paradox Interactive and seek to join their team if you're bummed out to a point of thinking that. (And you're welcome to link to this comment in your application.) Their audience is basically desperate for a better AI that does better strategic and tactical thinking rather than pathfinding, weighted decision trees, and a couple of high level heuristics. Here's what I and I'd gather many others would want instead: for the AI to go through the dev game logs, and perhaps even end user game logs, and then learn from what humans are doing, so they behave more like them. And then re-inject that into the game so it's something of a challenge to play without needing to give the AI some serious bonuses while playing. As things stand the AI is so bad you can start as a purposely broken one province nation and still turn into a major power. [0] And if you're thinking "no, the AI will trash them and they won't find it fun," here's a thought: right now, the AI is so bad that the only way to have some fun is to give it insanely large bonuses. But much like in a game of Go, as a player I'd much rather get those boosts myself to overcome a much stronger AI opponent. The same holds for other 4X games, like Civ. Playing Chess or Go against a computer used to suck. It no longer does thanks to how much better AI got. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJhyZ-9ktpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJhyZ-9ktpo
  • mindvirus 8y ago
    I'm not much of a chess player, but one thing I've wondered is whether the games against Chess AIs are interesting for good players. Do they feel exciting as though you were playing against a similarly skilled human player? And can you distinguish between an AI and a similarly skilled player very easily?
    • ddebernardy 8y ago
      The thing with Chess (or Go) is that unless you've a club in your area or a skilled relative, you're playing alone against an AI or playing online. It's of course much more exciting to play against skilled human players. In particular your parents or your childhood friends while growing up. But unless you're living in some large city you might not find many other offline options after you start beating all of them. That leaves you with a choice between going "pro" to some degree or another, playing online against other people, and playing against an AI (online or not). I'm honestly at a loss to give you an unbiased view of which is most interesting, since I've seldom found the time to play Chess in the past decade or two. What I do know though is that no bot gives you good social interactions.
• muzani 8y ago
  Much of the time it's too predictable, to the point it's no longer a simulation. For example, something like Battle Brothers, where the AI tends to attack the least armored ones. You can put a group of poorly armored people on one side of the map and then put heavy damage ones on the other side. The right side draws the combat which gives the left side space to take out the dangerous targets. Humans would spot the tactic straight away. Setting up I exploitation tactics is not so fun for some people. A worse case scenario are the FIFA games. Every release has some untested exploit. In some, the defenders often push too high and you can score goals from halfway across the field easily. In some, the goalkeeper gets confused when passing the ball right in front of goal. It becomes less a football sim and more how to get formations that optimize exploits.