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I'm always saddened that more works doesn't go into making fun and original game AIs. Most AAA games that are released these days have utterly predictable AI, m

by simias 7y ago

I'm always saddened that more works doesn't go into making fun and original game AIs. Most AAA games that are released these days have utterly predictable AI, modern shooters don't seem a lot more evolved that Quake 1. It's too bad because games like F.E.A.R. have shown that even simple AI heuristics can lead to very interesting emergent behavior. TFA demonstrates that very simple AI tweaks can make the enemies feel more organic and realistic. I suppose that some of the problem is that good IA doesn't make for nice trailers and ads (since you can just script those to do whatever you want anyway).

lainga 7y ago
I think most companies have given up on good AI (except maybe id) - all the money's in PvP. Single player campaigns are an afterthought.
- colmvp 7y ago
  I think it's more cost efficient for companies to give the CPUs some absurd advantage (crazy amount of HP, powerful attacks) and call it day. Problem with AI is even if you spend a lot of time trying to get it right, it can make choices that are confusing to us humans and illicit ridicule from the player base.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    Well, the choice to make AI hordes braindead zombies who hust mindlessly storm you, is confusing to me as a player, too, if the enemie are supposed to be not zombies, but smart special forces.
    - rochak 7y ago
      Titanfall is a pretty good example of how to design good AI. Same goes for Age of Empires, I would say. XCOM, on the other hand, just increases the HP and count of enemies, which is a bad experience.
      - crummy 7y ago
        Is that a bad experience though? If I want an easy time, I'd rather fight fewer smart enemies than just dumber enemies.
        1tCKV3QfIo 7y ago
        Why are do you insist on such an unimaginative gameplay experience?
  - rochak 7y ago
    Isn't that also due to the reason that consoles, once sold, last for close to 10 years and the game developers have to design their games for sub par hardware. Since graphics sell games more, they spend most of their available computation on graphics and other areas rather than coming up with intelligent AI which takes a lot of computation as well. This is probably the reason why we don't have many big single player games.
    - Retric 7y ago
      That’s not the issue as 20 year old hardware can run decent AI for modest numbers of enemies. The reality is most players simply want stupid AI and more importantly exploitable AI.
  - adanto6840 7y ago
    Spot-on. In our game the NPC AI is ... exactly what I wanted it to be, smart and extremely "opportunistic". And the gameplay is generally such that your goal is to build structures/layout the buildings in a way that the AI will make the AI most likely to reach their goals. To me, that's a huge part of our game -- catering to the NPCs, specifically figuring out "why are they missing X? Oh, because they're walking Z distance to the nearest bathroom!". I think the AI is fantastic but, when functioning perfectly as [we would have] expected, we still get complaints about why the 'dumb AI' will do X or Y. Part of that is defintiely a UI/UX issue on our part -- but another part is that players generally aren't used to it and they expect much more "robotic" or obvious/easy behaviors from agents/NPCs. Emergent & opportunistic behaviors are awesome (IMO at least), but a lesson we learned is that they may not always provide players with the desired or expected gameplay experience. It'll of course always be game-specific, but it's something we will keep in mind & likely simplify further in our next game.
hutzlibu 7y ago
Yes, even a simple implementation of selfpreservation would make KI so much more realistic. Meaning, if the enemy has low health, he is likely to run away. Or if they see all their allies die, etc. This is really not so hard to implement, simple games could do this for ages. Or at least basic tactics, I think in Far Cry 1 enemies did not run away, but were smart enough to sneak and circle around you, later in Crysis or the other Far Cry titles, they were just cannon fooder. Makes everthing more hollywood kaboom
- mntmoss 7y ago
  It's a fine line. There are plenty of stories of games that dumbed down their AI because it started doing inscrutable things when fully unleashed - and simulating full sense perception for something like a soldier in a shooter game is very computationally expensive, so "smart" opponents tend to feel like cheaters since they are thinking in terms of the underlying representations instead of behaving or reacting in a believable way. A lot of making the experience of a game is in managing perception and belief - in making the player agree that the game is doing "what I expected" - and when a feeling of realism is aimed for, the amount of falsified behavior needed to get that result goes up dramatically. The games where belief is easy to achieve are mostly stuff where the ruleset is abstracted, empirically tested and legible to all - board games, physics games, puzzle games, etc. Things where the decision making itself is the intelligence. In contrast making soldiers that are satisfying opponents requires a blend of assets: carefully managing their positioning, animation states and voice callouts so that their decision making is something that players can identify, respond to and overcome.
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    "and simulating full sense perception for something like a soldier in a shooter game is very computationally expensive, so "smart" opponents tend to feel like cheaters since they are thinking in terms of the underlying representations instead of behaving or reacting in a believable way." I am not saying it is easy. But today, we got some more cpu power to throw at the problem. And even if you simplify a lot, you would still get better results, than plain cheating, which breaks immersion for me too, when they all storm my position, they could not know exactly. "In contrast making soldiers that are satisfying opponents requires a blend of assets: carefully managing their positioning, animation states and voice callouts" And here is the crux: there are tons of ressources thrown at the animation states and voice callouts, which is even more frustrating, when their behavior is as dumb as allways. And not everything is expensive to simulate: in allmost every game with stealth elements for example: you can kill some enemies and the others are looking for you for some time - and then they go back to their default state with "ah, it must have been nothing", even though they might have been already wounded by you and witnessed comrades fallen. Here you would not need more cpu power, but simply a third state: where they can still give up the search, but remain on guard. (And tend to their wounds, etc. )
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
scollet 7y ago
Support indie developers!
qqii 7y ago
It really depends on what the game is trying to achieve. I recall reading an article on smarter ai on stealth games, which unfortunately lead to an unfun experience. As a player I don't want to feel the AI is "cheating". As an example the alien game released a few years back had both interesting yet an AI that didn't feel like cheating. In this context an AI that does intersting things is accepted since the goal is to strike fear, whereas with a modern shooter most enemies are made to bring some challenge but eventually be killed.

by simias 7y ago

lainga 7y ago

I think most companies have given up on good AI (except maybe id) - all the money's in PvP. Single player campaigns are an afterthought.

colmvp 7y ago
I think it's more cost efficient for companies to give the CPUs some absurd advantage (crazy amount of HP, powerful attacks) and call it day. Problem with AI is even if you spend a lot of time trying to get it right, it can make choices that are confusing to us humans and illicit ridicule from the player base.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  Well, the choice to make AI hordes braindead zombies who hust mindlessly storm you, is confusing to me as a player, too, if the enemie are supposed to be not zombies, but smart special forces.
  - rochak 7y ago
    Titanfall is a pretty good example of how to design good AI. Same goes for Age of Empires, I would say. XCOM, on the other hand, just increases the HP and count of enemies, which is a bad experience.
    - crummy 7y ago
      Is that a bad experience though? If I want an easy time, I'd rather fight fewer smart enemies than just dumber enemies.
      - 1tCKV3QfIo 7y ago
        Why are do you insist on such an unimaginative gameplay experience?
- rochak 7y ago
  Isn't that also due to the reason that consoles, once sold, last for close to 10 years and the game developers have to design their games for sub par hardware. Since graphics sell games more, they spend most of their available computation on graphics and other areas rather than coming up with intelligent AI which takes a lot of computation as well. This is probably the reason why we don't have many big single player games.
  - Retric 7y ago
    That’s not the issue as 20 year old hardware can run decent AI for modest numbers of enemies. The reality is most players simply want stupid AI and more importantly exploitable AI.
- adanto6840 7y ago
  Spot-on. In our game the NPC AI is ... exactly what I wanted it to be, smart and extremely "opportunistic". And the gameplay is generally such that your goal is to build structures/layout the buildings in a way that the AI will make the AI most likely to reach their goals. To me, that's a huge part of our game -- catering to the NPCs, specifically figuring out "why are they missing X? Oh, because they're walking Z distance to the nearest bathroom!". I think the AI is fantastic but, when functioning perfectly as [we would have] expected, we still get complaints about why the 'dumb AI' will do X or Y. Part of that is defintiely a UI/UX issue on our part -- but another part is that players generally aren't used to it and they expect much more "robotic" or obvious/easy behaviors from agents/NPCs. Emergent & opportunistic behaviors are awesome (IMO at least), but a lesson we learned is that they may not always provide players with the desired or expected gameplay experience. It'll of course always be game-specific, but it's something we will keep in mind & likely simplify further in our next game.

hutzlibu 7y ago

Yes, even a simple implementation of selfpreservation would make KI so much more realistic. Meaning, if the enemy has low health, he is likely to run away. Or if they see all their allies die, etc. This is really not so hard to implement, simple games could do this for ages. Or at least basic tactics, I think in Far Cry 1 enemies did not run away, but were smart enough to sneak and circle around you, later in Crysis or the other Far Cry titles, they were just cannon fooder. Makes everthing more hollywood kaboom

mntmoss 7y ago
It's a fine line. There are plenty of stories of games that dumbed down their AI because it started doing inscrutable things when fully unleashed - and simulating full sense perception for something like a soldier in a shooter game is very computationally expensive, so "smart" opponents tend to feel like cheaters since they are thinking in terms of the underlying representations instead of behaving or reacting in a believable way. A lot of making the experience of a game is in managing perception and belief - in making the player agree that the game is doing "what I expected" - and when a feeling of realism is aimed for, the amount of falsified behavior needed to get that result goes up dramatically. The games where belief is easy to achieve are mostly stuff where the ruleset is abstracted, empirically tested and legible to all - board games, physics games, puzzle games, etc. Things where the decision making itself is the intelligence. In contrast making soldiers that are satisfying opponents requires a blend of assets: carefully managing their positioning, animation states and voice callouts so that their decision making is something that players can identify, respond to and overcome.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  "and simulating full sense perception for something like a soldier in a shooter game is very computationally expensive, so "smart" opponents tend to feel like cheaters since they are thinking in terms of the underlying representations instead of behaving or reacting in a believable way." I am not saying it is easy. But today, we got some more cpu power to throw at the problem. And even if you simplify a lot, you would still get better results, than plain cheating, which breaks immersion for me too, when they all storm my position, they could not know exactly. "In contrast making soldiers that are satisfying opponents requires a blend of assets: carefully managing their positioning, animation states and voice callouts" And here is the crux: there are tons of ressources thrown at the animation states and voice callouts, which is even more frustrating, when their behavior is as dumb as allways. And not everything is expensive to simulate: in allmost every game with stealth elements for example: you can kill some enemies and the others are looking for you for some time - and then they go back to their default state with "ah, it must have been nothing", even though they might have been already wounded by you and witnessed comrades fallen. Here you would not need more cpu power, but simply a third state: where they can still give up the search, but remain on guard. (And tend to their wounds, etc. )

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

scollet 7y ago

Support indie developers!

qqii 7y ago

It really depends on what the game is trying to achieve. I recall reading an article on smarter ai on stealth games, which unfortunately lead to an unfun experience. As a player I don't want to feel the AI is "cheating". As an example the alien game released a few years back had both interesting yet an AI that didn't feel like cheating. In this context an AI that does intersting things is accepted since the goal is to strike fear, whereas with a modern shooter most enemies are made to bring some challenge but eventually be killed.