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I think a really strong FPS AI would be a technical achievement similar to automatic car driving; it has have a "real eyesight" algorithm, notice motion, unders

by chipsy 16y ago

I think a really strong FPS AI would be a technical achievement similar to automatic car driving; it has have a "real eyesight" algorithm, notice motion, understand varied terrain, etc. A basic LOS check is insufficient since there's lighting, smoke, semi-transparent items like fences etc. included in typical FPS environments. Even considering that the data structures for the world and rendering can be reused for AI purposes, it's still pushing our current hardware to expect to get a whole squad of really detailed, smart AIs and also have a playable action game with modern graphics quality. It's a lot easier, for the purpose of making a novel, amusing game, to just back off from realism and find other things to try.

dkersten 16y ago
A fuzzy LOS algorithm may work: have a "vision" value, when the LOS algorithm encounters an "object", add the objects opaqueness to the vision, if the vision is below a threshold, continue the ray, otherwise stop. Any objects of interest it calculates are made "fuzzy" based on its vision value. Also increase the vision value with distance, darkness, fog etc. That way, partially obscured, distant or dark objects have a higher vision value and are therefore treated as fuzzy, meaning the AI has only partial information on it (depending on how fuzzy). Now distant and obscured objects are visible to the AI, but it won't know everything about them and could choose to ignore them, investigate or take some other intelligent action.
barrkel 16y ago
it's still pushing our current hardware to expect to get a whole squad of really detailed, smart AIs and also have a playable action game with modern graphics quality I don't buy this for a moment. On multicore PCs, graphics horsepower is almost completely separate from CPU horsepower available for AI. Modern games rarely escape the 15..40% CPU utilization envelope on my machine (i7 920); there is bags and bags of concurrent room. Memory usage is barely noticeable (very rarely more than 2GB as most games are 32-bit, meanwhile I have another 10GB twiddling its thumbs). Meanwhile, it's the GPU that is normally limiting framerate, but only because I'm pushing up anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and shadow quality. I think consoles are the bigger issue: games are no longer designed to take advantage of modern PC hardware. Instead, they're developed with consoles in mind, with graphics parameters that can be turned up on the PC. But gameplay and AI doesn't get nearly the same tunable love as graphics - and in some ways it shouldn't as it would change the nature of the game - but it remains that modern PC hardware, outside of straight-line single-threaded performance and the GPU, is not particularly taxed by modern games.
- 6ren 16y ago
  If those spare cycles can be put to good use, that actually better serve gamers' needs, it seems that consoles would be disrupted. I guess a big issue is install base: lots of consoles, and few people with expensive, upmarket PCs. Also, piracy. And a single hardware target. And perhaps console game quality is "good enough" for most gamers. Perhaps having many people to play FPS against is more important than graphics (or AI). Even worse, as silicon gets cheaper, instead of those PCs becoming affordable, I predict most people will buy even cheaper PCs (or phones+HDMI+kb; or iPads; or a new ARM-based PC form-factor). i.e. PCs getting disrupted, as workstations, minicomputers and mainframes were. Worst case: it's possible that consoles will never improve from where they are now. The only hope I see is that someone comes up with something sensational, that everybody wants, that requires that extra processing power. Life-like AI might do it... but we already have real people to play against. Though I think cinematic graphics is probably the best bet.

by chipsy 16y ago

dkersten 16y ago

A fuzzy LOS algorithm may work: have a "vision" value, when the LOS algorithm encounters an "object", add the objects opaqueness to the vision, if the vision is below a threshold, continue the ray, otherwise stop. Any objects of interest it calculates are made "fuzzy" based on its vision value. Also increase the vision value with distance, darkness, fog etc. That way, partially obscured, distant or dark objects have a higher vision value and are therefore treated as fuzzy, meaning the AI has only partial information on it (depending on how fuzzy). Now distant and obscured objects are visible to the AI, but it won't know everything about them and could choose to ignore them, investigate or take some other intelligent action.

barrkel 16y ago

it's still pushing our current hardware to expect to get a whole squad of really detailed, smart AIs and also have a playable action game with modern graphics quality I don't buy this for a moment. On multicore PCs, graphics horsepower is almost completely separate from CPU horsepower available for AI. Modern games rarely escape the 15..40% CPU utilization envelope on my machine (i7 920); there is bags and bags of concurrent room. Memory usage is barely noticeable (very rarely more than 2GB as most games are 32-bit, meanwhile I have another 10GB twiddling its thumbs). Meanwhile, it's the GPU that is normally limiting framerate, but only because I'm pushing up anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering and shadow quality. I think consoles are the bigger issue: games are no longer designed to take advantage of modern PC hardware. Instead, they're developed with consoles in mind, with graphics parameters that can be turned up on the PC. But gameplay and AI doesn't get nearly the same tunable love as graphics - and in some ways it shouldn't as it would change the nature of the game - but it remains that modern PC hardware, outside of straight-line single-threaded performance and the GPU, is not particularly taxed by modern games.

6ren 16y ago
If those spare cycles can be put to good use, that actually better serve gamers' needs, it seems that consoles would be disrupted. I guess a big issue is install base: lots of consoles, and few people with expensive, upmarket PCs. Also, piracy. And a single hardware target. And perhaps console game quality is "good enough" for most gamers. Perhaps having many people to play FPS against is more important than graphics (or AI). Even worse, as silicon gets cheaper, instead of those PCs becoming affordable, I predict most people will buy even cheaper PCs (or phones+HDMI+kb; or iPads; or a new ARM-based PC form-factor). i.e. PCs getting disrupted, as workstations, minicomputers and mainframes were. Worst case: it's possible that consoles will never improve from where they are now. The only hope I see is that someone comes up with something sensational, that everybody wants, that requires that extra processing power. Life-like AI might do it... but we already have real people to play against. Though I think cinematic graphics is probably the best bet.