AI in Games
- Thread starter Kosmiche
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AI is bad in games because true AI code is expensive to write/debug and there aren't enough qualified programmers in the industry to do it.
Old arena games such as Unreal and Quake III did not have amazing AI, the bots simply cheated in ways that aren't always obvious. In example, they locked on to your guy and almost never missed with projectiles that hit instantly or they locked on to an area in the direction where your character was moving, depending on the distance, so you would "meet" with slower projectiles, assuming your direction didn't change. This isn't true AI, it's no different than the resource advantages the AI gets in strategy games.
Old arena games such as Unreal and Quake III did not have amazing AI, the bots simply cheated in ways that aren't always obvious. In example, they locked on to your guy and almost never missed with projectiles that hit instantly or they locked on to an area in the direction where your character was moving, depending on the distance, so you would "meet" with slower projectiles, assuming your direction didn't change. This isn't true AI, it's no different than the resource advantages the AI gets in strategy games.
Its regenerating health which has a lot to answer for in perception of poor AI in single players games these days. Nowadays you simply have to soak up bullets until you reach the next bit of cover. In the old days, even with poor opponent AI, you had to be much more tactical/skillful which inherently makes achieving the objective harder and more satisfying. Get rid of regenerating health and things would be the first thing I'd get rid of in modern games.
Eugh, tell me about it, I can't stand magic healing in "realistic" games.
"oh, you've been shot, stand still a moment while your Wolverine-esque mutant accelerated healing kicks in"
I play RTS games offline specifically because I prefer the AI to people. I like to play slower games where you build up colossal armies and launch them at eachother strategically, rather than cheap rush tactics. FPS games, bots are just there to be crushed. Single player is more about story progression than competitive play to me, so that doesn't bother me. I don't want to have to play a level that many times because the bots are as smart as me! That level of competition is for MP.
Eugh, tell me about it, I can't stand magic healing in "realistic" games.
"oh, you've been shot, stand still a moment while your Wolverine-esque mutant accelerated healing kicks in"
The granddaddy of this, Halo, actually had a good reason for regen. It was built into the mechanics of the game brilliantly IMO. All the me too shooters since are really grating though...
Also, good enemy behaviour should not be compared to AI. Scripting many possible states for x situation isn't intelligence
Q3's AI is fairly advanced, though stopped short of any complex neural systems and doesn't have the learning system and other stuff fully implemented/functional.
The area awareness system allows the bots to make fairly comprehensive decisions about the environment they are in and learn routes through the maps (though common connections are pre-cached), there is a basic logic system/state machine with stacked goals and fuzzy logic - you can introduce the bots to a completely new environment and they can adapt to it, a lot of functionality is artificially constrained in the code as shipped in the default game (mostly due to the above mentioned issue of unpredictability which is a game design nightmare) but with simple modification the personality system can be made far more dynamic as well as their learning behaviour. (EDIT: There is a mod somewhere that fully unlocked verbose mode and if left to their own devices they will start to chat to each other (there is a very simple chatbot implementation) - responding to each other and modifying their friendship towards other bots and even personality due to ingame events, creating allegiances on the fly and so on and 90% of the functionality is in the stock code just shackled for game design reasons).
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I actually agree with him to an extent, it's only an opinion so try not to take it too personally. The fun, I find, is mostly in the multiplayer.
And with the comment about a games story and character development, to some it simply doesn't matter, its playing the game that matters. For example I played through the entire Mass Effect trilogy and didn't pay any attention to the story or characters, I just loved the RPG elements and gameplay.
Soldato
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I forgot all about Trespasser. I used to have that; it came in a game pack of NFS3, Future Cop LAPD and JP Trespasser. I could never get over the gimpy arm mechanics, so gave up on it after a brief stab. Just been reading about it and it seems it could have been great... but wasn't!