Best AI in a Game? Suggestions?

Does the Football Manager AI count? If so, thats not so bad... I mean sometimes teams go awry, but in the main the AI will know how to get the most out of its resources and can learn tactics I believe... its not perfect by any means as the match engine has bugs, but thinking about what it has to do, it runs ok.

A shout out for the NBA 2K11 AI as well, puts up a good game without any 'boosts' as far as I can see. Thats on a fair slider set as well, which can make the AI harder or easier... but in the main you will see teams use their bigs correctly and play to their advantage ie star players. AI teams also run plays and make changes as required, including if they are on a cold streak.
 
AI in LoL is rather interesting on intermediate games, the teams are designed to work together to push the human player. Shame riot hasn't worked on more teams or harder levels of AI.

Do people actually play CoOP games? Usually when there aren't enough of the Mumble crowd online and i need my lol fix i will just a custom game which only has the beginner (retard) AI. And these guys are definitely retarded.. wouldn't mind seeing how much better they do on intermediate.
 
I'd agree with FEAR, that is probably the best combat AI I've seen in a SP FPS game.

Annoys me when people mention Halflife AI as being good (thankfully not in this thread), it isn't at all, it is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors trying to convince you that it is (like triggering a enemy shouting "grenade!" when you throw a grenade).
 
I'd agree with FEAR, that is probably the best combat AI I've seen in a SP FPS game.

Annoys me when people mention Halflife AI as being good (thankfully not in this thread), it isn't at all, it is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors trying to convince you that it is (like triggering a enemy shouting "grenade!" when you throw a grenade).

But you have to put half life in a bit of context, it was released in 98 when most AI in FPS consisted of either scripted moves, stand and fire from 2 or 3 defined spots or run at player as faster as they can to explode or melee....being flushed out by grunts with a grenade in HL after trying to hide is still a stand out moment in gaming for me.
A bit like the first time you see the T-Rex in the original Tomb Raider, one of those gaming moments you will never forget.

But on AI for an older games I thought the AI in Ghost Recon (original) and the mission packs Island Thunder and Desert Siege was very advanced for their time.

As said for more modern stuff FEAR was quite good, bot behaviour in UT series was awesome in terms of AI, especially when you consider they would gave you a decent game, not only DeathMatch but the other game types too.
 
Apparently the AI in the old builds of STALKER was so good, NPCs could complete the story of their own accord. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but they did dial back the AI in ShoC significantly, as you can see from still existing (but inert) scripts.
 
The thing is though that:

1) Unreal came out 6 months before Halflife and in terms of combat AI it was just as good as HL IMO. Skaarj were good dodgers, I think it was maybe better presented in HL though (due to playing voicecomms over the top of it). Thanks to Steve Polge it also had reasonable bot AI.
2) Putting it into context would have been fine in 1998, however many years later (even after the relase of FEAR) I still saw people holding it up as a bastion of great AI. Things need to be judged on merit, not given bonus points for their age.

edit: As for AI being able to complete entire games, I'm unconvinced myself (assuming that they don't get any artificial buffs and nothing is hardcoded). Certainly not something as complex as Oblivion, too many opportunities to fail I reckon. I can certainly see AI completing a few quests but you can't interpolate that into an assumption they could do the whole game. Of course, happy to be proven wrong.
 
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I'd agree with FEAR, that is probably the best combat AI I've seen in a SP FPS game.

Annoys me when people mention Halflife AI as being good (thankfully not in this thread), it isn't at all, it is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors trying to convince you that it is (like triggering a enemy shouting "grenade!" when you throw a grenade).

Original HL AI was relatively good - and as mentioned above in context it stood out from the AI in other shooters at the time. Granted there was a lot of scripted stuff but the grunt AI would attempt to flank you, staggered fall back when overwhelmed and attempt to flush you out with grenades if you took cover which was kinda cool. Those cloaky special ops weren't terrible AI either, again they attempted to flank you, distract you, etc.
 
The thing is though that:

1) Unreal came out 6 months before Halflife and in terms of combat AI it was just as good as HL IMO. Skaarj were good dodgers, I think it was maybe better presented in HL though (due to playing voicecomms over the top of it). Thanks to Steve Polge it also had reasonable bot AI.

That is a good point, Unreal had good AI too. And another stand out gaming moment (the waterfall scene).

In terms of AI - bots is probably where games of that era shined, I remember spending quite some time playing against Reaper Bot in quake before me and a couple of mates got our first network wired up between rooms in Uni.
 
Yeah ironically it was the reaper bot that got Steve Polge his job at Epic :)
Pretty similar background to myself, I learnt to play deathmatch against bots (reaperbot from a magazine cd) then went to uni and got holdof a better Quake bot (frogbot, which is still IMHO the best deathmatch bot of any game).
 
I'm with HangTime on this, much of what had been mentioned earlier in the game isn't really clever AI - it's the game mechanics being altered to suit the bot, like dodging bullets etc. It's no better than AI cheating in a game of Civ. The reaper and frogbots were limited to the game, albeit in the smallish environments but they took on a whole new life of their own.
 
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