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Graphics vs A.I

uksoldierboy

uksoldierboy

uksoldierboy

Soldato
Joined
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Been playing Ethan Carter redux tonight and it's got me thinking....

Graphics have come a long way since i first got into Pc gaming (S3 virge and the like) and it's been a very quick process relatively to go from very simple scenes being played to things like Crysis 3, Ethan Carter, Project cars etc which in some places, are almost photo-realistic imo.

It would be totally naive and incorrect to say that a huge change hasn't happened also to A.I and it's ability to challenge us in games, it has, but i still find that while it's changed a lot, for the most part it's still quite basic in it's abilities.

I've been playing Metal Gear Solid 5 these last few days and i found A.I in that to be very easy to beat, now i know that of course it's a game and i'd guess that the devs could make the A.I better, but need to keep it enjoyable, But if they were to make the A.I better, would it be a case of just increasing things such as vision stats, speed etc? things that are really making them just harder to beat, rather than more intelligent.

I hope that soon we'll A.I that can be predictable and unpredictable, but for the right reasons, not because it's "Stupid" but because it's maybe "what you or i may do".

I remember thinking the first FEAR game had fantastic A.I, i'm not sure that's the case still as i've not played it.

Id like to know your opinions on this guys, forgive me if i've missed importants reasons etc, my knowledge on the subject it very basic, i understand that it must be incredibly difficult to implement, so if anyone could explain it more in greater detail would be great, maybe you don't agree then i'd like to know your thoughts.

Sorry Mods if this isn't the right section please move if needed.
 
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Problem IMO is you tend to either get people who have no idea about AI programming so either don't want to touch it or just implement something basic, or people who have studied AI in incredible detail, talking about neural nets or whatever in their sleep and go for something incredibly complex and "next generation" and still working on it when it comes to the rest of the game approaching retail and ends up cut to the bone so they can ship it on time and very few people who are somewhere inbetween. IMO neither is the right direction - most games don't need incredibly advanced AI but they do need something that feels a bit more "living" and you can fake a lot of that by fuzzy approximation - even throwing in a weighted random chance instead of actually computing complex AI decisions.
 
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Understood bud,

It must be so difficult to do, I wonder if it's something we'll ever see, I play a lot of arma 3 multiplayer and some of the battles I've had have been so intense, that feeling of not knowing what's going happen and not always being able to predict another players actions make it so much more fun.

Just would be great to see and feel that outside of multiplayer.
 
uksoldierboy said:
that feeling of not knowing what's going happen and not always being able to predict another players actions make it so much more fun.

Just would be great to see and feel that outside of multiplayer.
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An AI environment is an extremely complex creation, Very few games do it well and none do it very well.

Personally I don't think we are anywhere near to having the ability to create seemingly life like opponents.

Some of the best I've seen can be found in titles that are 7 or 8 years old so we seem to have hit a barrier that's stopping us from advancing it further.

Once we do though Wow! The Sky is the limit.
 
AI can't be that good in many cases from a game design prospective. How frustrating would be to play MGSV with an AI comparable to a multiplayer game? It would be impossible to let you feel like Big Boss if any of your enemies is just as good.

This applies for many other games. AI needs to be tailored to game design.
There are many games where the difficulty level is just given by cheap tricks (ridicolous health bars, minions in boss battles and so on), but the "lack" of good AI is often just needed for a game to work.
I think MGSV has a good balance and FEAR is actually often pointed as a good example of great AI (played when it came out so I can't really remember).
 
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AI is always an afterthought in game development.
No game has good AI. Just 1 tiny part of AI, pathfinding, is a challenging computational problem.

Age of Empires 3 has an XS (expert system) AI script that is very sophisticated but ultimately sucks compared to humans. It comprises a moddable "strategic AI script" and a hardcoded "tactical AI".
CPU single threaded performance is a massive limitation of AI capabilities in RTS games.
 
The worst thing DICE did with Battlefield is drop AI Bot matches. BF2 bots were more hilarious than intelligent but if they had progressed the AI then by BF4 it could have been pretty good by now. Same for Titanfall they should have introduced the AI mode fully instead of still having to rely on other players.

AI in World of Warships though is not that bad you can have some really difficult matches sometimes.

Trouble is I`m in a minority and I prefer singleplayer to online multiplayer and devs are never going to change the emphasis.
 
I still think that the original Half-Life has the best A.I. that I've encountered in a PC game. I found the original Halo pretty special too.
 
AI seems to have taken a step backwards in the last 10ish years. A few classic games had great AI then the sequels just didn't bother (Half-Life 2 as an example).

MMOs especially never bother with AI and have NPCs just rush at you mindlessly. I think ESO might be the only exception.
 
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The AI in MGSV seems somewhat limited, but there is actually a huge breadth of responses that are programmed in that many people may miss. (I heard that someone equiped the water gun, and spraying it on a sleeping solider makes them think they have wet themselves!)

The point of MGS is to develop a strong understanding of the responses possible and manipulate them into pulling off a something incredible. It's not really supposed to have human like AI, its very much a sandbox game for you to tinker with. That said, the gameplay does evolve if you consistently abuse certain mechanics, forcing you to switch them up.

Regarding the overall point of the thread though, I feel that game dev have experimented with better forms of AI but from a gameplay perspective it becomes too fustrating.
 
Also worth mentioning from a design perspective that smarter AI might not be fun for some people. I remember reading an article for one of the Arkham games I believe where they actually made the AI difficult/smart. They would group up, flank from open sides, etc. But after play testing they found that players just got overwhelmed and couldn't handle it, hence why they went back to the regular system of "one guy attacks you why all the others wait around for him to get knocked out".

OR you do the ol' FEAR "AI" where they construct the levels in such a way that they funnel a player down a specific path and can create scenarios for the AI to seem smart, but they're really just placed/designed really well.
 
Best AI i seen in last few years was in well ESO..

I remember Bots in OLD fps shooters being unbeatable :D Like in Unreal Turnament or Quake 3 at maximum level.
 
You either make complex AI which requires a lot of computation.

Or you create a simple AI and increased its difficulty through cheats.

The first payday was the worst example of the second. When you have bots that can hit every shot through a pigeons Anus you know the game is fecal matter.
 
It would seem that perhaps A.I has hit it's limit some what then, where pushing any further would have adverse effects on the game it's self.

Where does it go from here then? Maybe Instead of using A.I in games, players are used? i like the idea but that brings a host of issues with it.
 
Winky_The_Winking_Turtle said:
Also worth mentioning from a design perspective that smarter AI might not be fun for some people. I remember reading an article for one of the Arkham games I believe where they actually made the AI difficult/smart. They would group up, flank from open sides, etc. But after play testing they found that players just got overwhelmed and couldn't handle it, hence why they went back to the regular system of "one guy attacks you why all the others wait around for him to get knocked out".
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There is a part of the original game where you are locked in a room (same one as the benchmark) with a "death squad" and have to separate them and kill them 1 by 1 basically and they react to your actions i.e. while feeling confident more likely to spread out, as they realise some of them are missing getting more nervous and sticking together more, etc. apparently with the original AI implementation not one single play tester could get past that point - not because the AI was "cheating" with impossible aim or reaction times, etc. but because the squad AI was reacting to the player well enough it would eventually second guess and come up with a way to defeat the player's next move before it had run out of assets to use against the player.
 
I don't care about AI in most cases, particularly in action/fps games. The best AI will always suffer from severe limitations, compared to a human. A scripted chain of events with multiple possible paths, planned by the developer, is far more interesting to me than a single soldier that tries but fails to mimick a human.
 
AI is more game-specific than graphics. Most games have different rules, although perhaps FPS games are quite similar.

My main problem with AI's in most games is the total lack of any kind of learning. Or something to approximate learning.

We've all seen situations in FPS, where you set up a kill zone at a choke point, and all the AI soldiers pour in to be gunned down. The AI routines don't associate their last action and the end result. "100% failure, try something else" does not seem to feature in any FPS AI I've ever seen :p Even the so-called "smart" AI's like FEAR (which was more marketing than reality).
 
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