Most Impressive Game AI? 398
togelius asks: "I have the feeling that when developers make the effort to put really sophisticated AI into a game, gamers frequently just don't notice (see e.g. Forza). Conversely, games that are lauded for their fantastic AI are sometimes based on very simple algorithms (e.g. Halo 1). For someone who wants to apply AI to games, it is very interesting to know what AI is really appreciated. What is the most impressive game AI you have come across? Have you ever encountered a situation where it really felt like the computer-controlled opponents were really thinking?"
fs2004, etc... (Score:1, Insightful)
There are a few traffic jams now and then but mainly realistic.
Re:Come off as cheap (Score:3, Insightful)
Friendly AI (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't play many games any more, but Halo 2 was one that I thought pulled ahead of the pack a bit. Friends that can drive vehicles was pretty cool (albeit not always the safest drivers...) allowing you to man the gun in the back. They also seem better at not running right in front of you when you're in the middle of launching a rocket, and also do little things like take advantage of available cover (or in other cases jumping up on top of said cover and getting blown to bits). Halo 3 is supposed to have even better AI for both friendlies and enemies, and that's one of the things about it I'm looking forward to.
Good, or good for the price? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if we're talking about "impressive" AI, nothing I've seen in the gaming world can compete with Paradox's EUIII. Yeah, I know, each individual AI nation makes a lot of bonheaded moves. But the game is managing the armies, navies, economic, religious, colonial and foreign policies of up to 300 nations, every game day when a game year can go by in a minute or two, on a 1.9GHz processor. Considering the number of cycles and the amount of memory avaiable for each AI opponent, it's simply amazing to me. I really think that should be the basis of comparison, not so much the level of play the AI achieves, but the level of play it achieves with the resources available to each AI player. If nothing else, that standard makes it meaningful to compare old games against new ones.
Re:Simplfy the game and the AI gets better (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm. If I write a neural net program, how is that different than what you call "scripts or code"? It's still just code.
And the best chess algorithms (which you seem to claim are "real AI") are just search algorithms that search 30 moves into the future (with pruning)
You're making a distinction between "real AI" and "not real AI", when really there is no distinction. If a system can solve a problem intelligently then it's AI, regardless of the algorithm.
There *is* a distinction between "human-like AI" (neural nets) and other kinds of AI, but we'd be foolish to assume that human-like intelligence is the only kind of intelligence.
yes, in GalCiv2 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Come off as cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Writing an AI that makes the occasional "human error", or responds in a reasonable time is harder than writing the "best AI possible", but makes for a more believable (and of course, enjoyable (since who likes getting beaten all the time)) game experience.
Re:Fact or fable? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, I've always thought that AI in computer games sucked. Games are usually made hard by having the bad guys have better fire power, shields, energy etc than you, or having loads of them against one player. It would have been a laugh, for example, to have a doom style game with one player against one computer bad guy, but have him be as smart as a human. Thankfully, online multiplayer games mean you are no longer restricted to whatever crap AI system the programmers manage to string together, although the problem has now shifted to dealing with people cheat - a problem which games programmers show no signs of being any less inept at dealing with than with AI.
Re:Simplfy the game and the AI gets better (Score:4, Insightful)
What I really was trying to get across was a common misconception (one that stuck me when I got into a game company) that "AI" as it's taught in school is very different hen AI as it applies to most games. The biggest difference is most AIs don't learn, and most are pretty much just a script that doesn't change. We don't have the ability to throw away any cycles of the game so the AI tends to be highly stripped down to the point it's just "oh I see a gun, I'm going to react to the gun, how should I react to the gun, I'll do that." This is completely scripted to the point where you can tell what's going to happen if you point the gun at the person a second time or a third time. There's no "thought" or "intelligence" to the system, thought it might seem "intelligent"
A chess AI on the other hand evaluates all the options of what it can do and chooses a best option, the pruning is a form of "thought". A chess master will be doing something similar where he thinks of all his possible moves and then considers responses and so on which is effectively using game theory. To me that's actual intelligence even if it's not fancy.
The difference between a neural net program is it's code that tries to simulate the learning and thought process if you will, the code that AI in games use is just like I illustrated above. There's an "action" and the code quickly decides what's the reaction and does it. It doesn't try to evaluate too much because we don't have the cycles to do that.
The original (Score:5, Insightful)
It had the first bots that you could play against for hours and not even notice you were offline. I havn't encountered a more convincingly human AI in the dozen FPS games I've played since, including UT 2k3(which probably means that the UT maps were just easier to code for).
It's the only game where you can feel yourself increasing in skill over the course of a few days of playtime, and ratchet up the difficulty a bit and get the same kill ratio, without feeling suddenly overwhelmed by perfectly aimed headshots.
Re:games don't really need good AI (Score:3, Insightful)
Creating difficult opponents is just a matter of reaction and aim. They can just stand blatantly still and fire at the very nanosecond you reveal yourself.
Good AI is the kind that retreats when it is outnumbered, interacts with its comrades and the surroundings, explores and interacts with the mess that you yourself may create and so forth.
It has got to be the original Alien vs Predator (Score:2, Insightful)
The game was not perfect, its crap save system for one thing BUT playing as the alien had some nice moves.
For once the "enemy" was more then just cannon fodder with a deathwish. You were a nasty scary alien and the humans knew it. So a fair number of them would NOT react all that well to signs of your presence.
Once I was hanging upside down from the ceiling slowly eleminating the lights. Below me a civilian must have spotted something for he threw up a molotov cocktail (or similar) at the shadows. Offcourse gravity did its job and it exploded when it fell down again and engulfed a soldier and another civie.
Another event had me again on the ceiling staring around corner down a hallway that was sloping down. At the end a soldier with a rocket launcher must have spotted me for he fired a round. Pity that a bend in the tunnel was in the way and the rocket exploded just a few meters away from him. AvP had volumetirc flames but by the time it reached me I had already ducked back into hiding.
Other events saw soldiers machine gunning straight to civilians as they tracked me and scared people hiding in toilets and throwing grenades in confined spaces.
In itself stupid behaviour every last one of them BUT made realistic because of the fact that the AI acted as if it was scared.
If it had been a regular soldier fps the AI would have blown chuncks, but because you were a scary nasty meany alien chewing the head of humans, the AI worked.
The combination of soldiers tracking you down combined with the capacity to introduce a state of mindless terror really worked. AI makes a dumbhead move? Must be because you scared it senseless.
Pity the sequel lost all of the originals capacity.
A really great AI must make you believe you are part of a real world.
Re:ummm, Galactic Civilizations II? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is AI? (Score:2, Insightful)
It ain't AI until I can ask it "Do you like this poem" and it gives a meaningful answer.
The game stuff seems more like a lot of parameters put in anticipated by a human author.
Re:What is AI? (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Far Cry (Score:5, Insightful)
The really sad part was when, halfway through the game, they switched from "smart" soldiers, to Doom-esque mutants who just ran straight at you. Ruined that game for me.
Operation Flashpoint (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how often you replay a mission, it will always come out totally different. This comes in large part from the very open nature of the game, namely there are basically no rooms, its all just one huge outdoor environment and both you and the enemies can go basically wherever they want. It also comes from the way the missions are designed, there are no soldiers that jump out from behind a rock to shoot at you, instead the enemy soliders just follow their routine, they walk their paths, drive a convoy along the road or whatever they have to do right now. Thanks to the large area, they don't have to walk on a stupid 10 meter long path and then turn around to repeat it over and over again. This all leads to a very realistic feel, because all the limits of classic FPSs are removed. Its also not you against 100 other, but often more like you + 5 team members against 10 other, so its a much more even match. In Operation Flashpoint the player is also completly equal to the enemy, one good targeted shot and you are dead, no 100% health that slowly goes done while enemies die on the first hit.
Another aspect that is noticeable in Flashpoint is that there is a very clear difference between the state of the enemies, you can easily tell when they are on patrol, when they are attacking you and when they are searching for you. If you shoot at them they will notice it and react appropriately, this also makes it easy to tell when they don't notice you, i.e. you can hide rather well, a tank won't see you when you are crawling directly infront of it, etc. As a player its simply easy to tell what the enemy is currently doing, since the animations and behaviors are rather distinct for each of the actions.
Last not least Flashpoint is also a game where you need your teammates and where they are not just stupid cannon fodder. Most of the time your teammates can take very well care of themself and you don't have to babysit them like in some other games (HalfLife2...).
All that said, the AI in Flashpoint is far from flawless, it can often be a nightmare to get your group to mount a vehicle or get to a certain point, they will do what you want, but when they crawl around for a minute before entering the vehicle it can get pretty annoying. But overall Flashpoint really is among the best, it is however not just the AI itself that does the job, but the overall game design that threads players and enemies basically the same, it also helps a lot that the whole gameworld is interactive, if you see a tank, then you can drive it, there are no artificial barriers, no pre-scripted events that happen outside of normal gameplay rules. That scripting that is there blends perfectly into the normal gameplay.
Re:Game where computer seems like it is thinking (Score:2, Insightful)