Artificial Intelligence

VirusType2

VirusType2

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Creating realistic artificial intelligence is the biggest challenge in video game programing.

What are some stand-out examples of good and bad AI?
 
Really bad:

Faces of War
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 ('Aim for the head.' 'AIM FOR THEIR LEADER.')

Worst:

Big Rigs
 
Examples of bad AI:

Every video game ever made.

Examples of good AI:
That creepy four legged robot that they made for the army.
 
Games always seem to fall into either the category "Dumb as a brick", or "Godlike Cheaters".

That being said, there are some games that have great AI:

Half Life 1 + 2
STALKER (well, once you lowered the distance they could spot you at)
Crysis (The Korean AI was generally very good)
 
The AI itself was good, but just as Darkside said the areas were too small for it to be obvious.
 
The biggest gripe I have with AI is easily exploitable predictability. If the AI does the same thing every time, even seemingly impossible AI becomes easy, once you understand how they work.

Bad AI: Gran Tourismo
 
Really bad AI that I notice is with co-op. L4D and its sequel are pretty bad and X3 is terrible due to wingmen crashing into each other.
 
VirusType2 said:
What are some stand-out examples of...bad AI?
Click to expand...
EVERY GAME THIS HAPPENS IN

2n87tdk.jpg
 
Wow that's actually never happened to me before, but I feel like it should.
 
Uncharted has some pretty adaptive AI. also the AI enemies in COD:MW2 were better than the previous installment. I would say L4D2 has some pretty adaptive AI that surprised me. oh and Sins of a Solar Empire has some wicked AI from what I remember.

Good AI:

L4D2 (enemies only)
Uncharted 1+2
Sins of a Solar Empire

Bad AI:
COD 3 (regarding the stupid barrier you had to pass before enemies stopped spawning)
Halo 3 (on both sides)
any racing game (mainly because I'm not the best and they don't really use auto balance much)
 
Warped said:
Uncharted has some pretty adaptive AI. also the AI enemies in COD:MW2 were better than the previous installment. I would say L4D2 has some pretty adaptive AI that surprised me. oh and Sins of a Solar Empire has some wicked AI from what I remember.

Good AI:

L4D2 (enemies only)
Uncharted 1+2
Sins of a Solar Empire

Bad AI:
COD 3 (regarding the stupid barrier you had to pass before enemies stopped spawning)
Halo 3 (on both sides)
any racing game (mainly because I'm not the best and they don't really use auto balance much)
Click to expand...
Halo 3 has bad AI? What? I am appalled by the fact you put Halo 3 in the same group as CoD3.

I recommend you try playing Halo 3 on Legendary, the AI is actually very good then IMO, for being an FPS anyway.

Anyway, as someone already said, you could argue all games have awful AI, however, all that really matters in the end to the regular consumer is how the AI -appears-, does it -appear- or -seem- to be good(humanlike) or does it -appear- to be very artificial?

I'd for example argue the AI in the game "The Guild 2: Pirates of the European Seas" with the Sovereign-mod does a very good job of imitating a human player, it makes use of all the same options as the player, sabotage, bribery etc, heck I've even had it steal my bride-to-be from under my nose, the Machiavellian bastard.
 
Gargantou said:
I recommend you try playing Halo 3 on Legendary, the AI is actually very good then IMO, for being an FPS anyway.
Click to expand...

So you have to up the difficulty to make the AI dangerous?

Thief comes to mind (any part, really), Jagged Alliance 2 (especially v. 1.13), the original Half-Life, Dawn of War has some decent AI tricks, although it's by no means a real challenge, Command & Conquer 3...
 
The greatest AI I have ever encountered was an enemy trooper in a sci-fi Korean game.


"Put your weapons down, and surrender! We will spare your life if you do so!"


*complies*


*trooper fires at player*


*player dies*


****ing bastard.
 
ODST in firefight is the best example of AI in a fps I can think of. They hunt you down, flush you out with grenades, synchronise attacks. It doesn't feel like you're being attacked by hacking bots *looks at HL2*. Whether this is the result of genuinely well coded and adaptive AI, or simple class behaviours, modifiers and scripted responses, I don't know - but the outcome is the most convincing, varied and deadly, which is the important part.

Stalker, Assassin's Creed, Borderlands, and pretty much any friendly AI, spring to mind when thinking of poor AI.
 
HL2's A.I. as an example of hacking bots? Surely you mean Far Cry?

Also, Warbie have you tried either of the Uncharted games? I've found they're much better at flanking than any of the Halo games. The only difference is the A.I. in Halo rolls occasionally when been shot at, which is great and I don't know why other games don't do that.

There should be more fast dodging A.I. in vidya games I tells ya.
 
I finished the first Uncharted, but haven't started the 2nd yet (saving for Christmas :)). The first seemed pretty standard when it came to AI - they either stood behind cover or came at you. It was good, but didn't blow me away.

The thing I like most about Firefight is how unpredictable the AI is. Sometimes they're cagey and hold off, other times they come piling in, grenades flying everywhere. And everything in between. More than a few times a grunt - the most deadly foe in Firefight imo - has thrown a nade to push me out of cover whole another grunt places a grenade in the only escape path. Possibly a coincidence, but things like this happen frequently enough for it to be convincing, like the little bastards planned it.


Does AI have to be complex to be affective, or fun?
 
I prefer dumb as a brick AI. Mowing down hundreds of enemies with little effort = fun, smart/challenging enemies = annoying
 
I guess strategy games have decent A.I. They can beat me at least.
Edit: Er, guess I didn't think about trying to get your tanks to somehow leave your base. Okay strategy games are good for enemy only.
 
I love seeing how soldiers move in Company of Heroes, it just looks some sense of real. But that said the path-finding can still be shit from time to time, same for all RTSs.
 
Warbie said:
I finished the first Uncharted, but haven't started the 2nd yet (saving for Christmas :)). The first seemed pretty standard when it came to AI - they either stood behind cover or came at you. It was good, but didn't blow me away.

The thing I like most about Firefight is how unpredictable the AI is. Sometimes they're cagey and hold off, other times they come piling in, grenades flying everywhere. And everything in between. More than a few times a grunt - the most deadly foe in Firefight imo - has thrown a nade to push me out of cover whole another grunt places a grenade in the only escape path. Possibly a coincidence, but things like this happen frequently enough for it to be convincing, like the little bastards planned it.
Click to expand...

That's really odd to me, because everything you describe here sounds like what happens in Uncharted on harder difficulties. The main difference being the enemy types and the rechargable shields.
 
Sparta said:
HL2's A.I. as an example of hacking bots? Surely you mean Far Cry?
Click to expand...
Yah, that reminds me. The enemies in Far Cry would be in places where they could see you, but couldn't move towards you and they would just run back and forth repeating the same speech forever. Maybe they were stuck behind boxes too.

Bad AI: Far Cry

Speaking earlier about exploiting the AI, where the enemy always makes the same mistake - I suppose that is the trick, the intended method to defeat difficult enemies or bosses. But the enemy should not be so stupid to make the same mistake over and over, where you dodge it's attack then counter.

I mean, I think they should learn from their mistakes and adjust their attack accordingly. I would accept that a robot or computer would make the same mistakes repeatedly, if it wasn't 'programed' to adapt, but not even a tiny brained insect would repeatedly make the same mistake over and over when it's being punished for it, so you know for sure that a large brained creature like a humanoid would know better.

I suppose I am suggesting adaptive AI or AI that learns, but it doesn't have to be that complicated for programmers. All they need to do is have alternate AI routines for when they begin to get dominated.


Another problem that I see all the time is multiple enemies that all think alike. Anyone who played Gran Tourismo would see that all the rival drivers drive exactly the same, like all the drivers on the track are the same person!

But almost all games use the same AI for enemies of the same type. This should be a thing of the past. If you are in a shootout with 10 enemies, they shouldn't all be thinking the same way, making all the same mistakes. People aren't going to all do the exact thing, so enemies in games shouldn't either. This goes back to predictability again, which ruins the AI.
 
May the black guy's spirit live forever. He sacrificed himself for greater good.
 
AI in all videogames are bad tbh if you really want to get down to the nuts and bolts, it's just that some games are better at emulating intelligence than others. The term "Artificial Intelligence" is incorrectly used in videogames and what you see in most games is merely an illusion of intelligence as character NPCs aren't self-aware.

"Virtual Intelligence" would be a better term to describe videogame intelligence instead. That is, scripted programs that aren't self-aware but emulate intelligence through a series of "if" and "then" statements.

Maybe programming techniques will evolve one day, an we'll witness true AI within our electronic devices we pleasure ourselves with every day but ask yourself this. Could you really maime and slaughter NPCs that were true, self-aware entities begging for their lives?
 
I was playing SWAT 4, and it had some pretty damn good AI.

Suspects vary EXTREMELY in their actions, and especially in situations where they aren't trained criminals, they can be very unpredictable. Sometimes they'll just give up without a fight, sometimes I'll have to fire a few warning shots or shoot 'em in the leg. Sometimes they'll pretend like they're putting their gun down, and then try to shoot you.

In one instance, they'd gotten on their knees, and as I walked up to restrain him he quickly picked up his gun and shot me.

God damn I got pissed off.
 
Saturos said:
"Virtual Intelligence" would be a better term to describe videogame intelligence instead. That is, scripted programs that aren't self-aware but emulate intelligence through a series of "if" and "then" statements.
Click to expand...

I see someone has been playing Mass Effect.
 
Saturos said:
Maybe programming techniques will evolve one day, an we'll witness true AI within our electronic devices we pleasure ourselves with every day but ask yourself this. Could you really maime and slaughter NPCs that were true, self-aware entities begging for their lives?
Click to expand...

See the movie 13'th Floor.

"Why did you kill all those people?"
''Because it was fun!!11"
 
Half-Life deathmatch had pretty good AI. The game was simple so the bots could emulate people pretty well. The automated chat messages that come up occasionally will make you suspicious though, and a ping of zero sets the truth free.
 
jimbo118 said:
The original FEAR had decent A.I.
Click to expand...

I dunno about that... "There he is!" *does a diving roll through a window, supposedly into cover but actually right into the player's crosshair*

I've always liked the UT series' bot AI personally.
 
Acepilotf14 said:
I was playing SWAT 4, and it had some pretty damn good AI.

Suspects vary EXTREMELY in their actions, and especially in situations where they aren't trained criminals, they can be very unpredictable. Sometimes they'll just give up without a fight, sometimes I'll have to fire a few warning shots or shoot 'em in the leg. Sometimes they'll pretend like they're putting their gun down, and then try to shoot you.

In one instance, they'd gotten on their knees, and as I walked up to restrain him he quickly picked up his gun and shot me.

God damn I got pissed off.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say SWAT 4's AI is "good" as such, but as you say, unlike practically every other game out there, it is highly variable. Characters morale/agreesion/accuracy/etc is generated before each play through of a level (so it will never be entirely the same, which makes it particularly interesting when combined with the variable placement, number and equipment of the NPCs ingame) This, I think while not "AI" as such, adds alot of replay value to the game and keeps it fresh (even when you're about to punch the screen for failing the mission again, you probably failed in a different way) and is something I'd certainly like to see more of in games. Particularly as it forces you to actually learn good tactics and approaches to situations rather than being able to rely on memorising what enemy is where.
 
I quite enjoyed the AI in the 1999 version of Unreal Tournament when the adaptive difficulty was turned on. Depending on how good the player was it would change the difficulty up or down so you'd play a relatively easy bot then a couple minutes later it'd be killing you in a split second.
 
The bots in CS:S were very effective and dangerous.
 
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