Rebels be a little less "rag-tag"

[Flynn(Snarkpit)]

Hi there something that bothers me with the rebels is that their appearence is so rag-tag and the way they aren't proffesional fighters. I know it would be ridiculus to expect them to be anything else in the situation, but I just got a more "powerful" feeling when commanding the grunts in opposing force because they were trained and organised fighters were as the rebels are just normal people. It's not a rant or anything I just wanted to express my feelings on the subject.

 

[Que-Ever]

Um... yeah, that's cool.

 

[Flynn(Snarkpit)]

But do you understand where I'm coming from?

 

[kupocake]

I think it suits their image... for now. It's not necessarily appropriate going on though. Would be nice to see some more interesting relics, inventions and captured technology turning up. HEV suits, PCVs, pre-HL1 military loadouts, special combat suits, resistance members wearing soldier or elite combine suits, or at least parts of. Be great to see more faces as well. Garry's Mod hasn't helped, but we've seen too much of the good old City 17 faces.

If their look doesn't need an upgrade as urgently as something else, it's their AI. The resistance AI is absolutely dire in Episode 1, and it shows through even worse in the Episode 2 vids. When will they learn that striders, gunships and helicopters aren't going to flinch when you stand 5 metres from cover using only an mp7?

 

[Canadian Gunner]

If their look doesn't need an upgrade as urgently as something else, it's their AI. The resistance AI is absolutely dire in Episode 1, and it shows through even worse in the Episode 2 vids. When will they learn that striders, gunships and helicopters aren't going to flinch when you stand 5 metres from cover using only an mp7?

Perhaps that's why we lost the war...
Back on topic, I'd say that if anything they weren't rag tag enough....like kupoartist said. Surely somebody's got a Kalishnikov (yes I know that would be cliched) or an old rifle lying around...but who knows. Maybe the Combine were really good at their door to door searches...

 

[Flynn(Snarkpit)]

Yeah that definately needs some work. In some situations those guys are just cannon fodder. I think also a health increase might be at hand as well. At the moment I think their health level is around 50. I'm thinking maybe increase that to around 75 or 100. It would be cool if they doned some Combine armour as well. I think maybe some faces should be what I am going to call "stereotype" faces like did you use the High-Definition pack with H-L 1? If you did you know what I mean-faces like the beret marines had and that. All the faces now look imperfect; which is good, I just think maybe a couple stereotype faces would be cool just to balance it out.

 

[kacation_man]

i think a lot of the non-main character npcs look like shit ( pardon my language ) as for the AI, there stupid to boot, and on top of that they're always in the way! In mods with FF i always kill them myself and take their ammo cuz i can do more with 5 rounds then they could do with a whole clip... im sorry to say that I think that it is one of the most dire things Valve NEEDS ( and i put all my emphasis on "NEEDS"! ) to put more work and thought into the non-main character npcs: looks, brains, brawn: the works... they lack all of that.

EDIT: Maybe i was a little harsh, some of them look ... ok... however a lot of them do look pretty sad, or at least compared to the main characters they look fairly pathetic, mostly the rebels. I think barney in HL2 was the best looking ( graphically, don't even make a joke! ) character in the game, however i thought he looked pretty bad in E1, or at least compared to his HL2 counterpart...

 

[Jintor]

You're right about the AI. Do you think Valve could program them not to waste ammo into something that doesn't feel the pain? It's pointless to stand there and fire into the god-damned Striders? Just find cover and hunker down!

I started off HL2 wanting to protect as many citizens as possible, but when the bastards started running DIRECTLY into Strider fire then it just started getting weird. And they'd cluster around me and shove me out of cover occasionally. Bastards!

 

[kacation_man]

ya...they're not that bright... and the E3 thingies made them look so smart...and out of the way as well... even when you use the call and command squad button the seem to doddle abit... or just not figure it out all together.

 

[Flynn(Snarkpit)]

i think a lot of the non-main character npcs look like shit ( pardon my language ) as for the AI, there stupid to boot, and on top of that they're always in the way! In mods with FF i always kill them myself and take their ammo cuz i can do more with 5 rounds then they could do with a whole clip... im sorry to say that I think that it is one of the most dire things Valve NEEDS ( and i put all my emphasis on "NEEDS"! ) to put more work and thought into the non-main character npcs: looks, brains, brawn: the works... they lack all of that.

EDIT: Maybe i was a little harsh, some of them look ... ok... however a lot of them do look pretty sad, or at least compared to the main characters they look fairly pathetic, mostly the rebels. I think barney in HL2 was the best looking ( graphically, don't even make a joke! ) character in the game, however i thought he looked pretty bad in E1, or at least compared to his HL2 counterpart...

I didn't notice Barney was any different, tbh.

 

[W4d5Y]

Didn't you?!? He looks pretty bad in ep1. No, that's not a opinion, it's a comment on his status Well, uhr, in RtB you could even see rebels with Combine armour, and as I checked that, I realized, that the voerwatch doesn't have a full bodysuit, but only parts stuck together, like boots you get in every shoestore and usual Kevlar. Also, in RtB the rebels didn't wear A CAP!! Z0MG!!! (//edit: I always wondered, what they were for..To prevent the combine from spying their minds? XD) Yeah, and the problem with their AI is, that they'd have to realize there's a strider, just like the gunship relizes there's a rocket, steering right into its behinds Also, they'd always stand in your way. C'mon VALVe, 'let me get out of your way' is no excuse! Also, that makes them look unintelligent, they should rather stand around in various distances, just like I don't stand closequarter with teammates in coop games, as if I was strying to spoon 'em. They basically should act more on their own, take care they stay in a group, as well as not trying to behave towards the player as momie's substitutes -.-

 

[Flynn(Snarkpit)]

The rebels should also don some Combine armour, That would be cool.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Don't double post please. (use edit button).

I agree the rebels can be cannonfodder but I believe thats just part of the game and doesn't need improvement. If you want truly epic warriors fighting along side you, you might as well not play. You are the one who is meant to make the difference. Also, true the mp7 isn't going to dent a gunship/strider - but could act as distraction/cover fire. You must also be aware there ARE rebels with RPG's who were shooting the striders in that street battle, there is some awareness. I really don't think the rebels are meant to be good/considered a team, moreso to show you theres people out there fighting back (poorly heh).

 

[Tagaziel]

Rebels you fight with in City 17 aren't experienced figters, they are just citizens with guns and caps.

The caps... well, caps make your shiny, pink little head less visible in an urban setting...

And second, the Overwatch has upgraded Interceptor Body Armours, BDUs with armpads and military boots plus the mask. I'd love to see citizens toting Overwatch Armor

 

[kupocake]

I really don't think the rebels are meant to be good/considered a team, moreso to show you theres people out there fighting back (poorly heh).

The rebels as an all powerful group of super soldiers isn't necessary, the problem is that they're not believeable even as incompentant human allies. Real humans don't stand in your way. Real humans don't stand under a plasma cannon for however long it takes them to die. Exit 17 is the pinaccle of this. You don't feel like you're escorting resistance members who need to be protected because you're a better fighter, and they're tired and unskilled: you feel like you're holding hands with a small group of retarded robot prototypes who get distracted by the shiny elite uniforms and want to stay where they are instead of moving on.

 

[Que-Ever]

Jeez, maybe it was cold. Don't you wear a cap when it's cold?

 

[AJ Rimmer]

They need to be meaner though. Their AI needs an upgrade but they need to be more bitter and resentful against the combine. In HL2 and Ep1 they feel so campy, like they all decided to get together one sunday night and rise up against the combine. Dang blastit they should be shooting wounded CPs on the ground, kick and spit on their corpses and such. Not running around all happy and shouting "Reaload Dr Freeman!" When I have 29 bullets out of 30 in my clip...

 

[W4d5Y]

They need to be meaner though. Their AI needs an upgrade but they need to be more bitter and resentful against the combine. In HL2 and Ep1 they feel so campy, like they all decided to get together one sunday night and rise up against the combine. Dang blastit they should be shooting wounded CPs on the ground, kick and spit on their corpses and such. Not running around all happy and shouting "Reaload Dr Freeman!" When I have 29 bullets out of 30 in my clip...

*immitating Dave Chapelle immitating Lil' Jon* Yay-uh! I was really scared about that easteregg phrase about a citizen commenting on how she 'kinda miss' the combine. TRAIT0R!!! Budabudabuda!!!! HIahahah!!!! Die, filthy collaborat0r!!!! back2topic, they should really be more believable in their behaviour, although the random sentences they throw in if you try 'using' them are quite funny

 

[kacation_man]

the part at the end of E1 where you have to escort them to the train ( i dont remember what its called, i dont pay attention to chapter names very well ) These people are like dare devils with death wishes. Im trying to get them all back to the train and one is lagging behind the rest of the bunch and i cant go back and get more till I take back at least 5 this round, a few combine bust out from the window and guess which way she goes... runs behind alyx and in to the train where she has lead them in to a trap and got her self to safety ... wrong, she runs the opposite way where she is now 2 on 1 where she only has a shitty smg vs. an pulse rifle and a shot gun... she ofcorse died and I had to go back and pull ONE MORE out bring her across then run all the way back to pull out 5 more so i can do it all over again.. and i thought i was stupid.

 

[kupocake]

They need to be meaner though. Their AI needs an upgrade but they need to be more bitter and resentful against the combine. In HL2 and Ep1 they feel so campy, like they all decided to get together one sunday night and rise up against the combine. Dang blastit they should be shooting wounded CPs on the ground, kick and spit on their corpses and such. Not running around all happy and shouting "Reaload Dr Freeman!" When I have 29 bullets out of 30 in my clip...

That's a well observed point. I think it kind of works before the uprising. They're hardly a happy bunch, but they're getting along ok. Then the uprising happens and they don't really rise up. You get occasional moments where it's near perfect: the iconic "STRIDERRR!" and "GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE" shouts, as well as most of the other things to signal new enemies, but other than that they're a bit wooden, and certainly too forgiving of their overlords.

 

[kacation_man]

"ALL HAIL THE OVER LORD" ...... " the over lord is gay" * walks away * *zap* "aw, gay"

 

[AJ Rimmer]

That's a well observed point. I think it kind of works before the uprising. They're hardly a happy bunch, but they're getting along ok. Then the uprising happens and they don't really rise up. You get occasional moments where it's near perfect: the iconic "STRIDERRR!" and "GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE" shouts, as well as most of the other things to signal new enemies, but other than that they're a bit wooden, and certainly too forgiving of their overlords.

Yep. See here's how it should be: A rebel shoots a CP in both kneecaps then kicks him for a bit before blowing his brains into tiny bits. The rebels pulling down the Breen-screen was a nice moment in that vain though, but that was about the only one.

 

[kupocake]

The rebels pulling down the Breen-screen was a nice moment in that vain though, but that was about the only one.

Yeah. It's kind of weird how the very same rebels are with you two minutes later when the TV in the hut is blathering the same thing and they don't give destroying it a thought. Though of course, that is probably done so the player can actually listen to the Breencast. Or follow their example and rip it from the plug

In all honesty, these things have only started bothering me now i've played Half-Life 2 so many times. But they're still important with respects to the Episodes, because, especially in Episode One, you were effectively simply playing the same game again. The Exit 17 escort mission probably wouldn't have made me quite as frustrated if it was in Half-Life 2 all those years ago for instance.

 

[kacation_man]

*stratches head * wait what?

 

[Jintor]

He said: Keeping Rebels alive while following you was done in HL2 and was essentially repeated for Exit 17.

Which is not completely true but true enough in that the AI is still as moronic. Still standing in your god-damned way and nudging you into the line of fire. Morons.

 

[kacation_man]

oh... yes very true... i dont like that they have the power to push you, they should have to ask you to move, even in parts with main characters during section that mostly do just story telling. if im in the way of a control panel i dont like that alyx can simply nudge me out of the way, she should have to ask me to move..

 

[Flynn(Snarkpit)]

How about "grenade rebels"?

 

[Solver]

The rebel AI, I think, was decent. Mostly. In HL2, when fighting off soldiers, they indeed helped. They do, though, have a few problems, such as sometimes refusing to stay behind cover.

Their poorest moment was in Ep1, Exit 17. When you try to escort those citizens to the trainstation, but there are Combine in that yard, the citizens insist of staying there and engaging into firefights with the soldiers, instead of following you quickly. That particular bit I found disappointing.

 

[W4d5Y]

yeah, they should've been running away, giving you covering fire, saying stuff liek 'go ahead!', signalizing fear, since I wouldn't want to die in vain, if there was a ****ing train right ahead to leave a city w/, that was going to vanish any minute. And about Alyx: She's said to be bossy, so she could also give you a wtf-view if you run around like a retard or stand in her way...It's typical 'move over there...no wait, better there...Oh noes, better just stay here and don't move...Don't...MOVE!' if you're in a small corridor for example and she's like smiling and running around, getting out of your way, if if it was the Olympics...Just like any other npc does...sutpid n4ps...

 

[Darkangel]

ya that part really pissed me off too

 

[Jintor]

So there you have it, Valve. Improve Citizen AI with your Steam feature! Otherwise we'll just complain about how you abuse it to make it too easy. : P

 

[W4d5Y]

And add grenades + crossbows, and medics blasting cps with revolvers. YYYYYYEEEEAAAHHH that'd be sweet IMO. I used to see what the console could be good for and once started Missing Info on a very cool map called sc_17 (it's multiplayer) and used the console for throwing in random alies and foes. It was pretty cool, espacially with combines using oicws, but basically I was trying to find out how many guns the npcs could make use of, and seeing that there's actually somebody who does not only build but also USE crossbows is really a valuable achievment.

 

[DarkStar]

I think the fact they are ragtag serves the story, which in halflife is one of the most important things.

 

[ríomhaire]

Allied snipers with crossbows covering you in EP2 FTW!

 

[bigburpco]

Meh, I'd rather not.

So many hot rebars flying through the air makes me want to watch out for my ass.

 

[Narvi]

I wish they could be a little MORE ragtag. As they are, all of them are unbelievably superb engineers and technicians. They build rutting drawbridges out of scrap metal, in a WARZONE for crying out loud.

 

[Ridge]

I think the fact they are ragtag serves the story, which in halflife is one of the most important things.

Agreed. If they perfectly organized all of a sudden and started pushing combine forces back into the Citadel, Gordon wouldnt be necessary...

 

[flycrusher]

The problem with the rebels is not that they have been designed to be stupid and look like poor soldiers, but that their AI is absolutely not effective.
As i'm a moder and a coder, i have looked deeply in the AI code and i've noticed that since the first Half-Life it has become far more complicated. They have added a lot of things especially for the choreography system.
In fact by extending this AI they have made it less effective. The NPC has to go through a lot of checks before beeing able to do something.
The main problem is that when a NPC is caught in a sudden event he has to go through a long processus. For example a grenade drop at his feets, before beeing able to run away, he must check if he is in a script, if the player is giving orders, what's the globals state and so on. Then he has to stop his actual schedule and decide for a new one that would be to run away, but once again he has to find a safe point, then find a route to go there, and finaly move. So if there are many npcs and not many routes there is a traffic jam and every one is blown up. So there is a hack in the code to avoid this, one poor rebel is chosen in the group and takes all the damage to save the others!!!
This is to show you that the AI code needs a real rebuild. There are many other examples as the friendly fire code to avoid to kill them when they systematically run into your fire or fire at you.
The way they stupidly run to strider shooting with ineffective weapons making any stealth approch totally impossible. The code doesn't check if the ennemy can get hurt or if it's best to avoid him. It does a lot of things but not the most important ones!!
The command mode is also totally useless, when in a fight they mostly ignore you, when you tell them to go somewhere they never stay more than 10 second, there is a timer set so, so you find them back in you way.
The choreography scenes need synchro so they just push you out of the way when they need to do something.
When you are in a small hallway whith some rebels, it's a real pain in the as.s because the code telle the rebel to go out of the way, but when they are many, the time response is very long so you are like a fly in a spider net.

So you can see that if the rebels are poor fighters and a real pain sometimes, it's not because it has been wanted so, but more because the way the AI has been done is really not so good.
I have read an article from Gabe somewhere speaking about multicore processors and AI or physics. He said that the main problem now is that if you need a good AI system you will need to use multiple threads using multiple processors core. To ensure that the AI will be effective and be complicated enough to accomplish multiple tasks in a decent time a single processor core will not be able to do it without a massive drop of the FPS.
That means that when you want a very complicated AI system like in HL2, if you can't do it in multiple threads, you will be forced to make shortcuts and drop many features to ensure that a standard PC will do the job decently.

 

[MorganFreeman911]

Allied snipers with crossbows covering you in EP2 FTW!

INDEED!!

 

[kupocake]

Insightful stuff Flycrusher. I hope these problems will be ironed out in later versions of Source and when multi-core processing tech becomes the norm...