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"He's cheating damn it!"

One thing I hate in games more than when some spotty 15 years old kid activates the infinite life cheat in an online game is when computer controlled players decide to do the same thing.

Take Mario Kart 64. After doing a HUGE cheat yourself, thus putting the rest of the pack a lap down, they somehow always managed to gain huge amounts of ground on you by the end of the race- how?

Now that is just plain annoying. But what's even worse is when the game developer makes their characters cheat to hide flaws in AI. So, for example, you could give them perfect shooting accuracy to make up for the fact they will randomly walk out from doorways rather than wait for you to blindly walk in!

You know, it never really strickes you how bad AI is until you do things you're not expected to do. So, instead of going out of the underground bunker, you instead run back inside it, and hide in a room. At which point a million guards all run to where you are, knowing your exact position! Complete nonsense!

In all honesty, the only game I've played in the last year that really does make the computer characters have their own intelligence, rather than giving them a load of preprogrammed scenarios, is Halo. The computer players will wait until you need to reload, they have an eliment of randomness to their attacks so they never do the same thing twice (even if you do), and they even (SHOCK) make mistakes as human players will. On harder settings they seem to act like more advanced human players- not just computer players with higher accuracy ratings!

But enough ranting about one game- why don't developers make great AI for their computer characters. Developers like Bungie and Halo put in months of effort, so why not many more?

Well, the answer is that if they keep supplying gamers with non-inteligent computer players, then gamers will just not know the difference. And it's true! Enemies now are no more advanced than they were in Goldeneye... and looking at the game, the enemies literally had no brains in that!

So, why code a great AI engine when you can just adapt a new one with a few more scenarios- how about having enemies beg for their lives every so often when you shoot the gun out of their hands? In the short term it sounds great, but in the long term it just means that the whole intelignece in games is being lost.

sonic

Thanks EB. Nice to know I wasn't the only one.

DrDragon wrote:
> ===SONICRAV---> wrote:
> I've never played UT or B&W, so I can't
> comment on that from experience, but
> didn't BandW get get great reviews?
>

Yes, but I've got no idea really boring garbage. It is novel for five
> minutes, then just annoying.

i could not agree more, it was fun, the graphics great, but thats all superficial, it was crap underneath its novelty coated gloss surface, shallow and generally dull, nice concept, poorly done...

What I want to know, is how do you actually give enemies proper AI. Not just prgramming them with lots of pre-made scenarios, but actually have them react to situations.

Even more complex- how do you make the "hard mode" AI better than the "easy mode" AI instead of just giving them better acuracy or more scenarios?

Sonic

===SONICRAV---> wrote:
> I've never played UT or B&W, so I can't comment on that from experience, but
> didn't BandW get get great reviews?

Yes, but I've got no idea really boring garbage. It is novel for five minutes, then just annoying.

El Burro wrote:
> UT's was good, and thats why UT2's will be brilliant...

B&W was too bad,
> it got stupid after a while, the peasants were simply too stupid and they never
> learned anything, not even how to harvest their own fields, and thats even after
> you told 6 of them to harvest one field... tut tut tut


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I wouldn't know, I've never played it

Though I do have a new GFX card, so it may work now

UT's was good, and thats why UT2's will be brilliant...

B&W was too bad, it got stupid after a while, the peasants were simply too stupid and they never learned anything, not even how to harvest their own fields, and thats even after you told 6 of them to harvest one field... tut tut tut

I never had any problems with UT's AI

Sure, they weren't super intelligent, but did you see them running into walls, firing repeatidly into thin air?

That's when you know a game has problems

I've never played UT or B&W, so I can't comment on that from experience, but didn't BandW get get great reviews? Surely the peasants are mneant to be stupid- after all, if they could do everything for themselves there would be no need for a God- just like society today ;)

sonic

PS. that god thing was a joke bible readers

i think the AI in unreal tournament 2 will be very good, in tournament 1 it wasn't bad for its time, but not brill a few idiocies but generally good.

the worst AI ive encountered is Black & White, those villagers were so god-damn stupid it hurt, they couldn't perform simple tasks you set, they would have had trouble going to the damn toilet if they needed to...
...they couldn't do anything, it meant you spend more of time on micro-management than developing, training and mastering your creature, so for me it got tedious quickly and i got bored...

I think hearing your sneeze is quality!

I agree, the AI in MGS2 is pritty amazing. Just the one flaw mentioned earlier really.