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| Re: Alright, then redirecting the monologue: Do you know how the AI works, then? by Forensic 07/02/2003, 11:31am PDT | ||||
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| I think we need to define some terms first. Scripting and AI are both ways to let you believe you're fighting a living, thinking enemy. I think when most people say "AI" they mean that a map maker could plop an enemy down in any territory and they could fight convincingly without further work.
The point the Colonel is rightly making is that the HL1 marines don't count as AI under this definition. If you crack open a map editor, you see that the soldier encounters are heavily scripted. The paths they can run are predefined, as are their reactions to different situations. (Just how the "reactions" work I'm fuzzy on, but I'm taking other people's word for it.) Setting up marine encounters is a hell of a lot of work. But like the Colonel says, the scripting in the game is so masterful that nobody would think it was scripting unless you checked under the hood. It's more convincing as AI then actual AI. (If you want to see the marine scripting system painfully obvious and poorly done, download some fan-made single player levels.) Contrast this with a game like Halo that really does do AI. Wherever they are on the huge outdoor maps, and wherever you are, they'll still dive out of the way of vehicles, hide for cover when their shields are low, recon when you're hiding, alert each other to where you are, etc. The problem is that the intelligence of the enemy doesn't become obvious until you play on a hard difficulty level or get a partner who sucks, because you'll be killing them too quickly for them to do anything smart. I was showing the game to someone who doesn't play games much, and he was taking a pounding on co-op. I got killed in one encounter, so the screen went to an overhead view. He was just standing in one spot, and everything was quiet. I could see that there was an enemy hiding right behind the tree he was standing next to, crouching in wait, and I warned him about it. He was like "What do you mean, it's 'hiding'?" We'd been playing for an hour, but he had mentally ranked the AI somewhere on Quake level, so it boggled his mind that they could do something so smart. So the question is, if good scripting can produce more believeable enemies than "AI" AI, is it worth doing AI at all? And are those Barneys in the E3 trailer advancing along a predefined path, or are they identifying cover some other way and moving towards it? Bungie still seems to think AI is the way to go, and Halo 2 is supposed to feature improved squad AI so units will co-operate more effectively as a group. I'm curious to see how it turns out. |
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