The Weekend Debate — Intelligence Design

when are we getting Crash Bash as a PSone classic?

HI James

Ross said he was going to reply to comments on the store update but hasnt yet, can you let him know, as he promised, like he promises every week but fails to reply to anything.

I would say that a good game AI is one that does what it is supposed to do. No running into walls, not moving just doing what it was created to do be it kill us,(or at least try to),beat us in races or most importantly make our gaming experiance fun.

A good AI makes a game good.

And also, if the AI dont fail at doing what he is suppose to do, then thats ofcourse a good AI.

A good game AI has to be smart, a quick thinker more like. I.E: In racing games the AI has to be competitive, smart and clean so we have a good challenge. GT5 did not get this right because (Pre 1.10) once you overtook an AI controlled car it would literally give up on trying to race. An AI also has to be bug free, do what the game wants it to do and make sure you have fun. A good game I feel fits this description is Duke Nukem Forever. When you play the game on “Come Get Some” difficulty or higher, the AI puts up a great fight, it thinks quickly too and it does what the game wants it to do, kill Duke Nukem!

Good AI is the AI that is scripted but also unscripted, what i mean by this is scripted to know what it has to do and unscripted to give the gamer a un-notice of whats going to come next, also a good AI is a hard AI so the games has a true challege and feels that wow feeling inside.

AI these days are too easy, well in my mind anyway, scripted with some unscript in an AI oponnent would make THE BEST AI.

Hope i win!

A goog AI should react when the player perform any action, following this action-reaction system not systematically but in an adaptative way. I mean, to react “wisely” to our actions in game. Of course that’s apart from the normal behaviour of the system which should be pretty much as in “normal” life.

A good AI makes each game through challenging but humanly, I remember counter strike days where the cross-hair is over people before they go around the corner – that is not good AI.

Also, it must adapt to new situations as it arises. A situation where you have one person flanking whilst another group is rushing. They should become defensive positions instead of simply guns out too.

Good AI for an example is within Battlefield Bad Company 2 Onslaught Mode.

Hardcore setting is very hard as the enemy tracks you, if you hide behind cover then grenades & rpgs will come your way & they will jump into vehicles etc & generally hide themselves.

Better AI would hide behind cover & try & flank you & keep you thinking & not guessing what they are going to do next!

Duke Nukem was a poor game but the AI was spot on imo.

Too many games have enemies that get stuck or stand still & don’t really do alot.

AI needs to evolve slightly where within a driving game for instance, if you overtake a racer then that racer comes back a bit more aggressive in nature & tries to ram, get in your way or attempt a tailslide, until you get the upperhand.

Needs to be tested more rigorously & adapt to copy your methods like a friend would, sat beside you with another controller in hand

Good AI is AI that is suited to the game in question. Whilst some games like COD or GT5 need unpredictable human-like AI in order to add to the immersion not all games do. The Metal Gear series, is, in my opinion, a great example of a genre that works better with scripted predictable AI. Admittedly being able to stand just outside the cone of vision in MGS1 and not be seen was a little bit silly but a large part of the fun was learning the patterns of the enemy patrols and knowing when to move.

Good AI also needs to maintain the difficulty level. DJ Hero 2 sticks in my mind as a game where the difficulty level of the boss AI spiked. I was quite happily making my way through the game on expert getting 4 or 5 stars on each song but when it came to the first battle I got my ass well and truly handed to me over and over again. Yes those levels should be more challenging, but to go from 5 stars no AI to constant failure against AI seems odd.

i think a great idea for a good AI would be for example on a game like call of duty where u play a game online but this game becomes saved then the softwear scipts the match u played and turns the people u were playing online with into AI so u could really improve on ur play this way

A.I in games is down to A: the genre B: the intended consumer and C: to give a little fun to the game. I mean nobody complains that Goombas in Mario only walk left and right till you jump on them do they? Yet if this is what Nathan Drakes enemies did there would be an outrage. I don’t want my platformers to have enemies who suddenly think “I don’t want those boots on my head I’m off” I think there has to be some leeway. Make A.I too real and you risk taking the whole point we play games in the first place away and that’s to have a little fun. I mean lets be honest with ourselves how many of us have loved games with easy enemies but hated games with harder than nails enemies. The A.I doesn’t make the game the game does, you could have the most intelligent system in the world but if the game sucks it’s still gunna suck. I want a challenge but I also want to feel like I have power I don’t have in the real world. Games like Enslaved and Prince Of Persia are fun because you can jump around the world if the enemies were impossible to kill due to A.I the games would have lost their charm. Games like Call Of Duty call for greater A.I due to the subject matter and lack of any other style of play so the challenge needs to be there.

Good enemy AI is the type of AI that take cover and pop out to shoot in differant places each time in FPSs. The type of AI KZ3 has. Also the type of AI that try to flank you in FPSs is good aswel. None of that standing in the open just firing and throwing grenades constatly like in COD games.

In RPGs the type of AI that know what attacks and heals to use is good aswel. Say if you were paralised like in WKC2, if the AI actually coped on to that fact and used magic to heal your paralisis instead of looking at you for 1 minute until the effects wear off then that would be good AI. Also if your Companion AI had knowledge of the enemies weaknesses and attacked monster to the best of their abilities then thats good AI.

In racing games like Gran Turismo, if the AI cars tryed blocking your car when you overtake them and braked behind you when you slow down instead of ramming into the back of your car then thats good AI.

Good AI, for me, needs to react as would be expected. If I throw a brick at someone, I expect them to move out of the way and retaliate. I deliberately threw a brick at someone, they should get angry. They need more human emotion and characteristics, I would want AI to be something I can connect with and share experiences in a game like, say, he Sims. For AI to react like a human being, studying playstyles of humans and adapting. Humans can and have evolved and so can AI. They just need to copy a human and not follow structures. They need to watch and learn from us, the gamers. We should teach the AI like children, so that we can make them as we would want them to be. So every AI needs to be unique and individual in a game. They need to have one of the most important parts of us in them – unique thinking. That, in my opinion is good Artificial Intelligence.

Good AI comes in two steps.

1) No glitching. It doesn’t matter how ‘smart’ the AI can be, if it runs into walls, catches on invisible bounding boxes of scenery, runs off into the distance chasing a ghost, changes weapon repeatedly without firing, etc. Talks to you every single time you face it, even though it’s permanently standing right behind you. Then it’s already bad.

2) Smarts. The AI should be a proficient user of any weapon it wields. It should be able to execute all the basic attacks the human character can. Grenades/Secondary fire should be used when sensible.

Is the target against a wall or in a choke point? Please deploy grenades.
Is the target in your face? Don’t shoot it, hit it.

In short, for me, good AI responds sensibly if a little predictably to what you throw at it, and whichever side it’s on, at worst, it should appear to be a very bad player, not a script that has got stuck in a loop.

Artificial Intelligence in games needs to be competent and able to make decisions in a rational way. Something which is simple and repetetive is boring for the player to come up against. It lacks the challenge that AI with some decision making processes behind it will show. If an enemy just walks back and forth with a single straight line of sight, it just becomes too easy to by-pass them. Although that isn’t to say the best AI will be the AI that always makes the right choices, always knows where you are going and what weapon to use and always lands a hit, thats just like playing against someone who’s hacked the game to make themselves stupidly powerful. It’s just unenjoyable. So to me good AI is adaptable to the changes in the game, but to also have some degree of error. Making them stupidier to make them more realistic, but not so stupid that they can’t ‘think’. Having the mistakes gives people a want to keep playing, if they believe they can win then they will want to play.

In my opinion good AI needs to first and foremost not cheat. I remember as a kid playing a certain plumber based kart game and being hugely frustrated that no matter how far ahead I got the computer would always catch up. Another example of this is the teleporting gestalt conscious guards from Oblivion that were all trained to such an incredible degree that they could spot a stolen butter knife from half a village away.

I like an AI to be fallible, we all make mistakes so our computer opponents should too. Take for example Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, the AI in that game is superb.

I think that a good AI ultimately needs to have diversity. In real life, everybody acts differently in difficult situations. For example, if Resistance was real life, some people would run out, shooting everything that moved, while others would stay back, and hide to survive for as long as possible. And then there’s a huge range of different reactions apart from these two extreme possibilities.

In the same way, when playing online, different players play very differently. The recent beta for Uncharted 3 springs to mind, where you could easily have each player on a single team playing very different tactics. Some would hide, and play the game stealthily; others would charge forwards and shoot everyone in sight; others might run around collecting treasures, or trying to complete the goals of each map.

Diversity is at the centre of intelligence, and is what separates a computer from a human. No matter how much information is stored on a computer, it can never hope to become “intelligent”, because it cannot make diverse decisions, unlike a human.

Continued from 18…

Good AI in games should show the same sort of diversity, allowing the AI characters to make intelligent, almost “random”, and yet intricately sensible decisions based upon that particular character’s traits. This would allow you to come up against some opponents which (in the example of a shooter) would run and hide from you, or attack you directly, with a whole host of other options in between.

This sort of sporadic human decision, based upon spur of the moment thinking as well as natural character traits should always be adopted into the creation of a truly “intelligent” AI.

For AI to be good, it has be able to fool you into thinking you are playing against/with real people. It has to be able to make mistakes, but it has to learn from it’s mistakes as well.

It will be impossible to make AI that is 100% real, but if it can fool gamers into thinking it is real, it’s good in my book.

A ‘good’ AI has to meet certain criteria for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s a friendly or hostile AI

1) Don’t behave out of place
The AI should not do something arkward, that breaks the immersion i.e. run into walls, runs into gunfire, without any cover, or does not support you in the way it would be logical.

2) Don’t be too aggressive / passive in some events towards the player
Just picking on the player to make it hard for him, even if the better way would be attacking another AI to secure victory for the AI itself feels so wrong. I’ve played a lot of games, where the AI worked together, to hinder me, in order that I don’t reach the goal as a winner (primarely racing games) instead of going first place for themselves. Sure, in some situation teamwork is required and then it is a good thing to see…

(to be continued…)

3) Be bound by the same rules as the player
Sure rules can be bent – a bit – it happens in the real world all the time, where some rules don’t apply to other beings, but overall if the AI is allowed to cheat severely, it just makes the game challenging for the wrong reason and leads to some frustration.
(continued…)

4) Don’t be predictable
If the AI reacts all the time and always the same way when the player does something, the game could feel boring and can easily break it. If the you attack someone in the real world odds are that the attacked person flees, but also fights back. The AI should do the same. However it shouldn’t go into places where 1) applies. Especially scripted AI is the worst – read: if player attacks do run else walk.

(to be continued)

(continued)

5) Be various
AI =/= AI. Some AIs have different tasks. If I recall correctly Pac-Man had three different AI

AI1 -> Chase player
AI2-3 -> Try to position itself in front of the player
AI4 -> Randomly walk around the board

Now-a-days also different AIs fullfill different rules. A normal citzizen should not be like a soldier A famous racer doesn’t act like a rookie and so on. If the AI is various, there is always something for the player to discover and adapt to.

Well, that are my 2 cents.

The best AI are the ones that twist ur expectations. We’ve played 100s of games, and r able to predict what the AI will do, so when an AI lures u into a trap, or exploits ur “this is a game, he won’t do that” mentality, they really do stand out from the crowd.

I would say a good AI is one that tries to figure you out as you are trying to figure it out. so when you are going through a game the AI is learning what you do in certain situations and adjusts itself, so you cant just keep using the same tactics you have to evolve with it.

good example of bad ai was crap driving from team mate in halo reach.

Hi James!
Tricky question this time! A good AI is different for a hardcore player or a casual player point of view.
AI is one of the most important features in a game. A bad or inadequate AI ruins completely the playing experience an may lead to that game’s early end.
A ‘good’ AI should be suited for each particular game and should never restrict gameplay.

@Shou_Kobayashi

Dude stop cheating! its not fair, evryone is bieng fair by putting 1 answer down and your putting 3! just stop cheating.

Thanks for this great app.

Good AI should be implemented with enough different response-sets to reply different to (nearly) every possible action you make in a game and have influence on the game itself.

my posts are not working its like 15 attempts then it might pop up on blog. this has been going on 4 ages now im tired of all the mistakes from sony its no longer fun to play just stressful

I would say it means that you can allow the charter to think as if it is an online player without programers. Also the charter should give a fair chance to destroy it but less of a chance as the game progress’s

A good AI, regardless of difficulty level, can uphold the illusion that a player is playing against other humans. This means that it has to not only react to the player’s actions, but it also has to manipulate the player and force tactics. When you’re pitted 1vs1 against AI, you might throw a grenade to force him out of cover. A good, human, opponent would anticipate this tactic and switch cover beforehand, or tries to rush you when you’re throwing and can not shoot.

Also, AI has to be able to work as a team. AI does not only have to react to events in his vicinity, but also to the positions of his fellow AI. When you play with humans, you use tactics like coverfire and flanking. Most AI nowadays does not. Assigning different roles to different enemies, and switching roles when needed, will make groups of enemies a more formidable opponent.

In short: Good game AI is AI that will challenge a player without needing to resort to giving the enemy more health, firepower or great

er numbers

Sorry for double post, I hate internet explorer.

@2 why ya complaining about ross, james hasn’t done bugger all. summer sale blog page had 400+ comments and not one reply. ai is pretty good these days a bad example was the driving from team mate in halo reach and yes gt5 was lacking the will to win after take over. ai in games should be like a game of chess always on top of your every move but with thousands of different outcomes its pretty impossible to program so much info into a game

I would say it means that you can allow the charter to think as if it is an online player without programers. Also the charter should give a fair chance to destroy it but less of a chance as the game progress’s

End still no word on the Indentity theft protection plan for Netherlands (and other countries).
This is not going to happen, right?
I´m VERY disapointed in Sony.

There really is no need to argue this at great lengths. It’s quite simple. A good AI in games is exactly as good special effects or good music is in films: the ones you don’t notice.
They support the main feature (in this case, the game itself) in every way, and they do this the best when you aren’t even aware of their presence. So a good AI is the one that acts normal. One that blends in, looks like real life behavior.

@36 no its not happening, my advise is dont give out correct personal info online

First enemy Ai.
I think good enemy or game AI can act like real humans.
First of all in a fps. The enemy must take cover, tries to flank you, but can make mistakes. Sometimes they must act as cannonfodder. As the enemy makes little or big mistakes, but still show an anticipation on you moves, the game becomes challenging.
When there are more people on a battlefield against you, I think a game must add a person in command of a squadron. In games these days…most fps throws enemies at you… But you can make a squadron of enemies lifelike just by adding a commander. The commander is there to give directions on the battlefield for the enemies. In that respect the immersion of a a squadron enemies is hightened… You hear the commander(if you’re close enough) make the decisions on the battlefield. …

I can’t even remotely think of a game which has “good” AI really when you start to really delve in what AI really actually is.

I believe were way away from what true AI is capable of doing in gaming today.

@2 why ya complaining about ross, james hasn’t done bugger all. summer sale blog had 400+ comments and not one reply. ai is pretty good these days a bad example was the driving from team mate in halo reach and yes gt5 was lacking the will to win after take over. ai in games should be like a game of chess always on top of your every move but with thousands of different outcomes its pretty impossible to program so much info into a game

ai is pretty good these days a bad example was the driving from team mate in halo reach and yes gt5 was lacking the will to win after take over. ai in games should be like a game of chess always on top of your every move but with thousands of different outcomes its pretty impossible to program so much info into a game and if it were people would complain thats its to realistic. keep gamein fun, wont a challeng in fps join army

part 2: … What games can add is a fleeing option. When the commander is down… some enemies lose there moral and flee. It’s a tiny thing added to the AI, that also can add to the immersion.
Also the enemy AI can use diversion. It can use tactics beyond taking cover and flank. Throwing grenade to get you out of your own cover. Send a recon enemy to distract you from the flanking manouvre they’re performing.
So the enemy AI should make realistic decisions based on the situation they are in. The whole must also add to the immersion.

Friendly AI is very challenging to accomplish. In games now they only heal you and help you shoot your enemies. But what if you have a commander who also give tactics… to tackle the situation… But it should be possible the disobey an order for the good of the bad of the squadron. ( An idea is, you have a squadron, when they’re dead, they’re dead ..an added layer of difficulty… obey and perform as told…save the squadron, disobey and risk the life of your fellow comrades). The friendly Ai should use realistisc tactics too…

I think “good” AI is any code that can allow a character to use their environment to the best of their abilities, but without constraining the AI to set scripts and paths. In short, it should be able to reasonably act like a human would while playing the game.

One big issue with AI is path-finding, or the AIs ability to traverse the landscape. One of the greatest examples of competent AI was Freedom Fighters by iO interactive. The AI could go anywhere you could, by monitoring how the player traveled through the landscape. That was released in 2003, yet some companies still struggle, and the end result is enemies/allies stuck on walls or bits of terrain.

(cont)

Another issue is AI that has no sense of self-preservation. We’ve all seen at one point or another AI suddenly jump up from cover and wander into danger. That’s an example of foolish AI programming. There’s no reason that AI shouldn’t be able to use the cover available in ways that a human can.

In racing games, it’s common to see the AI stick to a perfect racing line, never deviating. Again, a person wouldn’t do that. While, granted, it’s harder to code a good AI to pull off all the neat tricks in a game, and no AI can guess what every person ever will do in a game, it should be able to at least try ideas or use its environment to its benefit.

Of course, an AI design can go out the other side, and the AI spends too long trying to decide what to do. Ever captured an objective with a bot in a game, and noticed it stands bolt still for several seconds before heading to the next objective? Thats the AI “thinking”, trying to decide what to do next. With too many convoluted options, and AI can just get bogged down, to the point where it’s a hindrance more than anything.

(cont)
These are all issues in modern games today. I could name names, but I feel that wouldn’t be fair.

In short, a “good” AI should be reasonably able to do all the things a human player could do with the tools available. If that means cutting a few convoluted features from a game, or spending that extra month coding to get it right, so be it. I’d rather play against a fun, challenging AI rather than a poor representation of an opponent. Companies got it right in the past. Maybe they should concentrate more with whats currently available, and code the AI for it better, rather than desperately trying to add “new features”.

@36 / OttoT

Nope, its not going to happen. Its SCEE remember?

They only care for the UK (except when they can sell something then out of a sudden they do care about other countries…).

A good A.I has 2 get better and better all the time. Best A.I’s i’ve seen on PS3 is from Call of duty world at war’ and Motorstorm 2′ And the most crap A.I has 2 go 2 Section 8 you can fire 50 shots in there back before they turn round and face you even on hardest game settings. Mind you i do think games have gone much easyer and i’ve been gaming 25years.