Return to “Games”

Post

Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#1
Now that I'm working seriously on LT's AI, I'm curious to know what games you guys have played that you think have really good artificial intelligence? Personally, I'm not sure I ever played a game where I thought the AI was actually doing any substantial "thinking," and I'd be very interested to do some research on games that have actually put effort into this oft-neglected area of development.

So, what's the smartest AI you've ever encountered in a game, and why do you say that (what makes you think it's smart)?
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#2
Depends on what category you want to talk about since every game AI is unique to a specific problem/goal. Also I find a general problem of game AI being that it is extremely obvious some of the check the AI is doing and thus ruins the gaming experience.

AI War I guess is something that's very well known as well as well documented. However I find it too math based to the point where it becomes see through (even though it openly does that).

Stardocks Fallen Enchantress has something interesting AI in the way it expands and determines threats and how it achieves a strategy to win the game. Brad Wardell has always been very vocal and open about it so I am sure he would be an easy person to ask for ideas.

I have always held 2K's NBA AI in high regard since it is probably best representation of a sports game ever made.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#3
Although it's probably not the kind of AI you're expecting to hear about, I find that out of all the Civ-style games, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri does the best job of actually creating personalities out of AI factions. The AI represents the faction's intended play-style very well.

Otherwise, I like Unreal Tournament's bots and consider them to be the most humanlike in terms of play patterns (and the fact that they don't possess eyes on the back of their heads).
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#4
Fallen Enchantress was designed for an AI. =)
If you design a complex game, then write the AI for it, you're in trouble.

There are also very few games that have an AI working in a 3D space while having a strategic AI running in the background...
Turn-based games have infinitely more time to compute every move so they can use a lot more brute force / iteration.

You typically find the best AIs in games that have limited and discrete actions. Chess, for instance, but the new XCOM is also not such a bad example.
In both games the "move" of the AI has very few moving parts. Desired position is greatly limited by areas that are "in cover", limiting the positions from which the AI actor can be the greatest threat to the enemy.

The principle applies to every AI but a game like LT is not only needs realtime 3D, which massively limits the amount of "3D AI" you can cram into the tactical level, it also requires a strategic AI to animate the universe and that in several LOD.


The only game I am familiar enough with to evaluate the AI is X3. It has the exact same problems.

In every case, a lot of AI "smarts" is in assessing the current situation. Making the AI understand combat, understand the economic and military situation of a faction.
If you can do that part, it's downhill the rest of the way.
In X3, this part is largely skipped entirely and what AI is there is purely reactive.

That the X3 combat AI appears adequate most of the time is because the ships are practically all symmetrical. That negates any up/down aspect. Distance becomes the only factor.
It's a dirty trick but it works. =)

Example: The AI has figured out that the upper side of your battleship has all Flak guns, the bottom all anti-capital guns. The threat for a fighter is much lower below the battleship.
The solution is easy. Order it to fly below the ship.
The figuring-out part is much, much more expensive. If you don't have to do that at all...

Alas, with targetable sub-systems you will have to do it. =P
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#5
And this is why Total War separates it's games into the strategic and tactical side =p

It all depends on the goals set for the AI whether those are short or long term goals. Eg Harvest Resources in a sector vs Build an Extractor for a specific asteroid etc.

I presume that this long term goal planning that has a series of subsets is probably the most logical approach rather then a AI that only reacts to it's environment. I am not sure for AI in classic RTS games but do they build resource structures on a pre-determined algorithm or just by what they encounter?
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#6
In X3 Rebirth, the programmers faced a similar 3D problem because there will be targetable sub-systems.

It is public knowledge ;) that they cut up the space around a capital ship into sections. 4 or 8, depending, I guess.
That way an attacking fighter, which wants to target a specific sub-system, knows which "square" it has to go to to be able to hit that specific sub-system.
It limits the options that have to be computed in realtime.
It also helps route-finding around a capital ship. A fighter only needs to target the adjacent square as a waypoint. Unlike in X3, it does not directly fly to a point behind the ship, then executing completely random evasion maneuvers until it randomly slips around the ship that is in the way.

Once the fighter is close enough, things get easier. It no longer has to fly around the whole damn ship, it only needs to point it's guns towards the target and pull the trigger.

The same could be achieved by a more fuzzy approach, projecting a point from the capital ship through the sub-system, to a point 1-2km outside of it. That is the point that a fighter much more or less reach before being able to start it's attack run.
Just another twist to the 3D math you're using for your land-on-the-hull feature.
But again, you're limiting choices. Instead of having to evaluate every possible square meter of space around the capital ship, the fighter has to find a route to exactly one point with an accuracy of x m.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#7
This is a very well communicated and detailed account of a decision tree avoiding spaceship game AI. Some ideas in it seem very good, but he's taken a different path than Josh will. (e.g. it cheats economically)

http://christophermpark.blogspot.ca/200 ... art-1.html

There is practical experience in this article--I think thats really valuable--and FWIW, wikipedia says the game's AI was lauded by critics.
If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, also we should begin to wonder if perhaps we were created for another world. -C.S. Lewis

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. -Jim Eliot, martyr
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#8
I can vouch for the decentralised AI approach and the emergent flocking / pack behaviour because I have done that before.
The units showed teamwork without ever having been told that they are a team. Even units from allied races would work together seamlessly.
Not because I made them all super smart but because I made them a little smart individually... and then got the hell out of their way.
Even for the mighty smart player, these units were a royal pain.

This doesn't happen automatically, of course. That would be too easy. =P
You have to structure the situational awareness of your ships in a way for this to be the logical outcome.
What conditions, nodes, or whatever that may be in case of LT? I don't have the foggiest idea. That depends on the specifics of the combat systems.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#9
Personally I was not a huge fan of the AI in XCOM. It's obviously extremely linear on the strategic end and on the tactical end the AI has to compensate by having increased Crit and Hit chances. This is something I've always absolutely hated in games. I'm perfectly fine with the solution in XCOM of only allowing a max of 5 active units for the AI in the Easy / Normal settings, but I hate the solution to make the game "harder" is to allow the AI to cheat. To me that just screams "We were unable to make more compelling / challenging AI."

I have always enjoyed the AI in most of Paradox Interactive's grand strategy titles, such as Europa Universalis III and Crusader Kings II to just name a couple.

To be quite honest I think that's one of the biggest challenges of single player games these days. I generally play multiplayer because it provides a unique challenge. Every opponent may approach a similar scenario entirely differently. To be able to create a robust AI with multiple personalities based on a seed that provides a challenge without giving an advantage to the AI players would be quite the accomplishment in my eyes.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#11
I play the ancient chinese game of Go (it's awesome, check it out). It is the current test bench for the most powerful AI algorithms, just like chess was in the day.

Most bots are very bad at the game, because the intelligence needed to excel in it is almost irreductibly human.

However, some of the top bots (Zen in particular: http://senseis.xmp.net/?ZenGoProgram ) are extremely good. This one is stronger than almost every player at my local club (except for the professional Japanese man who owns it).

Please note the difference between Go and Chess. By today's computing standards a chess algorithm is trivial. That's because chess has a small tree complexity and it is possible to brute-force through all legal moves until the optimum has been found. In go, such thing is impossible, so algorithms do have to reason like a human would.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#12
Hm. I've been through a lot of AI, but the only one so far that impressed me was the one coded for an unofficial Battletech boardgame adaption back in the Commodore Amiga days.
(Mechforce, by Ralph E. Reed, if my dim memory is correct). The AI could play the game adequately, but what struck me as impressive was its self-preservation routines.

Basically, the AI could tell when it was totally outnumbered, and would retreat from the battlefield if that happened. If you tried to set up a completely one-sided match, the AI would run. Same if the numbers shifted badly during the game, or when the damage sustained became too great. The AI would also eject if the mech had no chance to leave the map, or if the situation was hopeless. On several occasions, damaged mechs would use the opportunity to self-destruct if close enough to a mech of my own, preceded by the pilot ejecting.

I'm pretty sure the actual fighting subroutines weren't all that hot in retrospect - but the dogged self-preservation instinct the AI showed went a long way of making it feel "real".
Hardenberg was my name
And Terra was my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#13
Hardenberg wrote:Hm. I've been through a lot of AI, but the only one so far that impressed me was the one coded for an unofficial Battletech boardgame adaption back in the Commodore Amiga days.
(Mechforce, by Ralph E. Reed, if my dim memory is correct). The AI could play the game adequately, but what struck me as impressive was its self-preservation routines.

Basically, the AI could tell when it was totally outnumbered, and would retreat from the battlefield if that happened. If you tried to set up a completely one-sided match, the AI would run. Same if the numbers shifted badly during the game, or when the damage sustained became too great. The AI would also eject if the mech had no chance to leave the map, or if the situation was hopeless. On several occasions, damaged mechs would use the opportunity to self-destruct if close enough to a mech of my own, preceded by the pilot ejecting.

I'm pretty sure the actual fighting subroutines weren't all that hot in retrospect - but the dogged self-preservation instinct the AI showed went a long way of making it feel "real".
this sounds beautiful. one problem ive had with a lot of the ai in games that they never know when theyve had enough. take elderscrolls for a quick example. ill bash their heads in they will have all of 15 hp left and while they beg for mercy trying to regain their bearings the moment their health regens enough for them to stand up they run at me like im a small furry rodent... the fact that ai are aware of their situation and acct accordingly sounds right up LT path and would make for very complex fights id imagine.
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#14
For me, probably Starfarer.

While the "admiral AI" could use some work, fighting the AI in small tactical engagements can be very difficult. The AI flanks constantly, stays just outside of your weapon range, aims for the engines a lot, and can really punish you for making mistakes.

If the AI in Limit Theory comes close to Starfarer's, I'll be enjoying LT quite a bit.
Post

Re: Best Game AI You've Ever Seen?

#15
BillyRueben wrote:For me, probably Starfarer.

While the "admiral AI" could use some work, fighting the AI in small tactical engagements can be very difficult. The AI flanks constantly, stays just outside of your weapon range, aims for the engines a lot, and can really punish you for making mistakes.

If the AI in Limit Theory comes close to Starfarer's, I'll be enjoying LT quite a bit.
I like Starfarer, but it's less the AI being smart and more like them calculating not to fly into your death lasers.

Online Now

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests

cron