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Procedural A.I.?

#1
Hey there!

At fist i want to say that this project is the first that i backed and it was the first because no other project made me ignore my skeptical attitude to register on kickstarter.

My idea fits quite good into the general concept of the game. "Your" space wont be empty. There will be plenty of other ships doing business in the galaxy, trying to make enough money to make the money to pay their bills. My idea would be to give every NPC a certain "attitude" may it be a ferocious miner or a lunatic bounty hunter and vice versa (flee, fight or cry when attacked). So you never know how the person will react when you start shooting, trading or defending that person. This could make its way to whole factions that behave differently in different "playthroughs". The same race/faction could be aggressively expanding in the one universe but being an intellectual one in the other universe (to say it with Star Trek words, be klingon in one universe, volcan in the other and ferengi in the third)

Thanks for making such a great game ^^
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#2
this would make a cool feature as long as the factions attitude didn't change every time you made a new world with the same seed, which would make sharing seeds pointless if it did change. Other wise that would just still tie into other threads about the Ai and player relation ship.
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#3
Yep, I fully anticipate different personalities at both the individual and faction level!

@Demetrius - Right, this kind of thing would be generated based on the seed, so a given faction in a given universe will always have the same attitude.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#6
The Hedge Knight wrote:Why would he give you credits, period than :/
Maybe so the player doesn't feel completely screwed over? I dunno, but I like the idea none-the-less. You take a contract from someone less reputable, or has a bad rap, don't expect everything to be all fine and dandy at the end.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#7
The Hedge Knight wrote:
happyguy142 wrote:I would love to see NPC's that are less then trustworthy.

"I'll pay you 1000 credits to escort my ship from point a to point b"

Reach destination-"here's 400 credits for your trouble" shoots out your engines, runs away!
Why would he give you credits, period than :/


It was just an example...
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#8
DWMagus wrote:
The Hedge Knight wrote:Why would he give you credits, period than :/
Maybe so the player doesn't feel completely screwed over? I dunno, but I like the idea none-the-less. You take a contract from someone less reputable, or has a bad rap, don't expect everything to be all fine and dandy at the end.
Well he should feel screwed over, then he will learn not to talk to strangers again.
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#10
I was mulling over Freelancer today and remembered one thing about the AI that bugged me when I got to the higher levels. I'd like to turn it into a suggestion for LT, so I figured I'd add it here rather than add a new thread; if it's a duplicate of a previous suggestion then my apologies.

(Note: I never played any of the Freelancer mods, so what I'm about to describe may have been fixed in one of them. It was definitely a characteristic of the vanilla game however.)

The issue was that the AI had no way to assess you as a threat. Thus post campaign, when I was flying a Sabre or Titan with class 10 weaponry on every hardpoint, I'd find Liberty Rogues pilots in Bloodhounds taking me on. These guys were literally one-volley kills but their behaviour was only governed by my standing with their faction and so they would valiantly perish in large numbers.

My suggestion is that AI pilots have two levels of logic that activates when they detect you. The first layer assesses your standing with their faction. If it's good or neutral then no further action is necessary (leaving aside potential actions governed by their procedural AI or bounties on your head). The second layer is where they assess the total strength of you and your forces against themselves and their forces. Only if this calculation indicates a favorable chance of success will they attack.

As usual there are plenty of areas for interesting gameplay mechanics here. Perhaps your faction alignment is different to your reputation as a pilot? Or perhaps their total-force determination includes distance to friendlies, so that NPC pilots know if they're on their own. This may also allow you to STOP ongoing fights by offering protection to one side...
Last edited by mcsven on Wed Mar 13, 2013 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#11
I think you are talking about goals and motivations.

An actor (or group of them) needs to have a reason for attacking you. What do they hope to achieve and what are the odds?

Would pirates attack you if their freighter's cargo holds are filled? They could gain nothing from that because they couldn't pick up any loot!

System security would have "destroy hostiles" as one of their goals but engaging vastly superior forces would amount to screwing up.
Instead, they should shadow the hostiles and request an interdiction force on the projected course.

When "economic dominance" is an AI faction's goal, your very peaceful trade empire would have a threat rating. =)

Attacking is only one of the tools in the box. If it doesn't further the goal, it stays in the box.


I'm sure we will have much fun observing and tricking the game's various levels of AI.
First, there needs to be a bit more of a game, though. =)
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#12
Great idea! In addition I'd also love it if factions would grow weary of you when you become a well known fighter, when you've amassed enough ships to pose a threat, or even when you've collected enough money.
In one way you'd be an asset to them to keep you friendly and to trade with you... On the other hand they should be a bit more paranoid about what you're doing and to whom.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#13
Gazz wrote:I think you are talking about goals and motivations.

...

I'm sure we will have much fun observing and tricking the game's various levels of AI.
Yep, agree with all of that. What I am proposing is definitely a special case of a much more general problem, which, as you say, is what governs the actions of the AI? This could be as complex as Josh wishes. I reckon that being attacked is possibly the action most obvious in a game primarily about space combat however, so it's worth special attention. I suspect for the deployment version of LT want to go for something that is as simple as possible but feels intelligent. That was my beef with the AI behaviour I described in Freelancer - it broke any sense of immersion because it was just so artificial. A real person just wouldn't act that way, and it felt like it would have been a relatively easy fix with some additional logic.

Of course the other issue is: how does the game communicate why the AI has chosen to perform, or not perform, an action? Will it be radio chatter, some sort of magic "intention"-meter that indicates the AI stance towards you or...? In practical terms, that may actually be a more interesting question!
Gazz wrote:First, there needs to be a bit more of a game, though. =)
Yeah, I hear that. This is all stuff that is currently a ways off, and potentially not day-1 functionality. Still interesting to chat about though!

It raises an interesting question as well: does Josh intend to continue development post release? I assume that he's going back to school at some point? Will there still be development, just at a drastically slowed rate?
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#14
One of the tricky bits about AI is to teach it to see.
Sure there's a hostile cruiser 10 km away. Now what does that mean? Is it a danger to me or something I care about? Will it be a danger if I continue my course? Space Is Big, after all. Can I tie up an entire enemy cruiser by having it chase my little patrol boat all across the sector for no reason?

Computers are great at finding facts. Connecting facts to meaning and goals... that's the tricky part.

Once the AI understands the situation, has dissected it into variables and local force concentrations, doing something about it is comparatively easy.
There is no "I" in Tea. That would be gross.
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Re: Procedural A.I.?

#15
happyguy142 wrote:
The Hedge Knight wrote:
happyguy142 wrote:I would love to see NPC's that are less then trustworthy.

"I'll pay you 1000 credits to escort my ship from point a to point b"

Reach destination-"here's 400 credits for your trouble" shoots out your engines, runs away!
Why would he give you credits, period than :/


It was just an example...
If AIs can do that, players should too:

"Here's your freighter with 10 tons of kendrium..."

"Hey! I thought we had a deal for 20 tons?!"

"Want me to shoot out the engines too, while I'm at it?"

".... Aargh, here's your stupid credits, now go away..."

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