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The future of A.I.
DevilXaphan
Member UncommonPosts: 1,144
Playing mmo's from years past, A.I.'s seem to be in a stagnent funk. With today's possibilities, where are the tough and unpredictable npc's we expect from the top game developers. What is the point of a predictable npc when they are boring the players, therefore making the game somewhat boring to.
Game developers need to step up and start making npc's less routine and give mmo's or games in general more suprises that the player won't expect.
Comments
AI is important to any MMO but I doubt that the increase in AI difficulty/predictability would mean anything. take WoW for instance. as far as I can tell, the threat system is the way AI is controlled in that game and its really a game of can my tank hold the treat while everyone else does whatever without much risk (not truely the case all the time but lets face it, its pretty much true). In this case, the problem isn't with AI but the threat system basically saying FU to the AI system. Other games that don't use this system are better off, and AI is really more about how enemies selcet targets, when they choose to use there skills, whether they scatter from AoE or not...what unpredictability do you want? do you want AI to do different things when you you do the same time in 2 identical senarios? do you want the AI to suddenly not play to the optimum of their abilities, and start trying to predict and counter what you do? It would all have to be programmed and I don't think I would pay the money to figure out how complicated an AI can get with todays technology. Its just not worth it. Not to me as a gamer, nor, appearently, to developers, who have to program the games.
tl:dr --> if it ain't broke, don't fix it. (some are but its not that important to most people...I suppose)
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
The only good AI I have ever seen in any game EVER was in F.E.A.R.
I heard they are implementing good A.I. in F.3.A.R. to make sense in playing multiple times the multiplayer part. Sounds good. As for MMOs I heard Darkfall has good A.I.
You should defnitely check out the AI on mobs in DF it's definitely a change of pace and while not equal to another player in difficulty it does make PvE a lot more fun.
Steam: Neph
Darkfall has good AI. They act a lot more like players aside from the lack of bunny hopping.
Ryzom has good AI.
Don't know why it has to be crap everywhere else. We've had the technology for a while.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
I'm talking about npc's moving around some, running away then suddenly turn and attack, use cover, try to flank, call for help and get other npc's of their kind to help, that kind of unpredictability.
The 2.5D game Commandoes Medal of Honour (not the FPS) is what I'd love to see in AI. You had to sneak around out of the enemies cone of vision. A few seconds after seeing you, theyd call the alarm. A lot of the mechanics was about tricking them to come and look at something so you could sneak up behind them.
I doubt we will see A.I's that are about equal to what a player can do in our life time, but i like to see the game developers streatch what the A.I. mechanics can do.
I've worked on AI before, it's no simple feat.
I think the future of Artificial Intelligence is actually Artificial Life. Giving a program a reason to exist on its own. A program that thinks, acts, and makes decisions on its own. Dynamic, learning AI. The code would likely have to be dynamic as well, meaning the code which controls the program would evolve at runtime as the program experiences and encounters new things.
If it moves to the left and bumps into a wall, it remembers where that wall is, and will no longer move in that direction in that area.
If an enemy swings a sword at the program and injurs it, next time it will know to get out of the way or block the attack.
You're talking about Neural Networks and Genetic Alghorithms here ( Wikipedia them if you're not absolutely certain if you know what I mean. )
Frankly we're still ways off with stuff like that. Top universities and science institutes with hundreds of parallel computers, Neural Networks optimized through the most advanced Genetic Alghorithms are almost able to approximate the intelligence of.... wait for it.... a cockroach....
That's right, AI is currently around the level of a cockroach. It may have progressed a little bit since but it's nowhere beyond insect level.
Not to say that cockroaches aren't incredibly smart. If you'd reprogram their brains to use all their neurons for a single purpose you can achieve quite a bit. Neural Networks are able to recognize hand-writing, recognize optimized faces ( look straight in the camera, have short hair etc and it will recognize you. ) function approximation, regression analysis and much more.
But a program that can actually form thoughts, make informed decisions and even a reason of existance that's some serious sci-fi right there. Barring some Turing reincarnation sharing his insights with the world it's not going to happen any time soon. And definetly not in games.
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Resistance is futile.
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I think environment managers may very well be the next evolution. It's not a new approach and has been used in games as far back as the arcade game Sinistar. Left4Dead uses something of that nature, where the number and agression level of the attack is determined partially by how the players are faring.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
A.I. has improved in games, just not for mmo's, which I think is concious choice on the development side to not try and take it a step further.
Now that it's been mentioned, i'm amazed to find that modders for games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 have managed to make a more robust A.I. than i've come across in most games.
The problem is that developers put "all" their effort to develop AI, but don't work much in the spawn. Those should work together to give a good sensation to players.
You can have the most complicated and worked on Ai, if the mob don't have nice respawn timing, quantity, and location of respawn, and space (space in wich the mob can wander), the Ai will have no effect what so ever.
Just look at the way some respawn was made in old school Uo like the Shadow Wyrm respawn, and the L2 style with a mob every scare meter crap, and you'll undertand what i mean. One is very chalanging and interesting the other is shallow as hell. Yet both Ai are mostly equally poor, at least there isn't nothign really special about it, the mob are just randomly throwing a skill, thats all. No combo, no group strategy, nothign than you could call a good AI. Yet both those play totally differently from a player stand point.
So the overall monster spawn is the problem in a mmo, not just the AI. One day some dev will get this kind of thing through their skull, one day...
I think Rift is giving some hope about this, but really untill i have played, it is all rumors. How many time some dev claim to have some features in their game that turned to be just words. So we will see if those portal invasion have any AI/spawn work behind, or are just some rhetorical stuff on a web page.
Actually, the problem is not so much the hardware and algorithms ..
There are both good enough for some amazing stuffs .. I think that just now this in not top priority for most of the games.
No matter how complex or random the Ai becomes it doesnt stop being a string if commads. Sooner or later everyone knows how it works and is easily countered by even the dumbest person. The only time it might prove a challenge is when someone plays it for first time and has no internet info(impossible since sooner or later 100 guides come up) and is forced to search for clues in the dungeon to see how boss will work and see how it is avoided.
The pve mobs in Darkfall all do that.
Steam: Neph
Source? Very interested in what interviews or data that's based on.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Considering what we got in Oblivion to what we were promised, I think the modders are just trying to make Todds lies come true.
What we were promised
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg
What we got
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-zk0eodQHI
For actual AI, I doubt we will see NPC's making choices based on changing information beyond a string of commands and hierarchy of choices, but it would be nice in an MMO that if a mob turns tail and runs, he doesnt stop running until he has some friends with him. For single player games, even with a similar level of AI, however dumb, you can always increase difficulty by throwing more bodies at the player, can script it as an NPC using his radio to call for backup if they are overwhelmed/pinned down, or you change difficulty modes.
the problem with good AI is they become better then humans:D google "deep blue" and you will see what i mean:D the key to a "good" AI is to dumb it down enough so that humans think they are beating the AI w/o making it look too obvious:D
I completely agree better AI is the key to making the next step in both MMOs and single player games. It would be amazing to play game where NPCs acted, reacted, and learned like real life people. Sadly it is going to take years of technical progress before we see anything close to that. Plus such self aware AIs that can learn and possibly even get angry, could turn out to be a liability.
Imagine if after getting defeated by a slew of smartypants players with toons loaded with epic items, the AI's got disgusted and decided to hell with the rules and just teamed up to kick the crap out of the entire player base. Or worse they decided the best way to win was to wipe out all human life ala Skynet.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I did not read this entire post, but have a good example of A.I. that made a game fun. Conkers on the Nintendo 64. On Einstein if the teddy got the magnum the difficulty was fun as hell. "Teddy with a trigger!".
It does seem that mob A.I. in reference to running into AOEs rather then staying back, not taking cover, and not targeting say the healer makes it seem dumb or behind the times atm. I do agree with one of the other posts that how well you are doing and determining the flow/spawn of mobs can amp up the feel of the A.I. in some ways.
As much of a failure the game was, Chronicles of Spellborn's AI actually behaved like that.
its funny you bring this up i was just talking about this is a wow forum post not to long ago in way. I think that questing has gotten so dull because we kill the same mindless creeps we have been for years its just not as much fun as it once was. When you think about it its kinda sad how advanced ryzoms AI was and that was 6 yearish ago but not much has changed since then in mmos.
If your going to ban the trolls please for our sake ban the Fan Boys too.
I hope I haven't posted this in this thread.
There are two reasons we don't have more advanced A.I.
1) Quests - quests are picked up in one area and completed in another area and the areas don't move around. Since the quest areas don't move, neither do the mobs. They don't migrate or anything like that.
2) Scale - more advanced A.I. for one mob is no big deal. If you start doing it for one mob, you have to do it for more of them or all of them. It may be a small change in the amount of processing power necessary, but you have to increase it for every mob that has the better A.I., then multiply it by the number of instances or servers you have.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I want to see a huge world, with kingdoms, different factions, uprisings, players being able to take areas as a guild or whatever and building their own kingdoms, and then the world being able to create content to take out kingdoms, and figure out if 'x' kingdom fell, what would take its place, and maybe even topple your guilds kingdom if you did not do enough to keep it strong or were caught off guard.
Basically a living world that could create content and adjust to players combined actions. If players destroyed a town/outpost, maybe some group from a city would set out to build another outpost somewhere, or in the same spot, with guards to capitalize on the void, or even allowing players to do it, thus making it a target for other players and npc factions.
It could be very hectic, but I think a game like this would be great, and then you could also have game created raid type content, and of course you would probably have to have developers help smooth things out in the early builds, but you could eventually probably have a engine that could control a revolving and changing world....new dungeons, bosses, monsters, towns, cities, kindgoms, ect...
I am also fine with monster AI being like player AI, have a boss mob that kills the clerics and nukers first, make you have to scramble to keep rezs going and damage flowing to outlast the carnage....trickle people into range, drag people out of range...whatever you devise to overcome it.