What Makes Good AI?
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Sources
The Illusion of Intelligence | Bungie
New Doom’s deceptively simple design | Gamasutra
The Secrets Of Enemy AI In Uncharted 2 | Gamasutra
The Systemic AI of Far Cry | AI & Games
Arkham Intelligence | AI & Games
The Artificial Intelligence of Halo 2 | HowStuffWorks
[ZIP] Designing to Promote Intentional Play | Clint Hocking
The Perfect Organism: The AI of Alien: Isolation | AI & Games
[PDF] The AI Systems of Left 4 Dead | Valve
Toru Iwatani Interview | MameWorld
Uncharted 4 is not as scripted as you might think | GamesIndustry.biz
Find Out More
[PDF] Three States and a Plan | MIT Media Lab
Managing Complexity in Halo 2 | GDC
Modeling AI Perception and Awareness in Splinter Cell: Blacklist | GDC
Understanding Pac-Man Ghost Behavior | GameInternals
Drivatar in Forza Motorsport | Microsoft Research
MGS V Enemies Response System Guide | SegmentNext
How Prompto’s AI-drive selfie system in Final Fantasy XV was built | Gamasutra
Further Reading / Viewing:
Laments on Half-Life 2’s AI and balance | Joe Wintergreen
Game Development Myths: Players Want Smart Artificial Intelligence | Ask a Game Dev
Games shown in this episode (in order of appearance):
F.E.A.R. (Monolith Productions, 2005)
Halo 2 (Bungie, 2004)
Half-Life (Valve Corporation, 1998)
Halo: Combat Evolved (Bungie, 2001)
DOOM (id Software, 2016)
Alien: Isolation (The Creative Assembly, 2014)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (Rocksteady Studios, 2009)
Waking Mars (Tiger Style, 2012)
Final Fantasy XV (Square Enix, 2016)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017)
Splinter Cell: Blacklist (Ubisoft Toronto, 2013)
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Kojima Productions, 2015)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Game Studios, 2011)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Naughty Dog, 2009)
Far Cry 4 (Ubisoft Montreal, 2014)
The Swindle (Size Five Games, 2015)
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment, 2012)
Pac-Man (Namco, 1980)
Civilization V (Firaxis Games, 2010)
Far Cry 2 (Ubisoft Montreal, 2008)
Vanquish (PlatinumGames, 2010)
Hitman (iO Interactive, 2016)
Spelunky (Derek Yu, 2012)
BioShock (Irrational Games, 2007)
Prey (Arkane Studios, 2017)
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Monolith Productions, 2014)
Killer Instinct (Double Helix Games, 2013)
Forza Motorsport 6 (Turn 10 Studios, 2015)
Left 4 Dead (Turtle Rock / Valve, 2008)
Rain World (Videocult, 2017)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC Game World, 2007)
BioShock Infinite (Irrational Games, 2013)
The Last Guardian (genDesign, 2016)
Event[0] (Ocelot Society, 2016)
Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004)
The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013)
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (Naughty Dog, 2016)
Music used in this episode:
Waking Mars OST
Please, Don’t Touch Anything OST
Contribute translated subtitles –
So I'm new to programming and it's only know that I really know how hard making ai is
More health = smart, durrr
Arkham's enemies adapt to make sure you won't lose. That's pretty annoying.
Enemies missing their first shot or not turning around isn't part of their AI. That's just normal code isn't it?
Alien isolation AI needs a video of its own.
I hate the civ V AI so much.
Diplomacy is a one way street.
Allied AI will occasionally (basically demand, but whinier) ask for donations, which you'll either never get back, or stress your alliance by refusing.
When they park their settlers right next to your city, you're supposed to take it in stride, but if you just settle some uncontested lands, they'll grill you for 'aggressive settling'.
I often send peace proposals to enemies, demanding cities, but they refuse, only for me to take said cities the hard way (I don't demand that stuff unless I know I can get it through warfare).
They'll ask you to break alliances, and then complain about you breaking your word they asked you to break.
Sure, each AI has a preset disposition (unless you disable it), determining their preference for violence, diplomacy, et cetera; through a set of modifiers, but this "intelligence" doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, and somewhat experienced players will agree that the AI is intelligent the way the POTC theme park ride's animatronics are well-designed (you won't notice in the blink of an eye, but when forced to observe closely, you'll notice how grotesquely bad they look).
The please don’t touch anything music in the background is so much nostalgia
ODST
How about superhot's AI its got no barks or similer and has 1 health point but still appears very smart in fast motion
Whenever I hear "Good AI", in an instant, Metal Arms – Glitch in the System comes to mind.
I feel like enemy AI just got ruined for me but also I feel enlightened. What a weird feeling.
For some reason i just knew that rain world was going to be mentioned
3:20 one of my favorite things about the last of us part 2 is that they flip this on it’s head. People have been conditioned to expect barks in every game, even in that game. The soldiers will say what they’re doing, and clickers make a weird chirp when they start to hear you. Then you’re introduced to the scars. They whistle. When you first have an encounter with them, you have no idea what the noises they make mean. They’re all just whistles. It puts the player in an uncomfortable and tense position.
I really hoped youd touch on Oblivion's Radiant AI.
Future vid?
The painstaking flag byerly bake because chemistry allegedly object notwithstanding a married pheasant. upset, salty pasta
Final Fantasy Tactics never gets enough credit for its incredible AI. Since it was one of the first turn-based strategy games I ever play that kind of ruined me because nothing has ever quite matched it. In a lot of other strategy games it seems like the enemies are just randomly attacking, charging blindly or just at most trying to attack your weak characters / healers as if they're in range, but the enemies in Final Fantasy Tactics seem to know the more subtle rules of the game and will absolutely use them to their full advantage.
It would do things like, specifically target characters that are charging up an attack with something that interrupts it. Purposely knock them off ledges to cause fall damage. If an enemy was unable to attack the player during their turn sometime instead they try to move as close as possible without moving into the melee range of any of your allies so that it would be more likely that they still get the first attack. If you were doing an area spell, let's say a fire attack, if an enemy is healed by fire it may try to move INTO the fire area in order to heal itself. I even once locked onto an enemy with a lightning spell and since it couldn't interrupt me before it was cast, it stood next to one of my allies so that when the Lightning Spell finally went off, my ally got hit also.
I still haven't played a turn-based strategy game that has head better understanding of its own mechanics then FFT.
I use this to be better and beat stff in games using this smartness.
It doesn't have to be great it just needs to be good
The best AI companion i'v ever encountered was the Pawns in Dragons Dogma (specifically your main pawn).
At the beginning when you're new to the game and dont know the creatures yet your AI will also not magically target its weak points. When you fight creatures often and figure out their weak points so does your AI. You can change its behaviour by setting rules for it like protecting the player or having it pick up everything it finds. This you can set specifically or let the AI change naturally based on your actions, if you get grabbed by a monster often the only way to get out is by having your AI interrupt it so you can signal "help" and it'll drop what its doing to try and assist you. If you do this often it'll become more protective and stick very close to you. You can also have it set up oppertunities for you like jumping on an Ogre thats wavering to make it fall over, or using its shield to launch you upwards so you can jump on monsters. They will also make an effort not to stand in AoE attacks (most of the time) and are pretty adept at not getting smacked around like puppets.
This made them feel more like actual intelligent beings rather than a nuisance you have to babysit throughout your journey. Wish more AI companions were this well made.
A great exsample of a game whit good ai is the "expirence" on roblox entry point
The last of us has some of the best ai I've seen in a game. Really impressed me.
The "doobly-doo"? Fan of philosophy tube? Haha!
I hate it when one enemy sees you and suddenly all of them know exactly where you are without even talking.
I feel Dungeons and Dragons should've been referenced in this vid, since much of what was discussed was principles of good DMing. Basically good AI are doing a limited kind of automated DMing is what I took away from this video.
They feel like opposing players because they can actually take bullets and not just die unlike the player themselves who can often tank huge amounts of damage
An example of BAD AI. Timesplitters: Future Perfect. I love the game, but in multiplayer with bots, bots will ALWAYS run into this situation where two of them will target each other, then keep getting closer until they’re right up on each other. Then they do this identical, scripted evasive dance back and forth, side to side, until they end up squashed face-to-face. If flare gun is the starting weapon, this invariably results in them both being blown up.
Predictable? Like how in Stellaris I won against 2 empires as strong as me by being just outside the system with My bastion and repetedly ambushing them untill they had No fleet left? That predictable?
I believe that in the second half life, the combine are especially smart. They try to surround you, and flank you, destroy your cover, and they overall force you to keep moving. They also only rush you when you're at a certain health, and try to overall work together.
This is cool and all but like
How tf does smash bros AI work?
Each AI level has different behavior: more reaction time, more mixups, shielding, comboing you, grabbing faster/more accurately, even edgeguarding going out of the stage. Sometimes even just spotdodge/ roll/ shield before you input anything, just for a chance of a counterattack. The thing I wonder about the most is that every character uses it's special moves appropriately, like Samus using charge shot as an actual ranged move, and considered the range and trajectory, and the neutral special of different fighters can be completely different, like jigglypuff's rollout, which seems to not use it much, and captain falcon using falcon punch at higher percents and not using it recklessly, the AI also doesn't use it as a ranged attack like Samus
Basically “Throw rocks to distract it, that’s good AI.”
Swat 4 ai team: pathetic
That remark about ai letting the player cheat struck a chord with me. One of my favorite games right now, the new hitman series, is really good at this – the way you get better at the game is by learning to exploit the various quirks of the ai in order to get away with basically anything you want. You can distract a guard with a coin toss long enough to sneak by him, or walk into a target’s guard over and over to separate them. These quirks of the ai make them seem poorly coded, but the game is intentionally allowing you to do these things and it makes for a super fun experience all around.
u wrong. good ai is super intelligent that hard to predict. if u can predict, it just average ai
In Monster Hunter World, the monsters have better things to do than attack the player. They run away to eat, sleep, and will fight other monsters, even if both of you are still fighting.
im beyond late to the party, but i would have to say generation zero has some really good ai, each type of robot acts in its own way, and everything is extremely persistent, if any robots hunt you down and you go into the house, if you escape they will stick to the area for some time to find you, focusing less on the areas outside of where they predict you to be, but not being totally oblivious to the outer areas
as well when an ai is blinded, it will struggle to find you if you use rockets or grenades, because it cant hear where the blast originated from, but if you use a shotgun on a blind robot, it knows very well where to shoot
the ai could still use a few little touch ups, but for being early access, its very good
One game I remember having pretty good friendly AI was Delta Squad in Star Wars: Republic Commando. Never felt so backed up by AI partners before in a video game.
amazing videos =)
My AI: kills each other through friendly fire trying to kill the player… Feels unfixable
Game Makers Toolkit: says that predictable AI is good
People who hated Aliens: Colonial Marines and loved Alien Isolation: Allow me to introduce myself
Metal gear solid 2 has some super smart AI
So many spoilers…
The AI (SCAV) in Tarkov gives me PTSD
SCAV:Von no suka
ban ban
and the PMC is alive no more
13:47 a creature so unbelievably stupid it assumes if you cant see it then it cant see you.
From what I gather from this video, people thinking the enemy AI in many games we see today aren't sophisticated would be wrong. It is actually varied depending on the game you play, and their behaviour changes in what information they have, and what triggers or not that change. What makes them feel "stupid" or "smart" is just the design conflicting with or isn't adapting to it.
Half-Life 2 Combine Soldiers have a very good AI, but they don't have much HP, and don't have barks significant to let the player know what they will do (which is, of course, smart IRL and Lore-wise, but not here). You just have to take a closer look at what they do if you don't attack much.
Counter strike expert AI "was" kind of a big deal back then.
i think mmorpg tycoon 2's ai is good
Halo 2 AIs were so good…
Insta heashot on the first frame you apeared in fornt of a Jackal on legendary. Such a good design…
I haven't watched it yet but I have a strong suspicion that Half-Life is mentioned within the first minute.
10:36 I was NOT expecting this game to be in here.
Heck, the whole infighting system in the original Doom games works to get that. Sure, the demons are super simple with their behaviours ("Shoot, move, follow player") but the infighting makes it feel like they are demons in a hierarchy, since they get pissed at each other to the point of murdering each other (making pacifist runs possible).