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Best enemy AI of all time

Kenak said:
The driving AI is absolutely awful. 4/4 of the times I tried letting the friendly AI take the wheel, they have gotten stuck on nothing, almost reversed off a cliff, stopped in front of an entire battalion, etc. I could have sworn I heard press talk about how Bungie had finally nailed the driving in Reach. Instead, I think it's even worse than the driving in Halo 2.
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You should drive yourself. They're pretty awesome on the turret or shooting from the passenger seat. They seem to have an aimbot I prefer them over human players. :P
 
DaBuddaDa said:
I've been playing Uncharted and have been very impressed with how cunning the AI is. You aim towards their heads and they duck down and scurry around, you aim towards their legs and they DO A BARREL ROLL behind cover. They flank you swiftly if you become too complacent behind one piece of cover. Sometimes when they're behind cover and wounded they stop popping out at all, forcing you to confront them face to face. Bravo, Naughty Dog.
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There's a difference between smart AI and downright unrealistic and fucking annoying AI.
 
common mistake: game is hard = AI must be good.
Enemies will evade fire/grenades/attacks, will counter any move = good AI.
WRONG.
It really is like the easiest thing to code.

Flawless AI is not good AI; AI trying to behave like a human would is, and this takes introducing errors, takes making enemies unaware of your position until they see or hear you, as well as more complex behaviours than - if player does this then enemy does that -.

Halo is still ahead of its competitors; enemies trying to flank you is not new in Halo, but Reach takes things a little further.
I was especially impressed when i saw enemies throwing grenades and rockets at me like a good human player would; that is, not aiming at me directly, but taking into account my speed and direction to have the rocket land on the spot where i will likely be in the time it takes for the rocket to travel across the screen.
 
godhandiscen said:
Halo Reach actually took a step backwards with respect to AI
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After playing the campaign a few times, and spending loads of time in firefight, I feel safe in saying your incorrect here. Quirks aside, this is the best AI i have seen since the original Fear. No other game has so much AI behavior at so high a level.

AI drivers still suck tho.
 
grace-and-glory.jpg


Grace and Glory from Bayonetta
 
I was pretty impressed by the Call of Pripyat A.I watching this LP video of it.

There is a point where he flanks the bandits, and accidentally shines his into a nearby door, which causes them to all be distracted, whilst he doubles back on himself and pops them in the head.

This is quite possibly one of the only times I've seen A.I in action and thought to myself how far it's come.

I'm also not understanding people listing action games A.I such as the Shadow in Devil May Cry or the post above as good A.I. They simply follow a pattern of attacks and try to evade if you attack. Difficulty ≠ good A.I.
 
Ashkeloth said:
I was pretty impressed by the Call of Pripyat A.I watching this LP video of it.

There is a point where he flanks the bandits, and accidentally shines his into a nearby door, which causes them to all be distracted, whilst he doubles back on himself and pops them in the head.

This is quite possibly one of the only times I've seen A.I in action and thought to myself how far it's come.

I'm also not understanding people listing action games A.I such as the Shadow in Devil May Cry or the post above as good A.I. They simply follow a pattern of attacks and try to evade if you attack. Difficulty ≠ good A.I.
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Ooooh, thanks for reminding me!

The AI in CoP is really neat. There was this one mission where you're supposed to grab some documents at the ~5th or so level of a building, and when you do so there's a scripted attack and some AIs spawn in the area. Some guys pop up on the same floor, I dispose of them pretty quickly, but I can see on my radar that there are more guys in the area, probably on the floors below me. I shut my flashlight off (since they'll notice that), drop down the side of the building and sneak up behind the enemies, as I do this I see that they're all standing looking to the point where they heard the noise from the last gunfight, which meant of course that they were all standing looking up to the roof, feet pointing to the stairs where I "should've" come down. I was just so impressed with the game for allowing me to do this kind of manoeuvre, and that the enemies did not have wallhack so they can follow me through walls (which is sooooo common for enemy AI). Really helps make the world feel alive, taking this lesson with me I started approaching the combat in a different way after that.

**
In SoC with the Complete mod (and realistic ballistics) I had another neat experience. With the realistic ballistics mod, just a few shots will kill an enemy, and if you play on the hardest difficulty, the same applies for you. It makes the combat much more tense and you need to sneak and stay in cover to survive. In one of the first missions of the game you're raiding a bandit camp along with a couple of other stalkers (the very first combat mission). I do this, sneak around the back, use my trusty pistol to take the baddies down with a few centre-mass shots. After the shooting is done my allies go back to "standby"-mode and start walking around casually in the area, and I set out to grab all the loot I can.
One thing that will sometimes happen in Stalker is that guys will not die when you shoot them, instead they'll bleed out. I find a bandit that's not quite dead, so I start lining up my pistol to finish him off. He's still lying there, mumbling something in Russian, and I hear a gunshot right beside my head and FREAK OUT, the bandit is dead, and beside me stands one of my allies, saying nasty things, also in Russian, after having just finished off the dying bandit.

I can safely say that nothing like that has ever happened to me in another game ever. So natural and dynamic. Far in the distance, I could see a grenade rolling down a hill.
 
Stalker in general did a good job with that. The AI was very far from perfect (no fps AI is), but I was genuinely surprised and flanked/ambushed/murdered by the AI a few times.

Similarly, I was also able to flank/surprise/murder the AI in urban combat situations, which was pretty neat.
 
What's generally considered good AI usually builds on good dynamic lookup tables for situational awareness, good static lookup tables with weighting for actions and sensible dynamic goals.

So an entity is in a situation, has a goal situation and searches through the actions to find a path from current situation to goal situation.

That's pretty much what the FEAR guys are describing, too. The original aspect being that they actually have layered the actions and goals in such a way that the outcome is pretty cool. And they communicate the outcome very effectively.

Straight-out switch-case stuff usually shows its limits pretty early if a human player pokes at it.
 
eso76 said:
I was especially impressed when i saw enemies throwing grenades and rockets at me like a good human player would; that is, not aiming at me directly, but taking into account my speed and direction to have the rocket land on the spot where i will likely be in the time it takes for the rocket to travel across the screen.
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But that's just calculating vector endpoints and using the result :(

It's not AI, it's math. No decision process there!
 
Another vote for Elites in Reach. Highly satisfying enemies to fight! I'd love to read an article focused on Reach's AI, someone go do some research and write it please!
 
eso76 said:
common mistake: game is hard = AI must be good.
Enemies will evade fire/grenades/attacks, will counter any move = good AI.
WRONG.
It really is like the easiest thing to code.

Flawless AI is not good AI; AI trying to behave like a human would is, and this takes introducing errors, takes making enemies unaware of your position until they see or hear you, as well as more complex behaviours than - if player does this then enemy does that -.

Halo is still ahead of its competitors; enemies trying to flank you is not new in Halo, but Reach takes things a little further.
I was especially impressed when i saw enemies throwing grenades and rockets at me like a good human player would; that is, not aiming at me directly, but taking into account my speed and direction to have the rocket land on the spot where i will likely be in the time it takes for the rocket to travel across the screen.
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the guards in NOLF 2 have better AI than any other game I've played.

they don't fight as well as the AI in FEAR or the Halos, but they do so much more than just fight.

they don't cheat either. they have nothing telling them where you are but what they observe. if they don't see which way you go at a junction they guess based on what they see, so you can trick them by opening a door that was closed before and running the other way.

they get urges to eat, or sleep, or work (ie patrol an unpatrolled patrol route). they will follow footsteps in the snow.

they were awesome.
 
Am I the first person to say FarCry? That game was intense.

FEAR and Half-Life are the champions though. Nothing comes close to them, especially not their sequels.
 
plagiarize said:
the guards in NOLF 2 have better AI than any other game I've played.

they don't fight as well as the AI in FEAR or the Halos, but they do so much more than just fight.

they don't cheat either. they have nothing telling them where you are but what they observe. if they don't see which way you go at a junction they guess based on what they see, so you can trick them by opening a door that was closed before and running the other way.

they get urges to eat, or sleep, or work (ie patrol an unpatrolled patrol route). they will follow footsteps in the snow.

they were awesome.
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I just reinstalled this game last night coincidentally, and I can't get the sound to work right. :( :( :(

I was able to get NOLF to work, but after bypassing the 16-bit install thing.

edit: Was Half-Life's really that impressive? I remember them being impressive at the time, but by today's standards they are pretty average.
 
TheThunder said:
I don't know about "BEAT OF ALL TIME" but the AI in MGS3 was very impressive, even better than MGS4.
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Thought I was the only person who realised this. They heal themselves, flank you, all sorts of things.
 
Fear AI would have been better if the level design didn't just put them in shooting galleries for 99% of the game. It's hard to show off your AI behaviors when all you do is pop your head around a corner and get shot.

Another vote for the elites in Reach, they really do some nasty, nasty stuff. They retreat and press intelligently, they use their weapons in proper situation (IE, the guys with carbines/Launchers stay back and the close range weapons push up), they set up with multiple angles. But it's also in the mistakes they make. If you flank them, you get a crucial second to make your attack and bug out.
 
BobsRevenge said:
edit: Was Half-Life's really that impressive? I remember them being impressive at the time, but by today's standards they are pretty average.
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Half Life's AI was made to look better than it really was with clever level design and scripting. it was still awesome for the time, but the level design would poke you in a direction and they'd have a clue as to what you'd likely be doing.

NOLF2 is one of the only games i know of with really pure AI that doesn't get any tips. I haven't installed it lately so I don't know about sound issues. I can try later on tonight if you'd like, pretty sure I still have my copy and CD key.

Note I'm just talking about the actual AI code in Half Life. scripting and level design can give you a sense of artificial intelligence and it's a perfectly valid way of making your characters appear smart, it's just not really 'AI' in the pure sense of the term if that makes sense.
 
electricpirate said:
Fear AI would have been better if the level design didn't just put them in shooting galleries for 99% of the game. It's hard to show off your AI behaviors when all you do is pop your head around a corner and get shot.
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Which is why you play on harder difficulties, where you can't just run in and headshot an entire squad before they have a chance to engage you properly. The level design in FEAR is one of the best things about it, and the way it's tailored around the AI makes it one of the prime reasons why the AI is perceived to be so good.

From an artistic perspective, the level design is dull, repetitive and boring. From a gameplay standpoint though, the level design is excellent.
 
Didn't the guys from FEAR came out saying that the AI was kind of shitty but they used heavy scripting to make it look better?

I'm pretty sure I read that like 5/7 days ago here on gaf...
 
God of War III...has anyone tried to fight Fear Kratos (you needed the Ultimate Edition DLC code to play the trials that features this boss fight)?
It's essentially like GoW's "Evil Ryu" or Zelda OOT's "Shadow Link".

Tried a few times and couldn't beat him, didn't give a genuine effort though...
 
electricpirate said:
Another vote for the elites in Reach, they really do some nasty, nasty stuff. They retreat and press intelligently, they use their weapons in proper situation (IE, the guys with carbines/Launchers stay back and the close range weapons push up), they set up with multiple angles.
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Great thread, but i still can't believe no one is mentioning Killzone 2 -_-' In Killzone 2 this also happens, the perfect example is the palace with radec's army. It also had great singluar A.I.. There was a time in the first level where I confronted a Helgast while he was reloading, he ditched the reloading and ran away jumping over the railing in the warehouse, so i looked down to find him. He went back up the stairs for a melee kill and pulled it off with a smart comment. He called me an "idiot". Now if that's not good A.I. I don't know what is...:lol
 
Danne-Danger said:
Which is why you play on harder difficulties, where you can't just run in and headshot an entire squad before they have a chance to engage you properly. The level design in FEAR is one of the best things about it, and the way it's tailored around the AI makes it one of the prime reasons why the AI is perceived to be so good.

From an artistic perspective, the level design is dull, repetitive and boring. From a gameplay standpoint though, the level design is excellent.
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Yeah, the level design in FEAR is AMAZING. It gets a bad rep for being boring, but its set up brilliantly. Playing through FEAR on hard is easily one of the best FPS experiences out there.
 
Saiyu said:
The Nazis in the Brothers in Arms games were good if I remember right.
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It's been a while since I played the good ones, but wasn't it really just them running out from a spawn-point and into cover and staying there? I know in HH it was mostly just them sitting still behind cover and popping up every once in a while, and me doing the same thing but shooting them in the head. You had to flank a lot in the original (nearly every encounter had a flanking "path") because your guns were horribly inaccurate, not the case in HH where you could do headshot after headshot.

Did they ever push towards you or bail out? I know they turned around and looked surprised when you flanked them, but by then they were as good as dead anyway.
 
The Covenant in Reach—Elites in particular—act wicked smart and seem convincingly limited by their senses. Last night I played four missions solo on Legendary. The AI is without a doubt the best I've faced in any game. Enemies know to rush in and attack when you're camping in a dropshield, flank you while you're sniping other enemies from afar, and stave you off in close quarters, yet they can also be caught off guard or be momentarily fooled. An encounter can shift from furtive maneuvering to an almighty bombardment in the space of a moment. I've had scouts sent after me when I retreated. I've been ambushed. In almost every battle I've been surprised more than once.

Bungie has been creating some of the best AI in the business for over a decade, and Reach's Covenant are the culmination of those many years of experience.
 
Uncharted on crushing. Those pirates are super aggressive and flank your position. One guy will creep up while another stays back to keep you in cover. I liked it better than UC2 because the open arena combat allowed the A.I. to stand out.
 
Up until FEAR it was the Halo series, hands down. Since FEAR I don't think there's been anything to dethrown it. FEAR 3 doesn't look promising either.
 
One game I haven't seen mentioned is Far Cry 2. It isn't always the smartest, but it does some surprising things. If you injure one so that he can't walk or something he'll crawl behind a tree and hope you don't come looking for him. Like, he won't poke his head back out and try to shoot you, he'll sit there and hope you aren't a murderous asshole until you go away or come looking. If you injure one his friend might try to help him.

Now, the AI wasn't perfect, obviously. It still had idiots in regular cars trying to ram you off the road for like, no reason. But when it was on and doing its thing it actually makes it feel like the enemies are actually trying to survive encounters instead of always coming at you till you kill them.
 
to godhandiscen:

maybe you where going through checkpoints back & forth with most enemies still alive?

the only time I have been able to make elites look dumb, was when I deliberately went as far back as I could, then return etc.
it was very obvious to me that somehow their behavior was modified, and from big distance they would behave like you describe. I think I triggered this (bug?) by accident as I was looking for ammo.
I can't imagine playing the entire game like that though. and without trying to do so.
so what gives?
 
Oblivion

The guards are so intelligent, they know when I'm in the woods and murder an innocent, they always know where to find me. I just wish my local police department was this caring and efficient.
 
p3tran said:
to godhandiscen:

maybe you where going through checkpoints back & forth with most enemies still alive?

the only time I have been able to make elites look dumb, was when I deliberately went as far back as I could, then return etc.
it was very obvious to me that somehow their behavior was modified, and from big distance they would behave like you describe. I think I triggered this (bug?) by accident as I was looking for ammo.
I can't imagine playing the entire game like that though. and without trying to do so.
so what gives?
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If it is a bug, it happened way too many times. It didn't detract much from the experience. I was already incredibly happy with the fact I was battling 20+ enemies and each one was incredibly lethal. I really didn't wish for the game to be harder, but the fact that the same formula worked over and over again gave me the impression the enemies were dumb.
 
Anyone who mentioned FEAR is wrong. They only created the illusion the AI was smart by using scripting. Scripting is used in most things yes, but when I think of AI I think decisions made completely on their own to respond to your actions.

There's a part where I was blown away by the AI. Second play through I realized the same group that 'decided' to flank me actually do it no matter what.
 
Danne-Danger said:
It's been a while since I played the good ones, but wasn't it really just them running out from a spawn-point and into cover and staying there? I know in HH it was mostly just them sitting still behind cover and popping up every once in a while, and me doing the same thing but shooting them in the head. You had to flank a lot in the original (nearly every encounter had a flanking "path") because your guns were horribly inaccurate, not the case in HH where you could do headshot after headshot.

Did they ever push towards you or bail out? I know they turned around and looked surprised when you flanked them, but by then they were as good as dead anyway.
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It was like that in Road to Hill 30. Even Gearbox admitted it was more of a "situational AI" whereas the enemy really only was observant of the player and maintained its position regardless of the player location. The AI was at its best in BIA: Earned in Blood. They would re-position constantly trying to counter your flank lines. It took some patient cover fire and some good tactical thinking to put the enemy in a killzone. Not sure why, but Hell's Highway regressed in that regard.
 
DaBuddaDa said:
I've been playing Uncharted and have been very impressed with how cunning the AI is. You aim towards their heads and they duck down and scurry around, you aim towards their legs and they DO A BARREL ROLL behind cover. They flank you swiftly if you become too complacent behind one piece of cover. Sometimes when they're behind cover and wounded they stop popping out at all, forcing you to confront them face to face. Bravo, Naughty Dog.
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In Uncharted 2, Co-op Crushing, they are ridiculous. They set traps, bottleneck you, lure you out, flank, take cover, rush...yea, it's intense.

Killzone 2 was also damn good. F.E.A.R. holds a special place for me too.

Meanest A.I. of all time is still the original version of Shin Akuma from SSFT2. He was merciless in SFA3 as well.
 
IlludiumQ36 said:
It was like that in Road to Hill 30. Even Gearbox admitted it was more of a "situational AI" whereas the enemy really only was observant of the player and maintained its position regardless of the player location. The AI was at its best in BIA: Earned in Blood. They would re-position constantly trying to counter your flank lines. It took some patient cover fire and some good tactical thinking to put the enemy in a killzone. Not sure why, but Hell's Highway regressed in that regard.
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That makes sense, I only finished the first one, and the disappointment from HH is still fresh in my mind. Seems to me like it's about time that I revisited EiB.
 
Enemy AI in Halo Reach really is outstanding. An absolute joy to fight.

They consistently surprised me with their tactics throughout the campaign often performing actions that you just don't expect from AI. I can't think of any other shooter with AI even remotely as good.
 
I'm surprised I've only seen Killzone mentioned once? KZ2 was pretty nice, with a well thought out AI from an academic PoV. I found their implementation of hierarchical task networks to be somewhat pioneering.

“If Remco and the KILLZONE 2 team can do 500 plans per second, then it's definitely ready for the industry. Some of the industry is simply not ready for HTN.” — William van der Sterren. Paris Game AI Conf. 2009.​

I guess to some extent this shows it's all about perception. Tricks > Technology.
 
Another nod to Reach because I watch a pair of Elites split up and come at me from both sides last night.

MGS4 at its time has some really good AI. They'd search for me when ever I set off an alarm and sometimes they'd find me, other times they'd walk right by me.
 
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