F.E.A.R.'s AI is often cited as an example to follow for FPS/TPS games, so this PDF is going to be an interesting read for many players and enthusiasts.
Also, I cannot but think of the A-Life of the Stalker series, as a similarly exceptional thing. I wonder if that one also has a PDF about it.
This reminds me that we should have sufficient power to pull off very realistic AI in videogames, but the research and implementations are insufficient.
I don't think its really that much to do with research and implementation and more about the goals of AI in games. Mostly its the illusion of intelligence while not actually being intelligent.
I was reading about game AI again just yesterday and an exmaple of this is in this aigamedev.com article about things you can learn from Halo's AI, they say that "when you make the AI tougher (e.g. with more health points), the players believe they are smarter": http://aigamedev.com/open/review/halo-ai/
Game AI is a careful balance between:
1. Providing a challenge
2. Not being too difficult to be frustrating
3. The *illusion* of intelligence
Non of these really have much to do with "AI" as such and certainly don't need fancy implementations or research.
For shooters, being a good shot and having fast reaction time (ie things that make a good player) make for frustratingly terrible AI (and is super easy to implement). What makes a shooter AI feel smart is advanced combat tactics: teamwork, flanking, tricks to flush their enemy out, whatever. A lot of this can be implemented as a mix between behaviour trees and pre-scripted events. But as the Halo guys say, if the enemies don't live long enough for this to be visible, then it doesn't actually matter.
Having said that, I personally wish games had more of an A-Life simulation (agapos mentioned Stalker, a game whose AI I quite liked). Combat tactics is nice and all, but I want the games to feel alive when I'm not fighting the inhabitants. This, I believe, is where realistic interesting AI comes in.
I was sorta hinting at the last part of your comment. RPGs are filled with AI characters. I've read some crazy things the AI was doing in some of the Elder Scrolls games before release, aside from running into walls (someone kills his neighbor because he needed a rake, neighbor had one; chickens reporting crimes).
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[ 21.3 ms ] story [ 414 ms ] threadAlso, I cannot but think of the A-Life of the Stalker series, as a similarly exceptional thing. I wonder if that one also has a PDF about it.
I was reading about game AI again just yesterday and an exmaple of this is in this aigamedev.com article about things you can learn from Halo's AI, they say that "when you make the AI tougher (e.g. with more health points), the players believe they are smarter": http://aigamedev.com/open/review/halo-ai/
Game AI is a careful balance between:
Non of these really have much to do with "AI" as such and certainly don't need fancy implementations or research.For shooters, being a good shot and having fast reaction time (ie things that make a good player) make for frustratingly terrible AI (and is super easy to implement). What makes a shooter AI feel smart is advanced combat tactics: teamwork, flanking, tricks to flush their enemy out, whatever. A lot of this can be implemented as a mix between behaviour trees and pre-scripted events. But as the Halo guys say, if the enemies don't live long enough for this to be visible, then it doesn't actually matter.
Having said that, I personally wish games had more of an A-Life simulation (agapos mentioned Stalker, a game whose AI I quite liked). Combat tactics is nice and all, but I want the games to feel alive when I'm not fighting the inhabitants. This, I believe, is where realistic interesting AI comes in.
Killzone's AI: dynamic procedural combat tactics (interesting for its use of tactical analysis): http://www.cgf-ai.com/docs/straatman_remco_killzone_ai.pdf
Misc. coverage of the HL1 AI stuff: http://aigamedev.com/open/article/halflife-sdk/ http://twhl.info/articulator.php?art=29
The Quake 3 Arena Bot (interesting for use of fuzzy logic and GA in training): http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/quake3/The-Quake-III-Arena-Bot....
The AI Systems of Left 4 Dead (interesting for focus on player state modeling): http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2009/ai_systems_of...
Steering Behaviors for Autonomous Characters: http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/
Artificial Stupidity: The Art of Intentional Mistakes (interesting for how it helps you train players): http://www.liden.cc/lars/WEB/Resume/Papers/2003_AIWisdom.pdf