For a long time, we've had partner AIs. While they used to be far and thin, only reserved for games that have a strong team element to it, now it's growing more and more in size. Before 2006, I don't think I could name many partner-based games. Sure there's the Rainbow Six series and SWAT 4 may of been released before 2006, but that's it off the top of my head. It used to be a one-man show where you'd be the star of the show. Behind enemy lines, you were there to wipe out the entire mercenary army using whatever weapons you can find. Now, it's more of a focus of "well, we figured you would need a friend, so here you go". This is when things suddenly got downhill in terms of partner AI.
I will admit that I am comparing Rainbow Six: Vegas to games like say, Army Of Two. In Rainbow Six: Vegas, you have a team of three others. You can tell the team to mount up, you can then tell them to breach. You can tell them to go loud or quiet. It was complex, but yet so simplistic. Army Of Two though, presented problems where there should of been none. The AI depended on you to tell it what to do to survive. This was a similar problem that I've face in Mass Effect, where some team mates will stand in the open and shoot at the enemy or not work out that it's best to not stick your head out when the bad guy is shooting at where you're hiding. However, maybe partner AI isn't as simplistic as "THIS. SHOULD. WORK!"?
On the flip-side, games like Call Of Duty allow you to have your team-mates survive, but to prevent the level just being cleared out if you left the controller on the top for about twenty minutes, you have to move in front of the army like a flag-holder marching in front of his company. Which then leads to the large problem of "why do they need me to point them the way to go? Why do I need to do the work myself and go through the door first? They seem capable right?". This is made worse by, more often than not, not being the leader of the company. Shouldn't the leader go first or maybe have a random selection of which soldier will push on and take a risk that will leave him with a medal when and if he gets home, or will leave him face down in a pool of blood? Since when was there army soldiers especially designed to be point always of the rest of the company?
However, among all the crimes partner AI could commit, some of the worst is ammo and supply wastage. There are a few games that commit this crime like no tomorrow. Resident Evil 5 on my own and Resident Evil: Outbreak turned into a game of inventory juggling similar to the fox-chicken-seed-boat problem. Your inventory will get full, it's undeniable, but it turns into a contest of trying to make sure your partner/s carry any baggage you don't want to use currently and you can't carry yourself, without being able to carry anything they can use. For example, you have to make sure you don't let Mark carry your left-over 9MM rounds on Resident Evil: Outbreak because he has a pistol as his special item which he can and will use all the ammo on any zombies he sees, instead of just dodging past them. Why should this be the case? Why can't AI work out when to use their guns and when to just run past or use melee weapons? I can't help but think too many games have good enemy AI but poor partner AI. This makes the game not only harder, but generally more annoying. Who wants to play baby-sitting for someone who is meant to be an equal of you who is able to use some intelligence to get through the situation.
The previous paragraph turned into an unintentional insult towards Capcom, but a lot of developers do this kind of thing. Army Of Two, both games, was terrible at their AI. Dragon Age: Origins wasn't exactly clever at it's own AI, not being too useful unless you manually adjust their collection of automatic behaviours or actually paused the game, chose what each character should do for them and then unpause. This become very annoying for characters like Morrigan who cast spells instead of melee attacking. I think a lot of games like Left4Dead are trouble-some because they tell you to focus on team-work but with a team that can barely function and feel the need to heal once they're below 60%, you almost wish the game actually allowed you to wonder off and allow the rest of your team to die. It's why in games like Counter Strike, even on the hostage levels, the name of the game is to kill the enemy and not rescue the hostages because you're relying on partner AI to work out how to use a doorway, which for some AI is impossible (which led to a game-breaking bug in Call Of Cthulhu). However, I find it funny that most games that have an element of bad partner AI, the enemy seem to have a better AI than your partner. Which happens more often than it sounds.
Some games don't require sophisticated AI, you don't need to spend months perfecting how a hostage can play follow-the-leader, however some games are complex enough that team-work isn't just important, it's impossible without brains working out what to do instead of algorithms.
Anyway, what do you think about Partner AI in general? Any games that are bright stars at the complex concept of actually intelligent partner artificial intelligence? Do you think more work should be done in development of a game in partner AI in general across the board or is it good enough? Do you think games like Army Of Two and Resident Evil 5 can get away with poor partner AI considering they are designed to have a human partner and a computer partner only needs to function, not work?
I will admit that I am comparing Rainbow Six: Vegas to games like say, Army Of Two. In Rainbow Six: Vegas, you have a team of three others. You can tell the team to mount up, you can then tell them to breach. You can tell them to go loud or quiet. It was complex, but yet so simplistic. Army Of Two though, presented problems where there should of been none. The AI depended on you to tell it what to do to survive. This was a similar problem that I've face in Mass Effect, where some team mates will stand in the open and shoot at the enemy or not work out that it's best to not stick your head out when the bad guy is shooting at where you're hiding. However, maybe partner AI isn't as simplistic as "THIS. SHOULD. WORK!"?
On the flip-side, games like Call Of Duty allow you to have your team-mates survive, but to prevent the level just being cleared out if you left the controller on the top for about twenty minutes, you have to move in front of the army like a flag-holder marching in front of his company. Which then leads to the large problem of "why do they need me to point them the way to go? Why do I need to do the work myself and go through the door first? They seem capable right?". This is made worse by, more often than not, not being the leader of the company. Shouldn't the leader go first or maybe have a random selection of which soldier will push on and take a risk that will leave him with a medal when and if he gets home, or will leave him face down in a pool of blood? Since when was there army soldiers especially designed to be point always of the rest of the company?
However, among all the crimes partner AI could commit, some of the worst is ammo and supply wastage. There are a few games that commit this crime like no tomorrow. Resident Evil 5 on my own and Resident Evil: Outbreak turned into a game of inventory juggling similar to the fox-chicken-seed-boat problem. Your inventory will get full, it's undeniable, but it turns into a contest of trying to make sure your partner/s carry any baggage you don't want to use currently and you can't carry yourself, without being able to carry anything they can use. For example, you have to make sure you don't let Mark carry your left-over 9MM rounds on Resident Evil: Outbreak because he has a pistol as his special item which he can and will use all the ammo on any zombies he sees, instead of just dodging past them. Why should this be the case? Why can't AI work out when to use their guns and when to just run past or use melee weapons? I can't help but think too many games have good enemy AI but poor partner AI. This makes the game not only harder, but generally more annoying. Who wants to play baby-sitting for someone who is meant to be an equal of you who is able to use some intelligence to get through the situation.
The previous paragraph turned into an unintentional insult towards Capcom, but a lot of developers do this kind of thing. Army Of Two, both games, was terrible at their AI. Dragon Age: Origins wasn't exactly clever at it's own AI, not being too useful unless you manually adjust their collection of automatic behaviours or actually paused the game, chose what each character should do for them and then unpause. This become very annoying for characters like Morrigan who cast spells instead of melee attacking. I think a lot of games like Left4Dead are trouble-some because they tell you to focus on team-work but with a team that can barely function and feel the need to heal once they're below 60%, you almost wish the game actually allowed you to wonder off and allow the rest of your team to die. It's why in games like Counter Strike, even on the hostage levels, the name of the game is to kill the enemy and not rescue the hostages because you're relying on partner AI to work out how to use a doorway, which for some AI is impossible (which led to a game-breaking bug in Call Of Cthulhu). However, I find it funny that most games that have an element of bad partner AI, the enemy seem to have a better AI than your partner. Which happens more often than it sounds.
Some games don't require sophisticated AI, you don't need to spend months perfecting how a hostage can play follow-the-leader, however some games are complex enough that team-work isn't just important, it's impossible without brains working out what to do instead of algorithms.
Anyway, what do you think about Partner AI in general? Any games that are bright stars at the complex concept of actually intelligent partner artificial intelligence? Do you think more work should be done in development of a game in partner AI in general across the board or is it good enough? Do you think games like Army Of Two and Resident Evil 5 can get away with poor partner AI considering they are designed to have a human partner and a computer partner only needs to function, not work?
