When has game A.I showed real intelligence?

[Black Arrow Officer]

When I was playing Splinter Cell Conviction today, I was holed up in the second floor of the medical facility in the Portland level. The guards realized there was only one way in to the lounge I was holed up in, so they cautiously waited outside, occasionally leaning in to fire at me but not rushing in. I decided to escape by jumping out the window, only to realize that 2 guards were outside watching the windows. Yes, they realized earlier that I had used windows to escape from them, so they had 2 guys outside watching the windows in case I decided to escape through them. I went back and hid behind my couch again, only for a frag to fly in through the window and land next to me. I was forced to run away from my cover, only to have 3 guards breach the room the second the frag went off. I was cut down in a hail of bullets, and left totally stunned by their tactical brilliance and adaptability. So, when has A.I amazed you in non-scripted sequences?

 

[RADIALTHRONE1]

Can we also post when they were amazingly stupid?

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Halo: Reach's can be extremely smart at times, at least with the Covenant. Wraith drivers, in particular, are extremely good at driving. Not only at dodging (while being very accurate), but also at playing keep away if you come close, and immediately going to ramming speed if you do something stupid like jump at them.

The Elites are pretty clever as well. They generally act like they know they have regenerating shields (and fairly strong ones at that), and will move up behind cover while one or two of them tank your shots and distract you.

 

[GaryH]

It's not quite the AI you're talking about but: Creatures. When you really pay attention, they were surprisingly intelligent.

 

[teh_Canape]

in my opinion, the bots from Counter Strike and Counter Strike: Source are pretty damn smart

 

[The Rookie Gamer]

Halo: Reach's can be extremely smart at times, at least with the Covenant. Wraith drivers, in particular, are extremely good at driving. Not only at dodging (while being very accurate), but also at playing keep away if you come close, and immediately going to ramming speed if you do something stupid like jump at them.

The Elites are pretty clever as well. They generally act like they know they have regenerating shields (and fairly strong ones at that), and will move up behind cover while one or two of them tank your shots and distract you.

Dear god, especially the ones with concussions rifles, who will fire an explosive weapon at point blank and be no worse for wear. You, on the other hand, exercise hilarious ragdoll physics.

 

[vivalahelvig]

For the time Half-life had good grunt A.I.
First squad-based AI.
Untill it runs around the corner into your bullets.

 

[Fenra]

TF2 heavy bots spy check me constantly, its incredibly irritating.

Do the guards in Oblivion count, for being inteligent enough to descern which identical spoon im holding i bought and which i accidently picked up, therefore stole, while looking at a table

 

[Extraintrovert]

If there's anything I've learned (and I haven't), it's that TV Tropes has an answer for everything.

For some specific examples, the AI in Galactic Civilisations II can easily be smarter than the player at times, at higher difficulties the enemies in Thief behave scarily similar to humans, Half-Life 2 mostly cheats with scripted sequences but its bots are capable of a full range of tactics, the Pokemon AI has gotten brutally intelligent in recent generations, and, of course, there's the classic example of chess computers defeating grand masters (though that probably isn't what the original poster was considering).

Terrible AI is - and most probably always will be - far more prevalent, but as with everything genius is there if one is willing to look for it.

 

[Dr. wonderful]

Half-life.

I kill a shitload of them, and then suddenly they use grenades on me.

I wipe a tear from my eye and then unloaded bullets on the poor fucks.

 

[Linkassassin360]

Do the guards in Oblivion count, for being inteligent enough to descern which identical spoon im holding i bought and which i accidently picked up, therefore stole, while looking at a table

I suppose so, because it is pretty impressive

But as for my AI intelligence, I noticed how often the Special Infected from Left 4 dead seemed to take notes from players: Boomers hiding around comers, Smokers dragging through holes in doors, and spitters can hit all 4 of us without fail. I also give points to the AI in Bioshock for actually using Medstations.

 

[triggrhappy94]

When I was playing Splinter Cell Conviction today, I was holed up in the second floor of the medical facility in the Portland level. The guards realized there was only one way in to the lounge I was holed up in, so they cautiously waited outside, occasionally leaning in to fire at me but not rushing in. I decided to escape by jumping out the window, only to realize that 2 guards were outside watching the windows. Yes, they realized earlier that I had used windows to escape from them, so they had 2 guys outside watching the windows in case I decided to escape through them. I went back and hid behind my couch again, only for a frag to fly in through the window and land next to me. I was forced to run away from my cover, only to have 3 guards breach the room the second the frag went off. I was cut down in a hail of bullets, and left totally stunned by their tactical brilliance and adaptability. So, when has A.I amazed you in non-scripted sequences?

You might have just gotten really unlucky. I have heard of some AI being programmed to detect matterns in the player's play and change accordingly. Also, its not uncommon to get spammed by grenades. In some older shooters, like CoD2, its gonna be what kills you half the time.
The difficulty you're playing on might have something to do with it too.

As for me... its hard to think of anything. Left for Dead is suppose to have the best AI programming in gaming so far in the form of the Director.

 

[triggrhappy94]

Do the guards in Oblivion count, for being inteligent enough to descern which identical spoon im holding i bought and which i accidently picked up, therefore stole, while looking at a table

I suppose so, because it is pretty impressive

Dont forget how every guard across Tamriel will instantly know when you commit a crime.

CAPTCHA= ityleig INDUCTION
... yes I see

EDIT:

Halo: Reach's can be extremely smart at times, at least with the Covenant. Wraith drivers, in particular, are extremely good at driving. Not only at dodging (while being very accurate), but also at playing keep away if you come close, and immediately going to ramming speed if you do something stupid like jump at them.

I know what you mean. Wraiths are my favorite thing to fight in Halo and I always try to jack them. Which means Im taking them on Mano-a-Mano, Teinama Square style, and of coure involves jumping at them. The shoot at you at range, when you get close enough they start backing up to see what you're going to do, then when you jump to take out their armor theyll boost.

 

[Wieke]

Real intelligence in computer game ai? We don't even have a clear definition of "real intelligence". Proper AI research hasn't yielded anything close to real intelligence. No way game ai shows real intelligence.

 

[Legendsmith]

This entire thread at the AI war forums:
http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,897.0.html

This is a thread about how awesome the AI is. Lets share stories about it here. I'll start.

Alright, I'm playing a game with PhonSiE. I'm assaulting the AI's planet, got a beach head set up, taken out the gate/comm station and I'm bringing in a colony ship. I start building my comm station, all is going well. Then I notice 2 Mark III Force Fields coming my way.

I laugh. I'm thinking "What are 2 puny force fields gonna do?". Boy was I wrong.

So, the force-fields slowly make their way to my comm station. I have no where near enough forces to kill them. Now, get this. They drive over my Comm Station... AND THEN THEY BRING IN ATTACKING UNITS. I was like "OMFG". The AI provided a shield for it's small amount of units (only like 6!) to kill my comm station. I was flabbergasted. Not only that, but they were blocking the wormhole, so I couldn't even retreat!

THEN while I was trying to get out, IT SENT A WAVE AT MY HOME STATION. I can't remember, but I think it may have even killed it.

This AI is just amazing.

This is stuff the AI is not programmed to do, it develops tactics on its own.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Weird, I normally run roughshot over Splinter Cell Convictions enemies on realistic.

GRAW 2 coop enemies. The campaign AI is pretty easy, the coop AI is fucking hard. I used to try 20 wave scenarios(sorta like a horde mode) with a group of friends and we could never do it. We always missed a section of fire or they found the one path we only had one man at and overwhelmed it, collapsing our perimeter and destroying us. Sometimes we could push them back but they kept the pressure up and we could never reform our perimeter.

 

[Terminate421]

Halo: Reach's AI can kick anyone's ass.

 

[skywolfblue]

Halo: Reach's AI enemy AI is pretty good.

Elites without shields fall back while all the other elites in the area move in to shoot you to death quickly if you pursue.

The aforementioned Wraith AI. I cursed that one wraith after all those brutes many many times when playing legendary.

The Hunters are very good at always keeping themselves covered, and they gained a lot of dexterity in reach, it used to be easy to bash their backsides in previous halo games but now they'll turn around and shield slam you in a heartbeat.




Starcraft 2 Insane AI is also pretty decent.

It's pretty limited in the number of strategies it executes, but it does have a tendency to build counters to your units pretty effectively.

 

[Korolev]

Never. There is no real A.I in any game. It's just a bunch of scripted routines and responses, or predetermined actions that can give the ILLUSION of intelligence.

I've always had an issue with the use of the word A.I to describe how enemies behave. Also, I have issue with the way it is treated different in each game. Some games get slammed for bad enemy A.I, yet other games are let off the hook despite having atrocious A.I.

Look at the Call of Duty games - the enemies behave like IDIOTS - charging directly at me from hundreds of feet away firing a shotgun, or popping in and out of cover like a whack-a-mole carnival game. Yet no one talks about how idiotic the "A.I" in these games behave. The combine in Half-Life are similarly stupid. They never retreat - unless you throw a grenade - and more often than not, they'll just STAND there getting shot to death. Fallout New Vegas has stupid enemies as well: If I sneak attack and kill an enemy, more often than not his companion will be "cautious" for a few seconds then go right back to being completely unaware of any danger! "Dude, your friend's head just exploded, and now you're going to nonchalantly stand right next to his corpse, oblivious to any potential danger?!" is what I said when this first happened in FO:NV. Also, if enemies were truly intelligent, surely they'd put the facility on lockdown the very instant you killed an enemy, and they would be searching for the killer for literally hours! That has always bothered me in MGS games - you kill 2 or 4 guards in the first section, and the others in the rest of the level don't care or bother to check in on their radio! They also seem to lose all interest whenever Snake or Raiden escapes through a door. That's ludicrous.

I'm not singling out CoD or Half life or Fallout or MGS for bad enemy A.I. I actually love all those games. I love CoD, Half Life, Fallout and MGS. I'm just using them as an example to show how even the best games don't have smart enemies.

True A.I in games will not happen until they actually invent A.I. Until then, it's just a bunch of scripted movements, canned lines and predetermined actions.

 

[JeanLuc761]

The A.I. in Unreal Tournament 2004 and 3 is incredibly well programmed: probably the best I've ever seen. They may just be giving off the "illusion" of intelligence, but the bots in UT are damn near as smart as the humans, if not more so.