When NPC's can play the game better than you.

[Fear of Intent]

worms revolution! the A.I. even on the lowest difficulty never miss! they pull off the craziest trick shots it almost makes it not fun

 

[Skillswords]

Cheating AI in Civilization games is tiresome.

understatement of the millennium... good luck out producing those wacky warmongering bastards... but they will still out tech and out expand.

5's happiness is the worst though, they have a cult of personality i swear...

 

[shrimpcel]

Actually, both examples you gave seem to me to be good game design. The Elites of Halo are indeed supposed to be formidable opponents. And Captain Macmillan is a very proficient sniper, whereas you are younger and less experienced. Also, as others have stated, it would have been very annoying to cover for his errors (remember when he breaks his leg?).

 

[Negatempest]

So no one is going to mention the NPC computer being able to shoot from corners and blindfire over crates?

 

[lacktheknack]

Every AI driven vehicle in every racing game ever made is better at the game than me.

You've clearly never played Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing. Can you finish the race at all? You've beaten the AI.

OT: It doesn't bother me too much. If it's cheating AI, it feels better to beat it. If it's genuinely good AI, I sing praises because AI in general makes my internal programmer a sad, sad panda.

 

[TheBestPieEver]

I like it when they're smarter than me, when the coordinate and ambush, and take cover. I hate it when they have more abilities or endurance than I do.

 

[Jacco]

Actually, both examples you gave seem to me to be good game design. The Elites of Halo are indeed supposed to be formidable opponents. And Captain Macmillan is a very proficient sniper, whereas you are younger and less experienced. Also, as others have stated, it would have been very annoying to cover for his errors (remember when he breaks his leg?).

I have no problem at all with the Elites being tough and smart, though on higher difficulties it hits levels of asinine-ity that are incomprehensible. It's the fact that they can do all these complex moves to evade grenades and rockets (both of which are pretty damn precious) that makes me mad. And it wouldn't even be irritating they could do those things and I could too. Their aim with grenades on Heroic and Legendary is fucking ridiculous and the fact that you can't dodge out of the way like they can just makes it aggravating.

Captain MacMillan, as I stated earlier, literally ran out int he middle of an area and when I followed on his heels, I was the one that got spotted. Which again, would be fine if he was even remotely competent in a battle.

 

[deviltry]

Yes it does. Especially when enemy AI can see you through smoke, grass or w/e. Wallhacks piss me off. >.> Running and diving into a bush in BF3 multiplayer and crawling - can save your life. Singleplayer - nope, still shooting at you.

And the AI in RTS games just made me not to play RTSes.

 

[Apollo45]

The worst is trying to play the max difficulty AI in RTS games. They can do everything at the same time without pausing for reactions, forgetting to do something, and are just generally better.

Case in point, I got wrecked in a Company of Heroes mission yesterday on just normal difficulty because I couldn't keep up with every goddamn tank and AT cannon on the map.

Total Annihilation takes the cake by doing that on medium. they can have a full base and steamrolling your own in 10 minutes max. Couple that with the fact they can pull resources out of their mechanical bums even when set on the lowest possible value...

Psh, try playing against the computer AI in Red Alert. Every production building that they build has a separate production queue, and somehow they end up getting 5-10x the amount of ore you do. Play against them on normal-hard and the only way to win is to find a base with a single entrance and build nothing but defensive buildings for the first twenty minutes or so. If you move too slowly within about ten minutes they'll be sending waves upon waves of tanks at you.

It's admittedly not the smartest AI, but it's an AI from the early '90s...

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Anyone who says good AI can't be done has never played Unreal Tournament.

Bots in that series can shoot, run, jump, make mistakes, and essentially act just like humans do, and depending on the skill level set, can do it better. Hell they'll even taunt enemies and scold teammates for shooting them.

I generally like having hard AI to go up against, because I'll always have a challenge. That's why I still bust out Perfect Dark.

Sometimes you like a game where the enemy is a pushover, just for some fun where you can switch off. Other times though, you want to really get put to the test by a game's AI, and besting superior 'players' in such a situation is always supremely rewarding. Like in Operation Flashpoint, for example.

Ah yes. Unreal Tournament's bot AI was always the best. On the higher difficulties they can pretty much perfectly predict your every movement as well. I remember playing the final mission on Unreal Tournament 3 with 4 player co-op on insane against one bot and the score came to 19-20 in our favour. One bot nearly beat 4 players lol.

 

[veloper]

A competent aimbot for a FPS is fairly easy to do as precision has little to do with intelligence. You'd probably even want to loosen it up a little. Throw in a solid algorithm for pathfinding and pre-scripted map and you can have a decent illusion (FEAR did this back in 2005 already).

Actually I made my own map for Unreal Tournament. It was a Domination map, which is where there are three control points that award points to the team that controls them, the first team to get a certain point total winning. Funny thing is, even though I knew the map backwards, and even on low bot difficulty, I still had huge trouble winning against the bots. I still have no idea why.

But yes, having read all the articles about how the UT bots actually work, I'd say there isn't actually anything special about them. They just follow a network of pathnodes to grab pickups and head for an objective, engaging any opponent on the way. They're not terribly different from similar AI in other games. It just works because that's what most players do.

It also works because the map maker has to show them how to do a lot of things, like using lifts and jump pads, and where to hammer jump for special items. They also won't snipe without special markers showing what to snipe at, which is why you can snipe all day from the towers in Facing Worlds and never have a single shot fired back at you.

So the moral of the story is probably to build AI into the map, so the AI understands everything in it and how to handle situations that may arise. Do that well, and you rarely find players saying 'what an idiot' regarding your game AI. Unfortunately it is also a lot of work, which is why it's rarely up to scratch, even in games that license the Unreal engine and therefore have their bot code. Internet connections were terrible when UT was releaased, so bots were needed for solo play and short handed LAN games, so the devs put in the work and advertised it on the box.

Yes, UT should have got some credit aswell as it is an earlier example than FEAR.

Anyway, I think we all here agree on how to do AIs within a (run&gun)shooter: start with aimbot that has all the precision that comes for free in a computer, then have some general scripts for such as always running and dogding rockets and aiming rockets in front of player feet, then for every single map have enough waypoints with scripts and finally include the options to tone down that killing machine.

The FPS is probably the easiest genre to automate, after the fighting game, because opposed to strategy there's more reflexes and precision involved and less planning.
I don't really consider anything sofar "AI cheating", BTW. A cheating AI would have infinite ammo or it could block unblockable moves and such.

 

[veloper]

The worst is trying to play the max difficulty AI in RTS games. They can do everything at the same time without pausing for reactions, forgetting to do something, and are just generally better.

Case in point, I got wrecked in a Company of Heroes mission yesterday on just normal difficulty because I couldn't keep up with every goddamn tank and AT cannon on the map.

Total Annihilation takes the cake by doing that on medium. they can have a full base and steamrolling your own in 10 minutes max. Couple that with the fact they can pull resources out of their mechanical bums even when set on the lowest possible value...

Psh, try playing against the computer AI in Red Alert. Every production building that they build has a separate production queue, and somehow they end up getting 5-10x the amount of ore you do. Play against them on normal-hard and the only way to win is to find a base with a single entrance and build nothing but defensive buildings for the first twenty minutes or so. If you move too slowly within about ten minutes they'll be sending waves upon waves of tanks at you.

It's admittedly not the smartest AI, but it's an AI from the early '90s...

I reckon the AI in an RTS could be pretty formidable even without such cheats as free resources and faster factories, if the multitasking advantage of the AI was fully exploited.

An AI should be able to immediate pull any single unit the second you focus fire on it, while managing it's units to focus fire on yours with perfect precision, all on multiple fronts at the same time. The macro ofcourse goes on merrily in the background aswell.

I envision multiple undulating lines of AI units, backed by some long range units and healers, constantly harrasing the player, pulling your units, with it trying to stay out of the range of your big guns at the same time.
Melee units would be particularly worthless against such a force, but I reckon any medium army that does not combine both long range + fast short range units intensely micro'd, would lose dramaticly.

 

[Blackdoom]

The AI in some RTS games on higher difficulties can actually perform actions faster than should be physically possible such as building a structure in 3/4 the time that the player can or collect resources.

I have always been intrigued by the psychic ability of enemies in games to know exactly where the player is at any point from a single person seeing them and immediately being killed.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

This seems par for the course for most fighting game boss fights.
I probably used all the swear words in my vocabulary just trying to get past Unlimited Hazama in BlazBlue...

 

[Thedutchjelle]

The AI for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was supposedly nerfed because it was too good an not in a cheating way.

The AI would make excellent use of cover, grenades, and healthpacks was second to none and their squad coordination was superb.

I've heard the same thing. They had to tone it down, because in previous builds the NPCs could finish the game before the player could.

They're still very decent AIs - they don't cheat but move based on last-head and last-seen location of the player or hostile NPCs. Thus once could fire in the sky as a distraction and then hide while all the hostiles move to where they heard the shot. They even show some decent flanking and stealthing - not shooting until they're almost right behind you.

The AI has some issues however - not one-hit-killing an opponent with a stealthed weapon and everybody in the vicinity will know your exact location. That was a bit annoying.

 

[Malkav]

When it comes to RPGs, I found it somewhat disheartening to find out that in Gothic 2, every NPC had 1000 mana points by default. As the player, you start off with 10, and if you're a mage and know the game REALLY well, you may be able to reach 350-500 to the end of the game. By then, you're supposed to be the avatar of a god and one of, if not THE most powerful mage in the game.
In reality, every townsperson could destroy you, given some mana-eating spells. If you fight against a mage, they use npc spells that look like yours, but cost less and do way more damage.
It makes sense. To regenerate mana, you need to drink potions or sleep, both can be kind of tricky in the heat of a battle. As a player, you know how to flee to get a 3-second-break, but NPCs couldn't hide efficiently from you. Then again, killing a single mage would normally give the player like 5 high-end spells that you normally need to produce at high costs, and a ton of potions, if things were fair.


Everyone knows about RTS enemies cheating. But the worst thing is when you have pretty much beaten them, but can't take them out for good. In Anno 1602, I went through a lot of trouble to get a strong army going, which is expensive as hell. I completely crushed one of the AIs, laid it's entire city to ashes and cut it off any kind of ressource. Still, if I stopped for one minute, it started rebuilding. The most important buildings I couldn't destroy completely, and they would be rebuilt instantly. But I can't afford my soldiers very long, so eventually, that AI would slowly rebuild everything.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

The NPC Phantoms one can summon in Dark Souls can usually provide a little assistance in defeating the game's nasty boss battles. There is one exception to this rule.

The boss of Sen's Fortress is a massive iron golem. Its massive axe and heavy armor mean that taking it on head-on is a bad idea (magic is effective, as is hitting it in the heels and knocking it off the fortress). However, there is a Phantom one can bring into the fight by the name of Black Iron Tarkus. Tarkus is a hulking brute decked in heavy armor, and he can fight the golem toe-to-toe, and if his A.I is having a good day, defeat it.

Beatrice is fierce as well, one day I decided to summon her for Moonlight Butterfly and she practically solo'd it, and she helps out with Moss Giants no trouble. Tarkus is still undisputably the best though.

On the flipside of this, the Black Phantom NPC King Jeremiah has some ridiculous pyromancies, and thanks to the series of small but unjumpable ledges where he invades, he often has the time to cast them. And hollow Logan can be powerful as well, but I've never had a serious problem dodging. I will say though, Dark Souls NPC summons are often only better than me by virtue of being more powerful for the level I'm at. I'd have to say I play the game better than they do, but from a worse position.