Enemy A.I.

So, you're a genetically modified super soldier, and you work security for some shady character or other. You don't ask too many questions. Suddenly, just minutes before you're scheduled for a coffee break, you feel a bullet thunk into your head.

Being a super soldier and existing in a video game, you survive this initial assault. Now what do you do? Duck? Hide? Run away? If you're doing your job, your reaction will include alerting some of your co-workers. If, on the other hand, you stand still and allow the gunman to carefully re-aim and shoot you several more times, congratulations.

To be fair, some gamers say they actually don't want the bad guys to go cowering behind a crate every time there's gunfire, Killzone 2-style. That can actually be annoying. That's why they like zombie games, where the enemies are just mindless shambling targets to absorb our nine-millimeter wrath.

Fine, but then that same gamer finds himself having to depend on that A.I., in the form of the hair-pulling frustratathon known as teammate A.I. Let's enjoy this clip of an A.I.-controlled player in MLB 2K9, trying to pick up a routine fly ball and doing several somersaults instead:



Your thoughts on the A.I in gaming?

First of all I have to say this video made me laugh myself to tears.

I think that AI's should be made to be as intelligent as possible....well at least to the point that they aren't actually outright better than the player is likely to be. It's fine if the AI has aim this isn't amazing but if you're playing a game where everyone is a military professional of some kind they really should be able to hit moving targets, use cover effectively, and not stand out in the open. Of course it's fine for zombies to just charge at you but the point of that kinda game really isn't that it's a challenge between professionals, it's a contest of a small group with limited ammo vs a rampaging horde (though zombies still need to be able to pathfind).

Recently my biggest woes about AI have come from Resident Evil 5. Now I played most of the time with my gf, which made the game pretty awesome. However I did test out how the AI worked on several occasions just to see what it would be like if I was playing it by myself. Honestly I have no idea how you're even expected to beat the game solo, it seems like your partner actually tries to get you or itself killed as often as possible.

Oh yeah, I remember that. xD
My frend was doing single player, and he kept dropping mines and crap, and his partner kept picking them up and telling him that "he dropped something." xD
It was hilarious.

Wow haven't laughed for a while

Not every game gets a bad A.I.

For example lets check out Ninja Gaiden Black. A game where you regret releasing the Guard button. *When i played it i never released it not even once.*



Note: NG 2 for X-BOX360 is 10 times easier.

O god RE5's ally AI was fucking horrible. When Sheva stood behind me for a full minute (i'm not even kidding) shooting me in the back with a machine gun trying to hit the nonexistent zombie in front of me, i just said fuck it and invited a friend over to play. and that wasn't the only incident: every time there was a zombie, sheva would actively move behind me and waste clip after clip, shooting the back of my ass until she ran out of ammo and had to knife me in the back of the head. i'm not kidding. same thing happened to my friend.

An enemy jumped off the cliff to his death within the first minute of that video. That's not a good example of "not bad" AI. You only use the guard button because enemies take off huge amounts of life and Ryu doesn't move fast enough to evade multiple attacks.

I personally, can't think of a game I've played where I would consider the AI "good". They usually fall into one of three categories: easy, cheap, or quirky.

Well, AI has a tendency to behave a certain way, always in all games. Doesn't surprise me anymore though.

I can get into an real long detailed explanations.

More likely that noone wants to spend that much work though, and so they keep it just meh.

AI teammates will tend to be inexplicably unintelligent in shooter games. Oh well, that's how it is most of times XD

AIs will also have infinite ammo. And so and so.

That was *just as planned*. And its not about enemies do lots of dmg,its just they all attack at once and you dont know who to attack first.

That was *just as planned*. And its not about enemies do lots of dmg,its just they all attack at once and you dont know who to attack first.

There ya go dude, +rep for that video.

Thank ye'.

Because of their programming we are able to find some exploit in the AI and abuse it like a motherfuck. We will find patterns in their behavior and create a strategy to defeat the AI based on that behavior. Guess that's one big reason people love online gaming against people.

Shit, that baseball game's programmers fucked up big time.

So, while we're on this note, what's the worst A.I you've come across?

I think mine is in Rainbow Six Vegas 2, where I came across two enemies staring at eachother, and repeatedly shooting headshots at the other. And I stood beteen them, crouched, and they never hit me once.

A close second is ANY Mario Party game, the A.I on Easy is ridiculously bad, they can't even complete the simplest of tasks. This one time, it took one of the players 2 minutes just to hit the dice block.

F.E.A.R. had very good enemy AI for it's time. It responded well enough to be a tactical challenge. But even more impressive was Half-Life back in 98. It was a completely different FPS experience at that time when fighting the military grunts. Running away when low on health to regroup and dropping grenades to halt your chase. Damn those grunts.

And more recently Killzone 2. It's probably the best recent example of enemy AI.