I read some reviews for Call of Duty, and one of its draws is capturing a realistic WWII experience. But I ran into a problem with both versions of the demo. At most times, my squad was firing at the Nazis, and honestly I had to run to keep up with them. And the firefights were intense and fairly satisfying. The bad point came when there was maybe one or two stray Nazis left, and my squad was just standing there. So I had to go hunt for them and take them out, and THEN my squad would move again. This really destroyed the experience for me. The special effects are really good in the game. And the weapons are realistic. The large AA guns firing into the air are a sight to see. But the intelligence of the AI is what got me. I got no indication from any member of the squad that there was another Nazi somewhere that needed to be hunted down. I mean, if they didn't know the Nazi was there, wouldn't they have started moving and get fired at, resulting in another firefight? If they knew the Nazi was there, shouldn't the commander have yelled something out about it? I know I'm talking as though the AI should act like people, but if the game claims to capture a relistic WWII experience, shouldn't the AI act like people? If I was on the design team for this game and saw this during testing, I would have brought it up big time, because I imagine it affects any player's experience in the game as much as it affected mine. Not that anyone else would have been so disappointed by it, but it takes away that immersion and suspension of disbelief. I'm not really trying to harp on the game at all, I mean it is a nice game. I was just really disappointed by how the AI just acts like any other old game. If you were endeavoring to create such a game, wouldn't you have wanted your AI to handle that situation like a real squad would, instead of just sitting there with no messages to the player? EDIT: To be clear, I posted this in the Game Design forum because I consider how the AI acts to be a HUGE issue in the design of a game where AI squads are involved. I also wanted to discuss the merits of making the AI human enough, and whether or not it's really worth it in a game like Call of Duty. In my opinion, it's crucial for the game to pay proper homage to the human struggle in the war. [edited by - Waverider on January 27, 2004 1:37:09 PM]

To be honest I did not really notice any AI problems, I was too concerned with conserving ammo. At the hardest level there are *no* ammo or health packs so is a real PITA. The single player is very short as well ( can finish in just a couple of sessions ). The real fun is in the multiplayer.

AI for these types of games must be fairly hard to do though. You don't want your teammates to totally kick ass since it would not be fun for you and you don't want them to be a bunch of monkies.

-------
Andrew
PlaneShift - A MMORPG in development.


[edited by - acraig on January 27, 2004 1:30:21 PM]

I was told in the Call of Duty forums that the released game played a little differently for those same missions. I''m still not sure if I''m going to get it. I don''t want to buy the game and play through it to find out that the AI acts the way I suspect.

Well, if you are into those types of games then I would suggest picking it up. The missions are very nice ( especially the Russians! ) but tend to be fairly short. If you are just playing the single player parts of it then I would suggest waiting a bit for it to be in the bargin bin. The online is great if you want to kill an hour or so and the maps are fairly varried to have a nice mix of machine guns and snipers. Best part, none of those #!$!ing rocket launchers that were in Medal of Honour.

I found the AI to be pretty good. There are a couple of occassions where I fooled it by getting behind enemy characters but generally it is pretty good.

These sort of problems are a failure in the design process and by the time the game is done and tested it is often impossible (for business reasons) to spend the time needed to fix them. The problem is not that the AI is badly designed but rather that the dev teams only design for when it works. They don''t think about what happens when it isn''t working (IE when the player manages to get around a trigger point and approach an enemy from a different direction).

A great example of this is in Star Wars - Jedi Outcast . You are supposed to fight two walker robots but by running away and going up a lift you can get to a position where the robots cant reach you or shoot you. The walkers get stuck and keep walking on the spot. The AI doesn''t detect that it isn''t getting any closer to its target and just keeps on walking and walking. The developers never thought to put in a check that would cause the walker to abandon it fruitless attempts and retire to some more useful position.


Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions (www.obscure.co.uk)
Game Development & Design consultant

quote: Original post by Obscure
The AI doesn't detect that it isn't getting any closer to its target and just keeps on walking and walking. The developers never thought to put in a check that would cause the walker to abandon it fruitless attempts and retire to some more useful position.

Hmm I don't remember that. Actually at times I like to challenge myself by putting myself in the thick of things, so I probably didn't give that a chance to happen. If an enemy is obviously too tough, I might try tomething like that, so who knows, maybe the designers left it there as a gaming device for the player.

Still, seeing the walkers change position to have a better shot at me would have been very cool.



[edited by - Waverider on January 27, 2004 1:55:52 PM]

I could tell the AI was on rails for sure, but I saw the team as a neat extra. They weren''t there to kill the bad guys, that was my job.

I didn''t have to run to catch up either. . . they tended to camp an area while I pressed forward. All of their camp areas had a better area nearby to get a good shot on the enemy. This was where the player was supposed to go. . . sometimes the situation called for throwing a grenade to get to that better area, slinking, or going a completely different route from the team. One of my worries was always that the team would draw fire and die on me, so I tended to be the one up front pulling fire whenever possible.

I totally see how this would annoy you if your play style is less gun-and-run though. If you are camping with your team and picking off Nazis from the same cover then your team is going to get ahead of you. It would be cool if the AI accomodated this play style as well, but I was pretty impressed with the team on rails as it is.

I played the demo and also have had the game for awhile. I did notice the AI kind of "waiting around" for me to do something. Towards the end of the game in the Russian levels I did find something that helped it out though. I found it by accident though *haha*. If players are leaning up against the wall by a doorway, fence, gate, whatever it might be....waiting for you to go through, just run into them and push them forward a little. Most of the time they will advance on to their next spot of cover. It was actually pretty cool, because I would move up to their spot, push them forward a little, then they would move on while I would provide supressing fire. Like I said, i''m not sure if thats how its suppose to go. But it was a neat little find I think.

Go T-Wolves
Go Wild

Man, I dont know exactly what problem you are talking about.
I mean, I played it AGAIN last night (the full game), and I actually think the AI is pretty cool.
One thing is, you kindof have to stick with them at various points in the levels if you want them to do anything. You cant just relax and sit back.
Although on some other levels, I was happily surprised at the effectiveness of my team mates to go and hunt down remaining enemy soldiers.

Two examples to see if we are talking about the same problems.
In the American campaign, at some point after you have been holding onto that little village since early morning, you have to go and blow up the enemy mortar positions.
My team mates did their best a giving suppresive fire on the MG42 nests, but they mostly ignored the mortar positions, AFAIK. Leaving me to deal with them. But honestly, with 3 MG42 pinning me down behind a wall and a bloody sniper in a tower, I had other things to worry about than stupid mortars.
I must say at times I would have liked the team mates to provide just a bit MORE suppresive fire, as once you have been spotted, the MG42 are rather, well, focused on YOU and no one else.
Then again, seeing how my team mates got mowed down as soon as they tried to get over that damn wall, and were mostly armed with submachineguns and rifles, they werent properly equipped to either deal with the threat (too far away and simply not enough of a firebase to suppress the enemy).
So it all ends up on me and the sniper rifle that was innocently abandonned being the wall (the FG22 is also a really amazing gun, although you dont get too much ammo for it)

On the other hand there was another level in that Russian apartment block where I ended up as the sole survivor or the assault team, got totally pinned down by at least a platoon of germans (I only survived coz I desperately hid on a ledge on the outside wall of the buildings. The shame !)
But when, thank gods, the reinforcements arrived, they nicely started cleaning out any enemies despite them being on my objective list (they didnt come inside the building though, which left me to clean it of remaining forces).

No honestly, as I am about to go to take that russian apartment block on Hard mode and scared shitless just thinking about how hard it's going to be, I cannot think of too many things to complain about my team mates.
One thing you learn quickly is that they ARE valuable. Going solo and leaving your little friends to die is a bad idea in the long run, and you ll pay for your cowardice (I am thinking of that apartment block again).
I think this is much better than Medal of Honour in this respect. You ARE part of a team. Most of the time you are leading it, or are given an important role, but you are never supposed to go at it on your own. Stick with your team mates and the experience becomes much different, once you get used to the stupid little things like standing in your way or taking YOUR spot against the wall

Never since Operation Flashpoint had I felt the adrenaline pumping so much as I desperately hid from the mass of enemy soldiers, in a desperate attempt to survive after loosing my whole platoon.
Never since OpFl had I had such tremendous fun in multiplayer (although I MUST say, the English guns are desperately crap, and the Panzerfaust is possibly the least accurate and frustrating gun I have ever used in a game...)
You can compare it to Enemy Territory, you can compare it to MoH, even Battlefield 42 for that matter, but I was happily surprised, despite a rather bad review in my usual French magazine.

Now get moving soldier !

Sancte Isidore ora pro nobis !

[edited by - ahw on January 27, 2004 2:12:28 PM]

I thought the AI was relatively good as far as on-rails AI goes. I did notice that the movement of the AI bots was restricted to where they had been scripted to go – they didn’t seem to act dynamically, but rather they simply ran to where they were programmed to go, take cover where they were programmed to. This was slightly disappointing as it meant that every time I replayed a level it was essentially the same. I felt that the only thing the actual AI dealt with was the firing of their guns / taking cover from incoming gunfire. Another thing I noticed was that (somebody mentioned this already) as soon as you expose yourself to an mg nest you instantly become the gunner’s prime target. But I liked the fact that, generally speaking, I did not have to watch over my team-mates to make sure they didn’t do anything stupid.
The only levels that I thought truly sucked was a) the British level where I had to blow up a dam or something similar and b) the British level where I had to board the ship and do whatever the assigned task was. In both these levels all my team-mates died within a minute or so, leaving me to ridiculously take on what seems like an entire company of Germans (wtf?). That spoiled the experience for me a little, as I’m not a fan of FPS where the player is expected to be an indestructible god. In fact, I don’t think I even began the dam level with any team-mates – they just dropped me in all alone.
The title of this topic includes ‘AI teamwork’. As far as I’m concerned, I did not see any actual AI teamwork at all. The bots fought well enough, but the team work presented was all scripted.
Off topic: is there supposed to be a single-player level of ‘Carentan’? I played through the entire game, but never played this level. What struck me as odd is this:
1) All of the multiplayer maps relate to SP levels, except for ‘Carentan’.
2) Being a major event shown in Band of Brothers, I would expect them to make a SP mission out of it.
3) My friend told me that the ‘Single Player version of that level is really cool’. But he might have been mistaking it with Dawnville.
Any thoughts?