I need some opinions on this one: What do you as a programmer, designer, or gamer consider to be the line between regular AI with not many features to the lets say creme de la creme of AI? I am not a big gamer, but I am very talented with programming. I would like to know what people consider to be advanced and what qualities should be added to AI in NPCs to make games better.

Advanced AI definitely needs to learn from its mistakes and be able to play at least nearly as well as a human.

Definately needed, and a very thoughtful puzzle to program. Do you think that there is anything else that completely gives a difference from the basic AI to advanced like certain qualities that the NPCs have like talking to one another or investigating a thrown rock. Anything along those lines?

Quote: Original post by M-Works
What do you as a programmer, designer, or gamer consider to be the line between regular AI with not many features to the lets say creme de la creme of AI?

The definition of artificial intellegence has been changing since it was first coined, and will continue to evolve to mean "better than we expect today."

The "creme de la creme" AI right now is what will be called "regular" a year from now. Todays "regular" was the "creme de la creme" of the year before.

The ideal best AI for an NPC really depends on your game.

Example case: Star Fox and Star Fox 64. When released they were both called revolutionary, in terms of gameplay and AI of the wingmen. Today they both seem very formulaic.

In an RPG, the perfect NPC AI would give every NPC lives of their own. Each one would be able to hold interesting conversations. Different villages would have different clothing styles, different group mentalities, different sayings, interactions among themselves, NPCs could move from place to place and interact with everybody there; basically complete autonomus individual identities for everybody, not just the major characters.

For a shoot'em game, the ideal AI is much different than a perfect AI. Players use perfect AIs (cheat bots) for never missing, standing on an errant polygon, or for miraculusly dodging an attack. A perfect computer AI would do all of that and more, destroying the fun of the game. An ideal AI would probably be just as good as the humans it is playing against, using a wide range of strategies, and not falling for the same trick over, and over, and over again.

But this is real life.

Script all the AI that seems appropriate, hope you get some emergent behaviors, and spend your time focusing on the release date.

Thanks very much for the tip. I appreciate it.

Quote: Original post by frob
Players use perfect AIs (cheat bots) for never missing, standing on an errant polygon, or for miraculusly dodging an attack. A perfect computer AI would do all of that and more, destroying the fun of the game.

i disagree with you on that point, as you said that isn't an AI as it has no intelligence at all, it just shoots at the coordinates of the head of the enemy. an perfect AI would be the one you said to be "ideal".

btw my first post :D

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
i disagree with you on that point, as you said that isn't an AI as it has no intelligence at all, it just shoots at the coordinates of the head of the enemy. an perfect AI would be the one you said to be "ideal".

btw my first post :D

And I have to disagree with you as well.

Game AI has nothing to do with "intelligence".

Game AI is all about APPEARING intelligent.

A bot that moves in a level and fires at you, LOOKS intelligent, therefore can be considered, in my book, game AI.

The line is thin between what is considered AI and "calculations". Think about pathfinding... its nothing but a simple graph search... but still, that's something I consider as an important part of game AI.

As frob said, AI used in games and "perfect" AI are two different things. You want your game to be fun, not unbeatable.

Quote: Original post by xEricxGame AI is all about APPEARING intelligent.

That's one of the big things I'm getting from the books I've been reading.

For example, you have the AI give an annoyed gesture when it's not sure what to do, so when it does something bad "it's because it was angry and in a rage". Or, if you only let a few enemies fire on the player at any given time, have one yell "Cover me" when it runs out of ammo, so it looks like the one that starts shooting next was actually coordinated.

Never mind the fact it isn't actually intelligent, mad, or coordinated: all you have to do is fake it.

one thing only

Advanced AI is producing useful but Unexpected responses.

i.e. it doesn't EXPLICITLY code for this but it does it and it's good.

Quote: Original post by ROBERTREAD1
Advanced AI is producing useful but Unexpected responses.

'Unexpected' doesn't require intelligence... heck, a random action generator would produce unexpected results.

I would say that 'advanced Game AI' merely has to produce meaningful behaviour given any context in which it finds itself. Of course, the "meaning" doesn't have to be that of the player, but rather meaningful in terms of the game world and the story.