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It's 2020 and we still don't have shooters with AI that matches F.E.A.R and the first Half Life.

Cow Mengde

Cow Mengde

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,706
Forget surpassing those 2 games, I just want the AI from those 2 games to be the standard. Half Life 2 was boring because the enemy soldiers were dumb, or the level design sucks. FEAR would have been up my alley if it wasn't for the dark corridors that require flashlight. That gave me a headache. I still admire FEAR because of its AI, gun play and environmental destruction. It's actually one of the reasons I got into the original Crysis thinking it'll be like FEAR but with a more refreshing environment. Crysis had the physics and the powers, but the AI just wasn't good enough. I remember there was some hype over the enemy AI in Crysis.

I really don't think asking current AI to be as competent as a 1998 or 2005 game is asking for too much.





Am I missing some great hidden gem shooter with great AI, or has AI not been improving over the last 2 decades if we got back to HL1?
 
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

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AI generally isn't that marketable, so it's fallen to the wayside in terms of focus
 
OP
OP
Cow Mengde

Cow Mengde

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,706
ILikeFeet said:
AI generally isn't that marketable, so it's fallen to the wayside in terms of focus
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I don't know, I remember developers bragging about their AI being great when they show off their new tech. Like I said, I remember someone boasting about Crysis's AI. I don't know whether it was the developer though. I know Ubi Soft actually claims Red Steel's AI was benchmarked against FEAR's AI. Yes, Red Steel for the Wii.
 
ILikeFeet

ILikeFeet

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Cow Mengde said:
I don't know, I remember developers bragging about their AI being great when they show off their new tech. Like I said, I remember someone boasting about Crysis's AI. I don't know whether it was the developer though. I know Ubi Soft actually claims Red Steel's AI was benchmarked against FEAR's AI. Yes, Red Steel for the Wii.
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I remember that too, but despite all that, no one brags about it and there aren't a whole lot of games making it a focal point. All that's for a reason.

At the very least we might see some games having decent AI at higher difficulties, but if they haven't done that now, don't see why they'll do it for next gen
 
Maple

Maple

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Oct 27, 2017
11,722
Halo CE Legendary AI is still somehow light-years ahead of modern games. Kind of unreal when you think about it.
 
PianoBlack

PianoBlack

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May 24, 2018
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Cow Mengde said:
Forget surpassing those 2 games, I just want the AI from those 2 games to be the standard. Half Life 2 was boring because the enemy soldiers were dumb, or the level design sucks. FEAR would have been up my alley if it wasn't for the dark corridors that require flashlight. That gave me a headache. I still admire FEAR because of its AI, gun play and environmental destruction. It's actually one of the reasons I got into the original Crysis thinking it'll be like FEAR but with a more refreshing environment. Crysis had the physics and the powers, but the AI just wasn't good enough. I remember there was some hype over the enemy AI in Crysis.

I really don't think asking current AI to be as competent as a 1998 or 2005 game is asking for too much.





Am I missing some great hidden gem shooter with great AI, or has AI not been improving over the last 2 decades if we got back to HL1?
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I agree with your point, but I think that good/realistic AI is one of those things people think they want but end up hating in practice. Can't remember where now, but I know I've read about devs playtesting with what they think is awesome new AI and players hating that it was "too hard", "feels like the game is cheating", etc. People have certain expectations that are hard to break :-/
 
OneBadMutha

OneBadMutha

Member
Nov 2, 2017
6,059
Agree OP. I add to the list. Halo CEs AI is better than Halo 4 and 5's with more dynamic gameplay situations. Maybe there was a better CPU to GPU balance? Or they weren't prioritizing resolution? Even today's 30fps games have awful AI. Sports games have gotten worse with AI which makes little sense when you consider how little visuals, animations and physics have evolved in those games.

Regardless it's a real disappointment as good AI can make a game much more interesting to replay.
 
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Cow Mengde

Cow Mengde

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,706
LiK said:
Halo 1 AI is still the best.
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RobbRivers said:
Halo...
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Maple said:
Halo CE Legendary AI is still somehow light-years ahead of modern games. Kind of unreal when you think about it.
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Weird, I don't recall any praise for the Halo AI. I don't have an Xbox, so I guess that's why I missed it.

PianoBlack said:
I agree with your point, but I think that good/realistic AI is one of those things people think they want but end up hating in practice. Can't remember where now, but I know I've read about devs playtesting with what they think is awesome new AI and players hating that it was "too hard", "feels like the game is cheating", etc. People have certain expectations that are hard to break :-/
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Never heard of it, but it makes sense. But here's the thing, how about being just as good as FEAR and HL1? No need to surpass it. Neither of those games have perfect AI mind you. They have their flaws, but when they work, they work amazingly well.
 
Comrade Crunch

Comrade Crunch

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Jan 15, 2018
840
I think with HL1 it's less that the AI is good and more that the level design is excellent and they leveraged it perfectly to anticipate what the player would do, giving the illusion that the AI was smart.
 
PianoBlack

PianoBlack

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May 24, 2018
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Cow Mengde said:
Weird, I don't recall any praise for the Halo AI. I don't have an Xbox, so I guess that's why I missed it.



Never heard of it, but it makes sense. But here's the thing, how about being just as good as FEAR and HL1? No need to surpass it. Neither of those games have perfect AI mind you. They have their flaws, but when they work, they work amazingly well.
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Yeah it's fair. I am 100% on board with wondering why Half Life still feels as good as or better than anything coming out today.

And to clarify, I'm not saying it's impossible to make fun AI that's significantly better than what we generally see today, just that I think it's not simply a challenge of "can we make enemies smart" but also "can we make smart enemies fun to play against." And I don't think there's much perceived return in tackling that challenge, unfortunately.
 
Lukemia SL

Lukemia SL

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Jan 30, 2018
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That's because AI will mess you up good if they weren't done in a way to make your gameplay experience fun.
 
Gush

Gush

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Nov 17, 2017
2,096
Same reason that Thief's representation of sound wave propagation is more advanced than the vast majority of games today. That stuff doesn't move copies and doesn't pop out on the back of the box.
 
4 Get!

4 Get!

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Apr 8, 2019
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If we're going to bring this type of A.I. back, can we also bring back the limb damage reactions from Goldeneye/Perfect Dark along with it?

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Cow Mengde

Cow Mengde

Member
Oct 26, 2017
12,706
Comrade Crunch said:
I think with HL1 it's less that the AI is good and more that the level design is excellent and they leveraged it perfectly to anticipate what the player would do, giving the illusion that the AI was smart.
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And games fail at that too.

4 Get! said:
If we're going to bring this type of A.I. back, can we also bring back the limb damage reactions from Goldeneye/Perfect Dark along with it?

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Yes!!! I was literally just thinking about that. There's real satisfaction in shooting someone in the ass in Goldeneye.
 
Vexii

Vexii

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Oct 31, 2017
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I still fire up F.E.A.R from time to time because it's just such an amazing game. I really wish that something would use it as the baseline for some new game or experience sometime.
 
Black_Stride

Black_Stride

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
7,388
Vexii said:
I still fire up F.E.A.R from time to time because it's just such an amazing game. I really wish that something would use it as the baseline for some new game or experience sometime.
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Fuck everything.
Just give me FEAR with updated graphics and UE4s destruction and physics model instead of textures.

Dust everywhere too....im ready.
Same control scheme and feel..

Legit FEAR is worth playing right now, but the graphics and textures let it down in this day and age......update those and it is still a king shit game.
 
TeenageFBI

TeenageFBI

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Oct 25, 2017
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GUSH said:
Same reason that Thief's representation of sound wave propagation is more advanced than the vast majority of games today. That stuff doesn't move copies and doesn't pop out on the back of the box.
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Yeah, I remember awesome sound tech in games like Half-Life 1 that's more impressive than the stuff we have today. A gunshot in a padded room would sound different than a gunshot in a metal room, you could hear sounds bounce around corners, etc.

I think that may come back with the new focus on ray tracing (since sound effects can benefit from ray tracing too).
 
Slayven

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Oct 25, 2017
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4 Get! said:
If we're going to bring this type of A.I. back, can we also bring back the limb damage reactions from Goldeneye/Perfect Dark along with it?

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2020 and the only game that does Damage modeling like The Soldier of Fortune games is Rebellion sniper series
 

giapel

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,594
Single player AI is good when it gives the illusion of intelligence. In that sense, something that's scripted but covers a wide array of potential situations can still be seen as good AI.
Having said that, apart from Half Life 1, I was most impressed with Halo 3 AI. Not for any technical reasons, just the way the encounters felt.
 
Sumio Mondo

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Oct 25, 2017
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Cow Mengde said:
Weird, I don't recall any praise for the Halo AI. I don't have an Xbox, so I guess that's why I missed it.



Never heard of it, but it makes sense. But here's the thing, how about being just as good as FEAR and HL1? No need to surpass it. Neither of those games have perfect AI mind you. They have their flaws, but when they work, they work amazingly well.
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Halo 1 was on PC too, not just Xbox.

Elites would honestly run away from you, to recharge their shields before coming back out to fight you.
 
Apathy

Apathy

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Oct 25, 2017
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Realistic ai has been doable for a long time, it's just that if they made that realistic ai in a game it would be much too hard for people. What you want is more believable AI, which takes time to make that tricks you into thinking it's realistic
 
Jupiter IV

Jupiter IV

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Jan 6, 2018
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Comrade Crunch said:
I think with HL1 it's less that the AI is good and more that the level design is excellent and they leveraged it perfectly to anticipate what the player would do, giving the illusion that the AI was smart.
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Not that I'm anything close to a game designer but I suspect that level design plays a huge part in how good an enemy AI feels to play against. I don't think it's just "make a realistic/fun/good AI" and it will just work and be fun. You probably need to have good (if not amazing!) level design to accompany the AI.
 
JDHarbs

JDHarbs

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Oct 28, 2017
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The great thing about Halo AI is how enemy behaviors change on the fly depending on what other enemy classes surround them. Kill an Elite, and the Grunts will panic and scatter. Brutes time their grenade throws with each other. I'm sure other games have tried to mimic enemy squad behaviors like that, but I honestly can't think of one off of the top of my head at the moment. I'd love to see unique traits like that implemented more in games today.

A book I read on AI in college also said that Halo 2 was the first game to use behavior trees if I recall correctly...because it technically released right before Half-Life 2 which also did.

Also, it may not be a full-fledged action shooter, but does Alien: Isolation count?

 
HTupolev

HTupolev

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Oct 27, 2017
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Cow Mengde said:
or has AI not been improving over the last 2 decades
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The issue is pinning down how those older AI were good, and what "improving" means. AI isn't getting ignored in modern games, and some modern games have extremely sophisticated AI in all manner of ways.

"Good AI" isn't necessarily not a matter of being smart or complex. The way that Halo 1's AI works is fairly simple, and the enemies are morons.
What makes the characters feel convincing and alive is that they're readable and very expressive. The simplicity behind how they work helps a lot with this: for example, if a character's emotional state is nothing more than a sliding scale from "confident" to "running in circles screaming", their disposition is easy to convey clearly in the thick of combat with simple animation and sound cues. And if the systems that control that emotional state are also simple, it's easy for the player to learn and understand what affects what: so things seem to happen for reasons, and the AI can be manipulated in ways that make sense and have predictable results.
 
Nooblet

Nooblet

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Oct 25, 2017
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Eh, plenty of games do.
What FEAR did was mix in a lot of clever callouts that made it look like enemies were working together and stuff when it was all very basic at the end of the day (probably even more basic than a modern Call of Duty game). It did add some new stuff for back in the day i.e. enemies crouching under objects etc but overall the levels in FEAR were very basic that allowed them to move a lot more easily than a game today where levels have a lot more complexity.

AI isn't just about aggressive enemies, AI has been improved so so so so much more since those games. When you play an open world game like Farcry or an open ended game like say Crysis the game is already requiring a lot more taxing and complex AI due to the variable nature of the encounters. People make fun of Ubisoft games but the entire reason their games work is because they are able to provide emergent gameplay, and emergent gameplay requires pretty complex AI. Additionally something like Alien Isolation is a prime example of a very advanced game AI. Splinter Cell Blacklist and MGS have had pretty amazing AI as well and that's despite the fact that they are stealth games which by nature requires AI to be predictable and a bit more dumb.

People say Destiny AI is bad and worse than Halo games, but those games have so much variation in enemy type and abilities that it requires a lot of complex AI implantation which simply would not have been seen back in the days.

Then there are systems driven games like STALKER, Bethesda games etc which have AI implementations so complex that it ends up causing bugs at times but when it works it works so damn perfectly that you don't even notice. And that's the thing, natural implementations of anything in a game often goes unnoticed, whereas simple implementations can be noticed if they are attached with flair like in FEAR.
 
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wollywinka

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Feb 15, 2018
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It's refreshing to see F.E.A.R. getting mentioned. It's one of my favourite last-gen franchises. The AI really kept you on your toes.
 
Phantom

Phantom

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This thread makes me want to replay FEAR! It's true that A.I. feels like it's been stuck for the past decade+
 
Nooblet

Nooblet

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Jupiter IV said:
Not that I'm anything close to a game designer but I suspect that level design plays a huge part in how good an enemy AI feels to play against. I don't think it's just "make a realistic/fun/good AI" and it will just work and be fun. You probably need to have good (if not amazing!) level design to accompany the AI.
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You are correct, if FEAR had a more complex level design rather than the simple and empty rooms it had people would might have ended up remembering AI often getting stuck while giving cool callouts.

MRORANGE said:
F.E.A.R.'s AI was so good it even got a GDC research paper on how it works, : https://alumni.media.mit.edu/~jorkin/gdc2006_orkin_jeff_fear.pdf

It's a shame game AI is still poor. once you played F.E.A.R. everything else feels so scripted.


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You'd see GDC papers on basically any popular game really.
It's not really a merit on how amazing it is, but rather the developers chose to share what they did and how they approached and solved a problem in a novel way.
 
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Poimandres

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Oct 26, 2017
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Piggus said:
Don't forget STALKER as well. That game has unbelievable AI.
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STALKERs AI is impressive because all of the creatures operate independently of the player and interact with each other. The human enemies are easily exploitable (but still decent).

I think STALKER is much closer to "real" AI than FEAR etc because of its attempts to simulate a full environment. Someone needs to pick up the mantle.
 
KDR_11k

KDR_11k

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Nov 10, 2017
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I wonder if that's even a priority. Do players WANT smart enemies in shooter campaigns or just fancy target dummies? I've heard some complaints about the AI in Division 2 being so aggressive and good at flanking. Similarly of course the stealth genre has to make its enemies really stupid so you can predictably fool them.
 
ArjanN

ArjanN

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Oct 25, 2017
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I feel it's mostly the level and encounter design that makes FEAR and HL1 enemies seem smarter than they are.
 
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