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Artificial Intelligence

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Radiac
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Artificial Intelligence

Doctor Tyche has hinted on these forums that the A.I. is already applying to Harvard and working part time at NASA, but it got me thinking about game AI in general.

What I've noticed is that the minions you're fighting can generally be relied upon to react in exactly the same way, with exactly the same reaction time to any stimulus that hits all of them simultaneously. If you drop Rain of Fire on a mob, they all immediately make a break for the closest edge.

Is there a way we could make them somehow less uniform and less 100% reliable in their responses? What if some of them started running for the farthest edge instead, out of panic or due to being disoriented? What if some of them reacted more slowly to the Rain of Fire and didn't even start doing anything until the second tick of damage? What if some of them ran away instead of aggroing on the attacker?

What I'm thinking is this, I assume that there's a prompt in the game AI that causes a minion to take action when the Rain of Fire hits them. Normally, they'd immediately make for the nearest edge and/or attack the attacker, if they can see it. What if there was only, say, a 90% chance of the minion doing that, and a 5% chance of running in a different direction to get out, and a 4% chance of running away from the attacker and fleeing, and a 1% chance of just standing there and waiting for a new stimulus (which would be provided by the next tick of damage). Ultimately, they all run out of the fire, but they run in different directions, might get in each other's way to some extent, and might generally look more realistic.

Different attacks and/or different mobs could have different possible reactions, the odds of getting a particular reaction out of a particular mob might change from mob type to mob type based on group affiliation, rank (boss, lt, minion, etc), type of attack that's hitting it, what kind of powers the mob itself has (Can it go invisible? Does it "always" do that first, or does it only do that first like 99% of the time?) etc.

So for example if a target has a "resist fire" toggle, a "go invisible" toggle, a ranged attack, and a melee attack and you drop Rain of Fire on it, it might have to decide between run to the nearest edge, run away from the attacker, toggle fire resistance on, toggle invis on, make ranged attack at attacker, run toward attacker and engage in melee, stand there like an idiot for another damage tick and reroll next time,etc.

What about this? Is it doable? Is it already being done?

Other ideas, not necessarily tied to the AI:

What if every minion had a slightly different movement rate, slightly different hit points, etc withing a given range and with a reasonably normal distribution about the average? So that when you drop Rain of Fire on them, the one guy moves slower, the other moves faster, the one has more HP the other less, etc. They could even have faster and slower reaction times, regen rates, etc within specified parameters.

This way whole mobs wouldn't run over each other when they all try to move to the same place at the same time, and you couldn't just say "ok, the mob always has 300 hit points, so my AoE has to do 300 damage to one-shot all of them". You'd end up with some minions getting redlined but not dead instead, or else the attacker has to up his damage to account for like "basic HP plus at least one standard deviation" just to have a decent shot at one-shotting all of them.

R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising

syntaxerror37
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Going along with this idea, I

Going along with this idea, I'd like it if they did not always lead with the same attack (providing they have more than one that makes sense to use)

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Smarter AI means better PvP.

Smarter AI means better PvP. I'm in.

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Doctor Tyche
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What you are describing is

What you are describing is not properly AI, but instead artificial instincts, which is a key element to making something seem more "realistic."

The issue with our AI right now is that it does not yet understand "idle." It wants to be doing something, and as it only has combat, that something is going out to find a fight. Since we have not yet put the perception system in place, it knows where our test players are, figures out the best path to approach the player, etc. In a map with 1 or two AI, no problem, just wait for them to come to you. A full map.... you get a stampede. Freaks out the testers the first time. From the inside, it really looks like a squadron of 8 people all deciding on picking on the new kid in High School.

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Izzy
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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

What you are describing is not properly AI, but instead artificial instincts, which is a key element to making something seem more "realistic."
The issue with our AI right now is that it does not yet understand "idle." It wants to be doing something, and as it only has combat, that something is going out to find a fight. Since we have not yet put the perception system in place, it knows where our test players are, figures out the best path to approach the player, etc. In a map with 1 or two AI, no problem, just wait for them to come to you. A full map.... you get a stampede. Freaks out the testers the first time. From the inside, it really looks like a squadron of 8 people all deciding on picking on the new kid in High School.

Awww.. not even one or two that circle around the back? ;)

Mind-Freeze
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Izzy wouldn't you run if a

Izzy wouldn't you run if a tank hit foot stomp lol :-)

Izzy
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Mind-Freeze wrote:
Mind-Freeze wrote:

Izzy wouldn't you run if a tank hit foot stomp lol :-)

Depends on my frame of mind at the time. Also, If im an Italian (Romans), or Viking (Asgard-ian), etc.. then no matter how hard you hit, i'll be right back in your face getting my revenge. :)

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

What you are describing is not properly AI, but instead artificial instincts, which is a key element to making something seem more "realistic."
The issue with our AI right now is that it does not yet understand "idle." It wants to be doing something, and as it only has combat, that something is going out to find a fight. Since we have not yet put the perception system in place, it knows where our test players are, figures out the best path to approach the player, etc. In a map with 1 or two AI, no problem, just wait for them to come to you. A full map.... you get a stampede. Freaks out the testers the first time. From the inside, it really looks like a squadron of 8 people all deciding on picking on the new kid in High School.

Is there a way to keep this effect active in certain missions (as in, keep the perception mechanics disabled sometimes)? I mean, imagine investigating an eerily-quiet and empty warehouse when you find a phone ringing in a back room. As soon as you answer it a door opens somewhere across the warehouse and UNLEASHES THE FLOOD OF BADDIES!!

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DaBeetus wrote:
DaBeetus wrote:

... when you find a phone ringing in a back room. As soon as you answer it a door opens somewhere across the warehouse and UNLEASHES THE FLOOD OF BADDIES!!

Awww... what if I saw that Cut-scene already for the 300th time?

Why not make it more than just that Phone... also throw in opening of a Random door the enemy could be hiding behind.

Or something clever, like a Weak Floorboard right above your group , which is about to Open a door that you thinks has enemies behind it, and as you do.. instead of the enemies showing up behind the door..
.. the Weak floorboards give way to the weight and a whole slew of debris comes crasin' down on your team and you're all on your asses and now the enemy is standing right on top of you. Instead of you surprising the enemy, the enemy surprised you. ;D

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I personally am a fan of

I personally am a fan of immersion and the effect on immersion that some randomness can insert. We will just have to see how practical it is.

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IANAL, IMHO, WYSIWYG, YMMV, IIRC, AFAIK, ETC

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kitsune9tails
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I personally am a fan of

I personally am a fan of immersion and the effect on immersion that some randomness can insert. We will just have to see how practical it is.

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IANAL, IMHO, WYSIWYG, YMMV, IIRC, AFAIK, ETC

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Bit of a shameless plug for

Bit of a shameless plug for an example of other uses to which one could put an AI.

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add Cthulhu in pvp and pve

whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich

Darth Fez
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The Everquest people are

The Everquest people are working with Storybricks for the AI stuff. They're setting up NPCs (especially NPC communities, in their case various species) with their own needs, desires, etc. Thus, if some aspect of the environment changes (one example was the discovery of gold near greedy kobolds) the NPCs will respond accordingly to that development.

Shooting for pie in the sky stuff, in CoT something like this makes me think of heroes and villains "fighting" for "control" of areas, or even zones, by doing dailies (or something of the sort). If villains earn more 'points' the area will become increasingly lawless (more gang members on the streets, etc.) while the heroes would serve to make the streets safer. The same would apply for events. For example, if the police decide to show more presence in one area or if police are pulled out of another area due to some emergency.

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The hardest part of writing

The hardest part of writing useful *game* AI is making it stupid *in the right ways*. Folks almost invariably avoid actually-smart AI when it shows up in games, because while it does have some disadvantages, most of those are mitigated by the limited nature of a game world, and it has quite a few advantages as well. So actually-smart AI tends to be somewhat but not a lot shy of an experienced PvPer, and can generally wipe the floor with an inexperienced one.

What Tyche really should have said is "the built-in AI is for an FPS bot" — which is why having it always aware of where players are isn't quite so overwhelming, as the players tend to be moving so fast that the ability to know where they are *now* is countered by the inability to predict where they're *going*. And also explains the "always doing something" and "only really has a combat mode" parts as well.

There are some reasons we haven't gotten too deep into the AI design yet, but they don't involve "we are ignoring it," that much I can promise. Mostly, the handful of folks who really have the skills / background to architecting a more robust MMO AI (as opposed to implementing the details of it) are dealing with higher priorities right now. There are some pretty significant decisions that could easily have impacts that last the entire life of the game, as well as possibly having business-case implications as well, so it isn't something where it would be wise to just throw something together and go with whatever doesn't break in prototype.


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DeathSheepFromHell
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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

The Everquest people are working with Storybricks for the AI stuff. They're setting up NPCs (especially NPC communities, in their case various species) with their own needs, desires, etc. Thus, if some aspect of the environment changes (one example was the discovery of gold near greedy kobolds) the NPCs will respond accordingly to that development.
Shooting for pie in the sky stuff, in CoT something like this makes me think of heroes and villains "fighting" for "control" of areas, or even zones, by doing dailies (or something of the sort). If villains earn more 'points' the area will become increasingly lawless (more gang members on the streets, etc.) while the heroes would serve to make the streets safer. The same would apply for events. For example, if the police decide to show more presence in one area or if police are pulled out of another area due to some emergency.

I'm sorry, Senator, I do not recall.


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