Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters
by seanwilson on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @04:50AM
(#14030693)
> funny situations like a rock shortage eventually triggering a massive war among all kingdoms, was fun.
I love emergent AI game situations like that! Even that feeling of seeing enemies in Doom fighting each other hasn't been surpassed by that much in modern games I feel. Spelunky had a few moments like that though.
> Watching kingdoms evolve, alliances form and break, funny situations like a rock shortage eventually triggering a massive war among all kingdoms, was fun. It might not be as fun for a passive observer, but as the author of the rules, the feedback loop of making changes and watching the emergent outcomes was pretty neat (kinda like programming, heh).
Sounds fun! Any more situations like that?
I tried another prototype where it was a text adventure in a single room containing NPCs where certain NPCs liked, loved or hated each other (which limited their actions), there was objects characters could obtain (like a gun to threaten people to do actions for you or money to bribe people), characters had attributes (like intimidating, gullible, jealous) and as the player you could ask characters to do things for you and they could do the same. It had the same issue of nonsensical things happening which were unintentionally funny. Huge state space explosion though.
So I gave a NPC the goal to make a sandwich from bread and cheese which two of his friends were holding. Instead of just asking his friends for the ingredients, he obtains a gun, threatens a NPC he hates to steal the ingredients from his friends then threatens him to make the sandwich and hand it over. A valid but inefficient solution in the search tree basically. You'd probably want some common sense logic that most characters want to achieve their goal in a way that doesn't impact their social standing. Same thing as before though, instead of making the NPCs normal humans you could come up with a story about why they don't act normal to sidestep the common sense issue.
I love emergent AI game situations like that! Even that feeling of seeing enemies in Doom fighting each other hasn't been surpassed by that much in modern games I feel. Spelunky had a few moments like that though.
> Watching kingdoms evolve, alliances form and break, funny situations like a rock shortage eventually triggering a massive war among all kingdoms, was fun. It might not be as fun for a passive observer, but as the author of the rules, the feedback loop of making changes and watching the emergent outcomes was pretty neat (kinda like programming, heh).
Sounds fun! Any more situations like that?
I tried another prototype where it was a text adventure in a single room containing NPCs where certain NPCs liked, loved or hated each other (which limited their actions), there was objects characters could obtain (like a gun to threaten people to do actions for you or money to bribe people), characters had attributes (like intimidating, gullible, jealous) and as the player you could ask characters to do things for you and they could do the same. It had the same issue of nonsensical things happening which were unintentionally funny. Huge state space explosion though.
So I gave a NPC the goal to make a sandwich from bread and cheese which two of his friends were holding. Instead of just asking his friends for the ingredients, he obtains a gun, threatens a NPC he hates to steal the ingredients from his friends then threatens him to make the sandwich and hand it over. A valid but inefficient solution in the search tree basically. You'd probably want some common sense logic that most characters want to achieve their goal in a way that doesn't impact their social standing. Same thing as before though, instead of making the NPCs normal humans you could come up with a story about why they don't act normal to sidestep the common sense issue.