Future of FPS: AI

Doom 3 is a shining example of how far the FPS genre hasn't come. After a decade of technology development since Doom, the best the industry could do was stick players in even smaller, more limited, more repetitive corridor environments than those of the original... fighting monsters almost dumber then they were in Doom 1, and then turn the lights out to show off "real-time lighting".

The buzz focus in games lately has been on NPC friendly AI, like that of Bioshock or Swat 4, which can do things besides just fight you, but the truth is that enemy AI could still go much, much further than it has gone so far. Of course, discussing AI in games always sounds like you're asking for some really complex, unreasonably difficult programming, but the truth is, a lot of the weaknesses in enemy AI these days comes down more to attention to detail than to technical implementation.

[Sashy]

That was a great article, really intressting.

[Armyless]

It's not AI, the future of FPS is multiplayer and control.

[ion666]

LISTEN THE WAY I SEE IT.FPS ARE AT ITS PRIME RIGHT NOW THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP IS TO INTERGRATE SELF IMAGE AND A HOLO DECK.I SO DESPERATLY WANT TO PUNCH A KLINGON IN THE FACE LMAO

[ShiftyLookingCow]

Klingon mating style is funny

[okcomputer]

Great article. n4g needs more stories like this and less flame bait for the fanboys. AI really is the thing that separates the good fps from great.

I was hugely disappointed by doom 3 too, it looked amazing graphically, but the gameplay was exactly the same as doom 1, no evolution at all. Resistance and fear both had solid ai though, so there are some steps in the right direction being made. Hopefully the next wave of fps will take it to the next level. Haze, halo3 and killzone should make some pretty big leaps forward in the ai department with all the time and money put into development

[The BS Police]

Frankie over at Bungie has discussed Brute AI interacting with equipment in Halo 3's campaign mode, and it sounds very promising.

AI never use to impress me before, but lately it's been something that I look forward to.

[tplarkin7]

Doom 3 was never an example of AI. In fact, it is the worst example. Halo or Half-Life 2 should have been the main focus for the article, since they have impressive AI.

[GnaM]

On the contrary, that was the whole point of the article, that AI in games is not much better than in Doom 3, in which it was poor. Halo, HL2, and FEAR have slightly better AI, but only marginally so; they should be a lot better. Things like taking cover, climbing over obstacles, or basic flanking are very simple things which should not be considered state of the art, and yet they are.

Having personally edited Halo's AI via modding, I can tell you that Halo's AI is full of stupid bad habits that are easy to fix. For example most of the time enemies just blindly rush into point blank range rather than use any sort of tactics. This is because the enemies are programmed to only shoot at you at a distance of 5-10 meters max... by doubling that distance to 20 meters or more, the enemies suddenly start acting a lot more intelligent. All by themselves, they actually start hanging back and shooting from a distance till you're pinned down, then trying to flank you.

Another example is how grunts fire their needlers in single shots, even though it's an automatic weapon that's only very powerful when 7-8 needlers hit you at once. They also fire plasma pistols extremely slowly, and even elites and marines use extremely short bursts in situations where they should just be hosing down their opponents. By simply extending the maximum burst length for the enemies, they suddenly become a lot more threatening.

Like I said, these are simple aspects of the AI which don't require any extra technical know-how to implement. It's obvious that Bungie made the AI in Halo as dumb as it is on purpose, because they felt they had to hold the players' hands through the game and not be to hard on them. This is made even more obvious by the fact that by and large the enemies got dumber in Halo 2. While certainly this may have been appropriate on the lower difficulty levels, without a doubt Heroic and Legendary modes would have been more fun if Bungie had actually concentrated on making the enemies smarter, rather than just giving them ridiculously high amounts of shields and health and keep them just as stupid.

This simply should not happen. Halo's AI actually does have a lot of potential, but unless you modded it, you would never know, because Bungie dumbed it down. That's why my whole point in the article was to point out that developers need to place a higher value on intelligent AI and stop treating gamers like n00bs.

[RadientFlux]

FEAR had amazing AI when played on Hard.

Doom 3 was never supposed to have amazing AI. Doom 3 was more about having stuff jump out at you and having about 5 seconds to deal with it or you end up dead.

[daftshadow]

That was a good read.

[Legionaire2005]

People forget that the original Ghost Recons had great A.I. that could kill you in seconds, and they don't just stand there. The enemy A.I. in that game follows you and attack you from all angles of the map. Heck!!! Look at the original Perfect Dark(which was ahead of its time) with it's enemy A.I. that actually pick up the gun it dropped. Shooting games should of change for the better since the original Perfect Dark came out. That game for N64 had everything from 40 weapons, great A.I. huge multiplayer options and etc. The James Bond games from EA games were all horrible starting with Tomorrow never Dies, The world is not Enough( which had A.I. moving like firemen going through fire), Agent Under Fire, Nightfire, and all the recent James bond games including the EA version of Goldeneye!!!! All of those games couldn't suppress the A.I. for N64's Goldeneye which is a darn shame!!!! I agree with this guy 100% percent!!! A.I. is lacking in shooting games.