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[Karin E. Skoog]

Do you have any games to recommend with particularly good (or different!) AI?...or perhaps you've heard other people mention a game for its AI?

[Raptor85]

Do you have any games to recommend with particularly good (or different!) AI?...or perhaps you've heard other people mention a game for its AI?

It sounds a bit weird to say but even to this day probably the best AI bots I've ever played against in a FPS are the ones in UT2004, in a properly made level (with properly laid out navigation nodes for the AI to use, like all the epic made levels) you can EASILY mistake them for an average player. Another few games with fantastic AI are Black & White (it's downright amazing what you can  train your creature to do) and the Director system in Left 4 Dead (i swear the thing purposefully fucks with you)

Also, there's a few games with "simple" ai that did them in such an incredible way it made it "feel" alive through the interaction of simple behaviors. A great example of this is the original doom, where since all the enemies were in the level from the start and they reacted to nearby sounds they would actually path around and try to "sneak" up behind you and such (the  pinky demons in particular always try to flank). plus each species of monster if damaged by another species could cause "infighting" where they attack each other, it was always funny to watch a baron of hell trying to swat down and fire at a group of lost souls after one accidently bumped him.  Again it's all really simple interactions but the game FELT alive because of it.

Half-Life did much of the same thing, adding on with the marines able to relay information to each other giving them more of the squad feel.

[Bad_Dude 2017]

best AI bots I've ever played against in a FPS are the ones in UT2004

i remember that they could not strafe and shoot simultaneously and their power was pretty much defined by aimbot speed and spread.
FEAR is the best shooter AI i saw, although i dont know how much of it is clever audio and level scripting.

[Schoq]

not sure how objectively true but UT99 bots sure as heck feel a lot smarter to me than those in UT04

[J-Snake]

I recommend Crytek's original Far Cry (PC) from 2004. The AI has some flaws but overall it is a sophisticated force that is going to work in team and hunt you down. It manages to pull off things in open world where other games fail in small controlled environments. That adds a lot to the tension and immersion. The AI in Far Cry did really stick out to me compared to other games. It is actually hard to believe that the same company was responsible for Crysis with its very underwhelming AI. Plus I liked the atmospheric sound in Far Cry. Overall a very tense and atmospheric experience. The game gets sloppy towards the end but the first half is a great trip.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

i remember that zombies from left4dead 1 & 2 have somewhat pretty much complex ai, as i rarely encountered the same behaviors and patterns even though it should be a simple zombie a.i.

[quantumpotato]

Do you have any games to recommend with particularly good (or different!) AI?...or perhaps you've heard other people mention a game for its AI?

It sounds a bit weird to say but even to this day probably the best AI bots I've ever played against in a FPS are the ones in UT2004,

A level designer told me that the bot difficulty = accuracy based on distance. Why Godlike bots never missed up close, but further away they felt "human" for missing

[voidSkipper]

The first F.E.A.R. game had really nicely crafted AI. It also showed that a big part of making AI seem good is not in the way it acts, but the smoke and mirrors over it.

For example, the AI agents often communicate with each other verbally. Obviously they don't actually need to do that, but it both gives the player strategic options (they think I'm flanking them, I can use that to my advantage), and means that the player is primed to interpret the AI's actions in a certain way.

For example, if you just randomly found the AI in a strange place, you might assume their pathfinding algorithm had failed. This breaks immersion. However, if the AI says "I think I heard something over here" or "find cover" or something like that, you presume the AI's position was a result of those intentions, and are more inclined to think of it as a decision than a shortcoming.

There were also a couple of really entertaining moments, like how sufficiently confident (well armed, numbers advantage) AIs would breach rooms by shoulder-barging and dive-rolling through plate-glass windows.

Definitely a master class in how to take some simple AI actions, implement them well, and then really sell them to your player.

[Karin E. Skoog]

So many responses already! Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Any less well-known titles you can think of?

It sounds a bit weird to say but even to this day probably the best AI bots I've ever played against in a FPS are the ones in UT2004.

I don't know if I tried UT2004 actually...interesting the AI seemed so believable when you played!

and the Director system in Left 4 Dead

i remember that zombies from left4dead 1 & 2 have somewhat pretty much complex ai

Half-Life did much of the same thing, adding on with the marines able to relay information to each other giving them more of the squad feel.

I'll have to revisit those games. It feels like the magic of some games has dissipated after reading articles/watching presentations about the implementation of squad behavior in certain games. As voidSkipper mentioned, some of it is smoke and mirrors - the only real purpose behind enemies yelling out commands is to give the illusion of squad behavior...whether or not the enemy follows through on it. (If enemies don't yell out, the player won't notice the behavior, because they're so busy with everything else going on.)

The first F.E.A.R. game had really nicely crafted AI. It also showed that a big part of making AI seem good is not in the way it acts, but the smoke and mirrors over it.

I recommend Crytek's original Far Cry (PC) from 2004. The AI has some flaws but overall it is a sophisticated force that is going to work in team and hunt you down. It manages to pull off things in open world where other games fail in small controlled environments.

It's been so long since I played the original Far Cry...that's another one I'll have to go back and play. It's definitely interesting to compare AI behavior in open world games against linear level design. A cool thing with designing AI for open world games (I was in AI Design at Avalanche most recently before going indie) is the emergent behavior.

[s0]

i like how the dogs in STALKER act as a pack.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

chess games tend to have very strong AI vs most players, but, that's due to brute force and a long tradition of writing chess AI that goes back decades. there's probably more effort put into teaching AI to play chess than pretty much any other game. pretty much any of the chessmaster games have good AI for example

besides that, i can't think of very many games that have AIs that can beat most good players without cheating

[J-Snake]

The first F.E.A.R. game had really nicely crafted AI. It also showed that a big part of making AI seem good is not in the way it acts, but the smoke and mirrors over it.

For example, the AI agents often communicate with each other verbally. Obviously they don't actually need to do that, but it both gives the player strategic options (they think I'm flanking them, I can use that to my advantage), and means that the player is primed to interpret the AI's actions in a certain way.

For example, if you just randomly found the AI in a strange place, you might assume their pathfinding algorithm had failed. This breaks immersion. However, if the AI says "I think I heard something over here" or "find cover" or something like that, you presume the AI's position was a result of those intentions, and are more inclined to think of it as a decision than a shortcoming.

There were also a couple of really entertaining moments, like how sufficiently confident (well armed, numbers advantage) AIs would breach rooms by shoulder-barging and dive-rolling through plate-glass windows.

Definitely a master class in how to take some simple AI actions, implement them well, and then really sell them to your player.

Interestingly, I have a conflicting opinion about it. The AI made a good impression in the first minutes but then the illusion quickly broke. For me it was certainly a lesson how to not design AI in an atmospheric single player fps. For example they overdid the communication to the point where it was obvious that the AI repeated nonsense over and over again, not matching the actual situation at all. Then the AI spawned in waves at specific times, and you could see it repeat specific patterns in tight corridors designed just for that. It felt like I am playing a shooter in the arcades, nothing wrong with that in general, it is just not what I expected in a game like this.

In short, FEAR was more about artistic choreography than it was about AI.

[WarpQueen]

Dwarf Fortress and Hearts of Iron IV. DF for the sheer complexity and scale of things they manage to handle, and HoI4 also has to deal with a rather massive set of rules. An accomplished player will beat the HoI4 AI of course, but you can also adjust difficulty in that game by which country you choose to play. I used to work on HoI4 though, so I MAY be slightly biased.

[Oskuro]

Not sure how much of it is level design instead of pure AI programming, but some of the monsters from the new DOOM, particularly the Imps with their high mobility, feel pretty smart.

Now, at times they get stuck in places (mostly climbing walls), but most times they successfully navigate the map to attack from unexpected angles, retreat when put in a dangerous position, and have the ability to lob fireballs while moving, even back at a player chasing them, which can make them surprisingly lethal for such a low level monster.

Again, not sure if that's good AI or just good level/monster design, but if the player can't tell the difference, I count it as a win.

[SchriefFighter]

I've always respected the AI of Fire Emblem. It makes me think about what it will do and who the opponents will attack. Sure, sometimes they're a bit predictable, but often times they make very smart moves. Especially at higher difficulty.

[Karin E. Skoog]

Not sure how much of it is level design instead of pure AI programming, but some of the monsters from the new DOOM, particularly the Imps with their high mobility, feel pretty smart..most times they successfully navigate the map to attack from unexpected angles, retreat when put in a dangerous position, and have the ability to lob fireballs while moving, even back at a player chasing them, which can make them surprisingly lethal for such a low level monster.

Again, not sure if that's good AI or just good level/monster design, but if the player can't tell the difference, I count it as a win.

The varied behaviors of the monsters at least is due to AI design. (Granted, successfully navigating the level is a combo of navmesh "magic" + level design, but that feeling of the monsters being "smart" has a lot to do with how they respond to the player's actions.)

True, there are quite a few interesting behaviors in Doom. That's a good one to revisit, now that you mention it.

Dwarf Fortress and Hearts of Iron IV. DF for the sheer complexity and scale of things they manage to handle, and HoI4 also has to deal with a rather massive set of rules. An accomplished player will beat the HoI4 AI of course, but you can also adjust difficulty in that game by which country you choose to play. I used to work on HoI4 though, so I MAY be slightly biased.

I've heard Dwarf Fortress is supposed to be good but haven't gotten into it yet.

Funny you mention HoI4. I've been playing a lot of CivV again recently, and it's making me want to play EUIV or CKII. Awesome you come from Paradox! The people there are great! I met up with some of them quite a bit while I was living in Stockholm. (I love the games industry in Stockholm in general - so many great companies in such a concentrated area!)

I just checked out your website. (Just so you know, seems like some of the links are broken at the moment.) Looking forward to seeing what your studio produces! Have you announced anything about your game? (Genre perhaps?)

[matwek]

The Hunter enemy in the Survival mode of Tom Clancy's Division.

The entire game up to that point is your usual Looter Shooter (like Destiny) with realtively decent AI but mostly bullet sponge enemies.
Except at the end of Survival, which is a kind of PvP+PvE perma-death game mode that was added with DLC.

- You've worked your way to the centre of the city, taking down the usual enemys along the way, looting and crafting as you go.
- You graft your flare gun, signal for extraction and wait for the timer to tick down to the end of the game.
- Thats when shit hits the fan. For every memeber of your team a single Hunter is sent to intercept you.
- They have the same health as you, the same skills and the same weapons. But most shockingly they move and act like human players.
- Up until that point you have mostly been shooting at slow moving target that tanks towards you, but these guys move around the map, flanking you, healing each other and diving out of the way of your attacks.

Its so unexpected the first time you come across them that it genuinly throws you off your game. What started as a near perfect run through Survival mode often ends in the Hunters scattering your team within moments of arriving.

The Division. Sup-Par game. Brilliant DLC