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Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

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Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#71

Post by Anil_Uttani »

krm01 wrote: post #41

I’ve been designing/coding games since I was 11yo and have a degree in gamedesign & dev. The hardest part isn’t the technical side of the game’s AI. It’s finding the balance of an AI that makes the gamer feel powerful enough to be fun- but not too powerful to become bored - and not find it too hard that he/she becomes demotivated. Obviously every player is different so finding a balance that can keep the gamer excite…

The Solution here would be rather than weighing the AI Difficulty for good players and bad players.You must have different sets of AI.

Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#72

Post by trexmix »

bryondowd wrote: post #33
Someone1234 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All players want to win. The level of difficulty is equal to the level of accomplishment, but games have to be made for the average rather than the exceptional, so many better than average players won't be challenged by the difficulty. Nobody is going to invest the resources into a real AI just for the hardest difficulty modes. If it cannot be used on Easy/Normal, it simply isn't happening.

Considering how many successful games are released targeting a niche market, there's probably a pretty sizable niche market of 'better than average players' that some studio could take advantage of. Market size is only half the equation, the other half is the cost to develop the feature. As methods and technology improve, the cost to make a smart AI for a complex game system should decrease. As the cost decreases, yo…

But smart AI isn't fun to play against. Take Chess- AI is smart to the point of domination against players. In a FPS setting you just have an aimbot. In a RTS game you would have an AI with passable macro and insane micro. I think the only real chance of a smart AI being fun is in a pure strategy game (I believe it's GalCiv 2 with the epic story about a backstabbing, scheming AI).

Smart AI is easier to make than a mediocre, fun AI. Optimality is is a clear goal. Fun AI is less clear and requires a unique blend of technical and design expertise.

Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#73

Post by blattimwind »

bryondowd wrote: post #54
blattimwind wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody is going to invest the resources into a real AI just for the hardest difficulty modes. Which is really sad because "hard" difficulties in most games just mean that you have less health and NPCs do more damage or their "cheat factors" are turned to 11. They're still the same stupid NPCs as on "easy", but now they just headshot you behind cover and have zero recoil / perfect accuracy. It's technically difficul…

The "tank huge amounts of damage" thing has annoyed me going back to the old RPG games on NES and SNES. How do we make the game harder as the player progresses? Give enemies more HP and DMG values. Ok, how does the player combat this? Have him aquire levels/skills/equipment that increases his own DMG and survivability to restore things to the same balance they were earlier in the game. Repeat ad nauseum. Some variati…

Vanilla Skyrim is an especially annoying specimen in this category, because it has this weird "S curve". With low levels most enemies are way stronger than you (ok, that's good, a level 5 player shouldn't be able to defeat city guards, for example), then there is a "growth phase" up to ~level 40-70ish (depending on play style) where the player is on par or better than NPCs, and after that the player's abilities level off and NPCs continue to grow stronger, so a high level player has a hard time again against NPCs of a class that she could previously defeat easily.

Which makes no sense at all.

Luckily for Skyrim the game thrives on mods anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#75

Post by kruczek »

ggggtez wrote: post #29

Watch the talk about Civilization's AI. Seriously, game AI does not need to use advanced ML techniques, and probably shouldn't if you want players to have fun. The trick is coming up with fast algorithms, with a semblance of personality to make it interesting. Difficulty is not required for the AI to be fun in most cases.

Eh, I think Civilization is a great example of an awful AI. Specifically I mean here Civ5 and they way it does combat. It is absurdly easy to outmaneuver and defeat even vastly superior armies. It'd be much more fun to have an enemy who can put up a fight.

Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#76

Post by mcv »

scarejunba wrote: post #39
bryondowd wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the game. The entire genre of strategy games could probably benefit from smarter AI. More so for 4X style games. Mostly, the current AIs act like players, but make terribly inefficient decisions that get 'balanced' at various difficulty levels by throwing more resources at them or other advantages. So the games vary between being absurdly easy, to being difficult simply because the AI cheats, and even then…

TA:Spring had these AIs that would exploit shit in a terribly annoying way. Like, you had ballistic projectiles that would take a while to arrive at the target, and your units would fire them. Well, the enemies had them too, except the AI would exploit its superior micro by firing off the projectiles at maximum range and maximum inbound velocity and then immediately shifting outbound. You can't move your bloody units…

In clicky action games, the AI has a definite advantage over human players, because it's not encumbered by an interface. For turn-based strategy games, that advantage disappears. Outside of heavily researched abstract predictable games like chess and go, I haven't seen any games where AI can beat a skilled human player at strategy.

Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#77

Post by mcv »

blattimwind wrote: post #32
dx87 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of a lesson developer's learned when making a stealth game, Splinter Cell. Originally, when you were spotted the enemies would just try to shoot you, but tester feedback said that players didn't like getting shot out of nowhere. The devs added audible cues that you'd been found, like the guard yelling "Hey you!" before they started shooting. It turns out realistic AI behaviors aren't necessarily fun A…

Splinter Cell also has cooldowns in some/most levels (like most stealth games), which is of course an absurd notion. A guard on a military base wouldn't back out of "DEFCON1" after two minutes just because the invader didn't show herself for that long.

There's a cool isometric stealth game called Robin of Sherwood, where you can follow what the guards are doing. A guard might accidentally stumble upon someone you killed, be alarmed, look around, run off to warn their commander, then the commander organises a search for the culprit, with lots of guards explicitly looking for you everywhere. Eventually if they can't find you, the whole thing dies down and everybody resumes their original duties, assuming the dead body was just a fluke or something.

Also, if they find someone you merely knocked unconscious, they assume they'd been sleeping on the job. If you tied them up, they free them, but I forgot if they search for you or if they just assume they got accidentally tied up somehow.

Also, you'd think they might raise the alarm if they find less and less guards present at their assigned post.

Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#78

Post by nkrisc »

c0nducktr wrote: post #67
nkrisc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the AI is friendly being able to predict their behavior is still desirable. Nothing worse than friendly AI ruining your game because it went off and did something you couldn't anticipate.

What if the friendly AI called out it's plan, and the player then could have an agree/disagree option with the proposed strategy? If done well, it could feel much more like you're playing with a human partner.

Then, sure, because it is now predictable. Alternatively, I don't think it would be an issue if the AI was good enough that it could do unpredictable things that were actually intelligent (which would pleasantly surprise the player) or if the unpredictability and occasional awfulness of the AI were somehow an intentional challenge of the game.

Re: Ask HN: Game devs, what is the hardest part about designing an AI for your game?

#79

Post by ggggtez »

kruczek wrote: post #75
ggggtez wrote: post #29

Watch the talk about Civilization's AI. Seriously, game AI does not need to use advanced ML techniques, and probably shouldn't if you want players to have fun. The trick is coming up with fast algorithms, with a semblance of personality to make it interesting. Difficulty is not required for the AI to be fun in most cases.

Eh, I think Civilization is a great example of an awful AI. Specifically I mean here Civ5 and they way it does combat. It is absurdly easy to outmaneuver and defeat even vastly superior armies. It'd be much more fun to have an enemy who can put up a fight.

You say "awful AI", but it's clearly a AAA selling game, where 90%+ of players play on the single player setting.

What is your goal as a designer? To make a game with state of the art AI, or to make a game that has AI that keeps people buying and playing your game?

I know which I would choose.

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