Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The AI Systems of "Left 4 Dead" [pdf]

valvesoftware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 84 posts

Re: The AI Systems of "Left 4 Dead" [pdf]

#3

Post by lazyjones »

That's a very interesting read, even though in practice, the ingame AI still feels lackluster. Survivor bots often ignore nearby players attacked by special infected to move (slowly) towards some far away target (another attacked/incapacitated player) and special infected bots could really use some cooperation (as do many human players ...).

Re: The AI Systems of "Left 4 Dead" [pdf]

#4

Post by cateye »

This is exactly the reason why I don't like playing computer games. The games feel really scripted. Enemy character that wait until I cross a line before they attack me etc.

I wished that instead of investing in graphics, the AI got more attention.

Re: The AI Systems of "Left 4 Dead" [pdf]

#6

Post by adriancooney »

The climbing sequence is particularly impressive but maybe a tad excessive in my opinion but. I count six operations, two of which seem to computationally intensive due to their trial-and-error approach. I can see the reasoning behind it if the AI is climbing a physics props but surely map data could be retrieved relative to position and save all that ray tracing (if that's the correct term)?

Re: The AI Systems of "Left 4 Dead" [pdf]

#7

Post by ddorian43 »

cateye wrote: post #4

This is exactly the reason why I don't like playing computer games. The games feel really scripted. Enemy character that wait until I cross a line before they attack me etc. I wished that instead of investing in graphics, the AI got more attention.

play multiplayer?

Re: The AI Systems of "Left 4 Dead" [pdf]

#9

Post by kriro »

Question about the navigation mesh.

I'm assuming that represents an entire open area (otherwise the path optimization makes no sense) and the dark stuff are the obstacles. In that case I'm wondering how the arrive at the actual grids and arrows (slide 12)

Re: The AI Systems of "Left 4 Dead" [pdf]

#10

Post by manmal »

lazyjones wrote: post #3

That's a very interesting read, even though in practice, the ingame AI still feels lackluster. Survivor bots often ignore nearby players attacked by special infected to move (slowly) towards some far away target (another attacked/incapacitated player) and special infected bots could really use some cooperation (as do many human players ...).

I always wished that I could tell the bot teammates "stick together", "fan out" or "help me" via the chat. That would give them an actual sense of social intelligence, and bring them closer to real players (to be 100% realistic they would then have to ask "where r u??" :)).
Post reply on HN