What’s your job at Bethesda?

[Pegultagol]

Nael wins this thread.

 

[Naked Ninja]

Hehe, you guys are funny. It's always amusing seeing the clueless discuss AI.

The AI in oblivion was good. Very good. But the best AI yet invented is still an utter and complete moron. Hell, moron is too kind.

But I'm sure you think it is because it is crappily programmed? No. It is because the computer lacks a complex contextual framework and is unable to process anywhere close to as many inputs as a human. The result is something that looks horribly artificial and stupid, more so than if it was scripted. Because the illusion of intelligence (scripting) was created by an actual intelligent mind, even if the underlying system executing the script has no more intelligence than a light switch. So the real irony is the illusion looks more intelligent than the ACTUAL intelligent system, to the unknowing eye (thats you guys).

Yep, the AI in Oblivion was actually pretty good. That odd behavior you see where the AI does something which you think is nonsensical? Thats because you have years of context and vastly superior resources for input processing at your command. I wander how you acted to stimuli when you were 1 month old say?


Funny how often people here talk of how they'd love to see a dynamically generated AI driven RPG, then slam with extreme prejudice an actual example of a move in that direction. Do you plan to critisize every attempt until it perfectly matches your ideal or are you willing to support people who are at least trying to move in that direction?

 

[Lord Chambers]

Thank you for the lecture on AI programing: The Real Deal.

The Codex sees Radiant AI as a failure for two reasons:
1. It was marketed as something amazing and fails to meet that metric, even if it is a step in the right direction.

2. Radiant AI is a step in the wrong direction when held up against games like Gothic whose NPC actions are scripted and more believable.

 

[Naked Ninja]

It was my pleasure Chambers .

So hardcoding a limited set of actions is the right direction and attempting to make AI able to interpret their surroundings and context isn't?

Which direction is that exactly? A dead end of hardcoded actions which is diffucult to expand on because it massively increases development time? How is that better than the promise of AI agents able to dynamically react to changing scenarios?

Here is a hint, the goal of true interactivity and roleplaying requires a world and agents able to respond to changing inputs (As a human DM does in P&P). Scripting will never lead to that goal. Ever. I salute Beth for trying something in that direction, even if it was hugely flawed. Here's hoping they iterate and improve that tech.

 

[Longshanks]

^^Your point seems to be that crappy (in terms of gameplay) implementation of somewhat dynamic AI is necessary, in order to improve on what we have. This is not the case, such AI is being worked on much more seriously than in video game development, Oblivion was not at the cutting edge of AI. Oblivion's AI is rightly criticised as, whatever the merits of the programming behind it, the gameplay result was worse than in other games, like The Witcher and Gothic 2. As consumers, we judge the product, the "under the hood" stuff is not all that important in our evaluation, just a potentially interesting sideline.

I agree that NPCs being able to react dynamically is a good thing to aim for, it does not mean that poor gameplay need be excused as a baby step in such a direction, such steps can be taken outside of commercially released products (if taken in commercial products, then it is fair to compare them with others on the market, whether favourably or not). Maybe computer generated voice overs are the right direction as well, it does not mean we should accept "robotic", poorly synced dialogues, just because it's heading along the right path, developers will wait until the technology is good enough, and if they don't, consumers will criticise them for game aspects that are below the standard achieved by other games.

 

[Astromarine]

that's fine, NN, and you're right that the AI systems in Obli were the best around in terms of videogaming. But with all that discussion about research into the future of gaming and dead ends and so on you forget that people paid top dollar for a product that they expect to enjoy. To ship a game like Oblivion so that people can further the SotA in terms of AI programming makes me worse than a lab rat. It makes me a lab rat that has to pay for the privilege of being experimented on.

Fine, push the boundaries of AI if you really want to. But once you're done add a few scripts to increase verosimilitude and entertainment value. There, problem solved.

 

[pkt-zer0]

So the real irony is the illusion looks more intelligent than the ACTUAL intelligent system, to the unknowing eye (thats you guys).

I was under the impression that, given the fact that people have thus far failed to properly define the term "intelligence", any system that looks more intelligent would actually be considered the more intelligent. That is, an intelligent system would be the one that gets the task done the most effectively.

Do you plan to critisize every attempt until it perfectly matches your ideal or are you willing to support people who are at least trying to move in that direction?

There is no point to mass-producing a pocket calculator that takes more time to add two single-digit numbers together than a human would.
Similarly, I see no reason to implement a system into a game on the basis that "it could actually work pretty well in ten years time". Projects with such massive production values aren't really the ones to be experimental.

 

[Nedrah]

I actually think that Beth themselves were probably sure they could achieve a lot more with their AI than what we saw as an end product. I am even inclined to believe that it would have been able to be a lot more reactive to the gameworld, but they could not make it "game compatible". I do not blame them for that, actually I seem to be with Naked Ninja on this. They tried to push into the right direction, and we might see some pretty interesting things come out of the principle, yet.

They can be blamed for not pulling the emergency break earlier to stop trying to improve the AI in favor of implementing some scripted behavior to give the World some amount of believability. They possibly felt that they had hyped non-scripted AI too much to do that without a nerd shitstorm. Actually, that is what I hate about them. Their fucking hype. They never admited that "radiant AI" was not working out as intended, so they had to fix it with other measures (like heavy scripting). Instead they kept hyping and lying untill release and beyond. To the best of my knowledge, they have still not admitted there are some serious issues with their AI.

Had Radiant AI been all it was supposed to be, the game might have been a pretty nice Sandbox despite the (modable) level Scaling and bland story on rails.

I wonder if they are trying to go with an improved version of the AI system with fo3.

 

[MetalCraze]

@NN:

we have every right to criticize oblivion's ai. why?
a) because they were selling it to us as a next coming
b) yes oblivion's ai is poorly programmed. because at least there was no stupid shit in gothics with schedules. you see - people praise gothic for ai also. and oblivion's ai looks to me like a poor copy of that.

so let's see.
the promises of the best ai * better ai was scripted 5 years ago = ... ... why shouldn't I criticize oblivion's ai?


also on-topic. we already know that fallout3 will be fps with stats. what ai except that will shoot at you do you want from fps?
ai is the least important of all problems with f3...

 

[Jack_Deth]

It makes me a lab rat that has to pay for the privilege of being experimented on.

Ridiculous theory, every product or technology goes through iterations and at one point or another, a company has to release a game. Bethesda could have
spent years more working on the AI or <insert>.

By your philosophy, Wolfenstein players were lab rats for Doom, Doom were lab rats for Quake and the line continues to this day.

O NO WE R DA LAB RATZ

 

[Nedrah]

By your philosophy, Wolfenstein players were lab rats for Doom, Doom were lab rats for Quake and the line continues to this day.

O NO WE R DA LAB RATZ

Which would be true if there had been tried and true technologys available at the time that could have done what they tried to do better. However, there were not. With Oblivions AI, I think we can agree that from a players point of view, heavy scripting would probably have worked out better for what they were doing.

 

[1eyedking]

Oblivion didn't have AI.

What it did have, however, was ground-breaking wall-watching scripts, random-dialogue generators, unconsciousness, bribery susceptibility, indifference to charm spells being cast at NPC's faces, and finally soil erosion.

So no, Oblivion didn't have AI, for AI is created out of I.

 

[Jack_Deth]

Maybe you'd have preferred a system similar to Fallout's, where NPCs don't move but stand in the same spot for day and night over years.

 

[Nedrah]

Fallout and Oblivion are only in the same genre because of naming conventions. Comparing the game to the gothics makes a lot more sense to me. And yes, I would have prefered G2 Ai a lot. Who cares if the smith is basically spending his whole day at his anvil? That's easy enough to overlook compared to all the fuck ups that RAI delivered.

 

[Au naturel]

Since I didn't buy the game, what were some of the outstanding things about Radiant AI? Bad or good.

 

[pkt-zer0]

Since I didn't buy the game, what were some of the outstanding things about Radiant AI? Bad or good.

This I found pretty funny.

 

[vrok]

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/as ... s-meet.php

 

[MetalCraze]

Maybe you'd have preferred a system similar to Fallout's, where NPCs don't move but stand in the same spot for day and night over years.

as I've said - in Gothic the very same things were done much better.
4 years before the Oblivion.

and at that time Piranha Bytes had much less manpower than Bethesda at Oblivion's one.
so I can't see the problem with doing AI at least on a par with Gothic - because that was done years ago.

 

[Section8]

2. Radiant AI is a step in the wrong direction when held up against games like Gothic whose NPC actions are scripted and more believable.

Actually, it's sort of the opposite. It's nice in theory, but the design is about as hamfisted as they come, so it cops the criticism it deserves.

I guess it's a bit like like chastising a kid for picking up American Psycho. It's great that they're interested in reading, but they shouldn't be attempting something that they can't properly comprehend, especially if it's going to end in tears.

And before anyone slaps me on the back for drawing analogues between a Bethesda AI programmer and a kid learning to read - it's not the programmers who are at fault - it's the absense of proper design that's evident throughout all of Oblivion.

From what I can tell, the AI basically does everything it's supposed to do, it's just that nobody actually sat down and fully nutted out the specifics or fully considered the probable and possible dynamic interactions. Most of the YouTube examples of Radiant AI failure are flaws inherent in the system, not programming errors.

The dinner party? The design calls for sneak attacks that kill or KO in one shot to be undetectable, and that's exactly what happens. The ones where mass brawls erupt? The design seems to state that an attack, regardless of intent, must be met with a retaliation of lethal force, and once again, that's exactly what happens. The thieving NPCs? Again, a product of a system that says "NPCs should steal to add flavour to the world" and doesn't account for any reaction to the crime, or even any purpose to it.

Of all the things Bethesda is guilty of, you can't really criticise their artists and programmers who seem plenty competent at what they do. The problems lie with a design that calls for Disneyland high-fantasy art direction, or with a design that wants AI to do a bunch of stuff to look cool. If I had to sum up Bethesda in three words, those three words would be "Underdesign by Committee".

 

[Nedrah]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MVAYY5LHhv4

Everything you ever need to know about Radiant AI.

 

[Bluebottle]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MVAYY5LHhv4

Everything you ever need to know about Radiant AI.

You see again that's a pretty good example of exactly where the attempts at non-scripted AI failed. It's not so much the AI system there that's failed, so much as a design philosophy that thinks they can get away with a sneak mechanic that equates crouching with being invisible. Had some more effort gone into making an inherently more sophisticated sneak system (quality of animation & distracting NPCs mainly) then that could of been carried across into the NPC behavior, making that scene play out in a more believable manner. The only real massive improvement I could see that scene needing from a purely AI perspective would be for the thief to select his target better (i.e. to run a check on the number and proximity of NPCs to food items in the local area and to pick one that isn't quite so surrounded by people, in the kitchen for instace).

 

[Nedrah]

The only real massive improvement I could see that scene needing from a purely AI perspective would be for the thief to select his target better (i.e. to run a check on the number and proximity of NPCs to food items in the local area and to pick one that isn't quite so surrounded by people, in the kitchen for instace).

How about some actual reactions besides standing around and saying bad things by the other npcs involved? Oh, that's what teleporting telepathic guards are for, I guess.

 

[SmokedWolf]

you should compare oblivion with stalker perhaps.

When stalker was in developement they were talking about creating pretty much a fully autonomous world where the world was really living, and each time you played the game you would get dragged into different bits of the story.

They apparently succeeded in creating this world but apparently the world did not fit well with publishers, I think they had a simlar problem as with oblivion where the AI went a little to far, they pretty much re did the whole game with toned down ai ineraction and a more linear story.

If any one wants to knock the makers of STALkER (I can't remember who, but the google toolbar is so far away from the reply box) feel free, because it seems only fair to do it to them if you are accusing beth of not delivering what they promised.

Seems like ninja said that there are problems with delivering such complex ai systems while balancing it with large scale game worlds.

 

[Nedrah]

If any one wants to knock the makers of STALkER (I can't remember who, but the google toolbar is so far away from the reply box) feel free, because it seems only fair to do it to them if you are accusing beth of not delivering what they promised.

First of all, my expectations of a FPS AI are very different from a RPG. More importantly, I'd like to see where exactly the makers of Stalker are still pretending that the AI works as promised while it was in development.

I understand that balancing an "advanced", semi-autonomous Ai against a big gameworld is a huge task, but that's not something that should come as a surprise to anyone who earns his money be developing games.

 

[SmokedWolf]

I will give you the second point.

I don't understnad quite why your first is relevant.