Is FEAR's 2006 AI better than Cyberpunk's one?
FEAR's AI is better than every FPS I've played since. I don't understand why they don't just outsource that AI. Lazy devs can buy it and modify it slightly.
I don't know how game AI works, so it was probably heavily scripted to only work in the limited and confined spaces of FEAR's level design, but it's still really impressive.
What is heavily scripted on FEAR is the audio chatter, this use enviromental triggers. The ai basic behavior? Not so much. They use a state machine, not enviromental triggers for it (with exceptions for something like enemy spawns and scripted action sequences), its been a long time since I read the articles about their Ai so I might be bsing because I'm speaking of memory, but I think they have two levels of Ai, squad and individual and a state machine to regulate both. The squad Ai controls the relationships between each enemy soldier and the player, like... if he is alone, if he is on player sight, if he is far or close to the player. The individual Ai keeps track of things like individual animations, if he is injuried, what weapon the enemy soldier has and etc.
Each individual Ai has a state that is changed by the squad Ai, the trick of FEAR is that this isnt an universal state change, some individual Ais can recieve a state, while others might get other states and this state is changed all the time. An ai that is on player view and full health might get the "assault state" (this isnt the names they used for the states, I'm just simplifying) while other Ai that isnt on player view might get the "flanking behavior" state where its pathfinding algorithm tries to avoid the player cone of view until they hit the player once then they change to "assault" state.
That Ai could be adapted to be used on an open world game, of course, the FEAR Ai used a series of assumptions about its level design but you can use the same concept, only change the assumptions, like the player cone of view changing greatly with distance on open world games, for example. This requires adaptation but it isnt impossible.
However, an Ai like FEAR on an open world game might mean, enemies using buildings to hide and not exposing themselves to your sniper, frustrating popamole players, enemies forcing you to move like crazy because they will move to hit your ass mercilessly, what isnt that good for controllers and FPS with slow movement like pretty much all console shooters as your reaction time isnt that good. You also need to balance the game, it doesnt matter if the Ai can flank you if you have infinite instant healing on demand like Cyberbug. You will also need to nerf or remove weapons that can fire through walls or tracking weapons because no Ai can handle that and giving that sort of power on the same scale to a decent Ai means you are toasted the moment combat starts.
Also, keep in mind that most shooters these days are PvP or extremely linear what doesnt require Ai at all and those that arent, some shitty Ai is more than enough for the average normie. Modern FPS have a very rudimentary Ai with universal state changes from unaware state to combat state, once combat state begins, they seek the closest pre stabilished cover positions and melee ones just charge in your direction, that is it, and most console gamers are okay with it. Good luck finding someone that have alot of experience on complex FPS Ai these days, even assuming the companies want it.
