Nope. AI is what makes characters act and react, make decisions and so on.
Pathfinding is the part of the AI involving making decisions regarding getting from A to B in possibly effective and efficient manner.
IE games failed hard at both fronts - being effectively TB emulators running in RT they obviously didn't benefit from fine timing control, and the AI, including pathfinding was an absolute clusterfuck.
AI and Pathfinding are two different things, at least when it comes to the IE games. AI is how smart the enemy is. In most of my favourite games (Gold Box, Civilization and Age of Wonders games) the AI is the weakest link, but in the IE games it can be really good.
Any system where an enemy between two archers runs back and forth unable to decide which to run at does not have good AI.
From what I have read, Knights of Legend fits the bill for this thread. AllcombatEVERYTHING is super complex with poorly implemented interfaces to further obfuscate and pad gameplay. To add further salt to the wound, the game has a literally arcane magic system COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE GAME
Until you explain how and why you are just shitposting.I disagree with almost every single poster in this thread.
I remember buying this game as a kid and playing the heck out of it. What a great use for paper route money.From what I have read, Knights of Legend fits the bill for this thread. AllcombatEVERYTHING is super complex with poorly implemented interfaces to further obfuscate and pad gameplay. To add further salt to the wound, the game has a literally arcane magic system COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO THE GAME
Until you explain how and why you are just shitposting.I disagree with almost every single poster in this thread.
I like unnecesasarily elaborate mechanics, the ones that add depth and complexity, the ones that force me to learn to survive, i like it when they are obvious but obscure, like survival gear featured on realms of arkania. It adds to the game and to the world. All those unnecessary things are what Drew me to the genre in the first place.Until you explain how and why you are just shitposting.I disagree with almost every single poster in this thread.
I think virtually every RPG has many poor implemented, ill conceived ideas that are essentially unsalvageable and should simply be eliminated.
The first time you play a game, the enthusiasm and the engagement that comes with a learning curve may mask these faults that produce littlee but tedium, frustration, and capitulation. But come back a year later and tell me you don't end up putting the game down thinking "damn this is clunky/unnecessary/stupid etc).
For instance -- every crafting systeme ever. You basically need a list that is hundreds or thousands of entries long -- but you may end up caring about only a dozen. This means that the entire system is basically inaccessible AND superfluous. I want to say that it literally can't get more unnecessarily elaborate than that -- but I know that it can.
No.AI is what I mean by AI instead of what is commonly referred to as AI.
You could actually affect characters' and monsters' attributes too, it just wasn't worth the trouble. Thus 80% of available magic in KoL is irrelevant.agic system was rather boring, though, with spells only affecting the health of party members or monsters, and no buffs, area effect or global spells, IIRC.
Get a clue, when people talk of AI first and foremost they WILL mean the enemy AI. And not how your own guys respond to your orders or act when idle. Yes, that is AI too, but that's something you specify with "unit AI", "idle AI", "pathfinding", and the like, to differentiate that you're not talking about the AI handling enemy actions.No.AI is what I mean by AI instead of what is commonly referred to as AI.
Have you played The Summoning, or are you just watching the video and commenting on the "inventory management" of the guy playing? If you are saying inventory management in the Summoning sucks, that's one thing. However, I wouldn't call the mechanics of TheSummoning elaborate. If you are saying the magic system is unnecessarily elaborate, I would say you are nuts. I really enjoyed the magic system of The Summoning, just wish there were more mana potions, etc.The summoning *ducks*
Realms of Arkania or TOME4 is good complexity, this is just full retard.
What if both AI s use exact same components?Get a clue, when people talk of AI first and foremost they WILL mean the enemy AI. And not how your own guys respond to your orders or act when idle. Yes, that is AI too, but that's something you specify with "unit AI", "idle AI", "pathfinding", and the like, to differentiate that you're not talking about the AI handling enemy actions.
What if both AI s use exact same components?Get a clue, when people talk of AI first and foremost they WILL mean the enemy AI. And not how your own guys respond to your orders or act when idle. Yes, that is AI too, but that's something you specify with "unit AI", "idle AI", "pathfinding", and the like, to differentiate that you're not talking about the AI handling enemy actions.
Because I wouldn't expect enemy pathfinding code to be different from friendly pathfinding code, nor the way enemy AI scripts are handled to be different from the one responsible partymembers AI scripts.
Sorry, but no part of BG AI is defensible.Of course the AI scripts are not different. But that's not what we were discussing anyway, as I specifically mentioned manual control, not using AI scripts.
As I tried to explain, scripts are continually checked, so the pathfinding is usually not a problem in those cases. The problem is when you use manual control and neglect/forget to babysit the characters, and they behave like morons due to blocking or lack of line of sight at the moment they got their order.
I'd like to bring up the original Fallouts as an example of games which manage to be both needlessly complex and bare bones at the same time. The problem those games have is that every possible interaction with an enemy is a "nuke" by default (which is why aimed shots fail - they're the only way to debuff something and you're still hitting stuff with bullets to do it). It's people shooting guns at each other all the time! Anyone who's ever held a players handbook for, say, 3rd Edition D&D can be astounded by the disparity of options spellcasters have at their disposal compared to those of fighters. In Fallout, everyone's a fighter! Which then makes the item progresion all about the deeps and armor (and arguably range). But there's a ton of guns and ammo in the game, except if you already have whatever does the most deeps, most of what you can find lying around or gain as quest rewards turns out to be nothing more than vendor trash. It's not a very complex game combat wise, but the level of complexity it does have is... needless.
As for other games... IDK, I find most of the D&D based systems have really aged badly and were always needlessly complex or poorly concieved. My experience with Dota really turned my approach to pen and paper D&D around. It condeses the concept of level based combat RPG to an episodic format, it's fully real time, and it's brilliant in design because what would have to be handled by an AI is handled by humans. No pause needed. It does have clearly defined party roles, and 4 or so spells/abilities (some of them passive) and 6 item slots (most of which give passive bonuses), and a wide variety of class packages for a wide variety of different experiences on every "playthrough". Desktop dungeons feels like a single player TB variant of this. After having spent too much of my life playing videogames, I'd say a variant of this is about as complex as combat design in an RPG needs to be to not be needlessly bloated.
If you think about it, to reverse-engineer a decent RPG out of this bare bones condensation, all you really need is to replace lane creep grind with questing, cook up a big enough non-combat perk/reputation/skill character customisation system, and a decent story and world. Everything else will be needlessly complex one way or another. If you make it turn based or phase based, coding an AI for it wouldn't even be too hard. Yeah, it's a bit jRPG-ish but it makes for complexity in the learning curve rather than execution, I think.
I'd like to bring up the original Fallouts as an example of games which manage to be both needlessly complex and bare bones at the same time. The problem those games have is that every possible interaction with an enemy is a "nuke" by default (which is why aimed shots fail - they're the only way to debuff something and you're still hitting stuff with bullets to do it).
Sorry, but no part of BG AI is defensible.Of course the AI scripts are not different. But that's not what we were discussing anyway, as I specifically mentioned manual control, not using AI scripts.
As I tried to explain, scripts are continually checked, so the pathfinding is usually not a problem in those cases. The problem is when you use manual control and neglect/forget to babysit the characters, and they behave like morons due to blocking or lack of line of sight at the moment they got their order.
Enemies can be drawn around in front of the archers for cheesy kills, small sight radius and disabling AI outside of player's visual range makes for some extremely cheesy exploits resulting from merely trying to fight smart. Scripts are good to have, but they too are pretty bare-bones.
Whether or not pathfinding behaves differently for selected units doesn't change the fact that it's an inexcusable clusterfuck.