AI Improvement

[Enemydown 10]

AI taking effective cover.

So the idea hit me when I was playing ArmA 2 with smookie's animations addon. I was able to take cover quite effective because of smookie's animations but the AI lacked the skill to use them. Now that smookie is part of the ArmA 3 development team, isn't it possible to create certain "prefixed" positions on buildings, (none moving) vehicles and such for the AI to take cover behind with the use of smookie's animations?

Ofcourse this has to be ironed out, AI shouldn't take cover behind burning wrecks, should propely identify "harder" cover and not change positions every 2 or 3 seconds.

Thank you for your time.

What do you guys think? I had to place this in this thread, I'm sorry for the unconvenience.

[NeMeSiS 11]

I think the AI wont use any special animations to take cover.

[froggyluv 2136]

I'm also curious how smookie's animations will play out with AI. Will they now have an idea of when to use sniper sit or tactical pace depending on the situation? Also I pray that they can now use dynamic cover ie.. cars and armor. How cool would it be to fill a street with cars and watch two squads go at it from cover to cover poppin out windshields Michael Mann style :cool:

Edited August 13, 2012 by froggyluv

[denco 16]

Just searching the forums I found this :)

So myb there is hope for a good AI.

[^Th0mas^ 10]

There are good AI mods for ArmA 2, but I dont know why BIS isnt using it into the vanilla.

[instagoat 133]

There are good AI mods for ArmA 2, but I dont know why BIS isnt using it into the vanilla.

Because they are ad-hoc scripted solutions. The AI in arma seems to be FSM based exclusively: BI themselves advertise their AI to be non-scripted entirely. Have to say I´m no codeperson, though, so I may be completely off the mark on all points here 9_6

[neokika 62]

There are good AI mods for ArmA 2, but I dont know why BIS isnt using it into the vanilla.

Ai mods usually consist of configuration tweaks and heavy scripted solutions, such as, having open scripting threads all over, say, for each AI group or even worse, for each AI unit.

I think it is pretty obvious why not.

[maturin 12]

Zeus, ASR and ACE never script their AI. They just fix vanilla stupidity. It's straightforward improvement that implements what already should have been done.

[NoRailgunner 0]

Lets wait and watch the next A3 ingame presentations and maybe later this year we can all have a closer look at A3 - Alpha release. Seems that Xaitment products (eg AI unity control) aren't very useable and affordable for A3....

[traviss 1]

My concern is better voice acting to go with their improvements.

[maturin 12]

My concern is better voice acting to go with their improvements.

Congratulations on choosing the item at the ultimate bottom of everyone else's list.

[old_painless 183]

Now now, one has to cringe when listening to some of the british troops. But agreed, that it is somewhat secondary

[^Th0mas^ 10]

I hope we get some AI gameplay from Gamescon tomorrow. :D

[naizarak 4]

it'll probably be another pointless tech demo showcasing "high-res foliage" and "night-time glowsticks"

[tpw 2315]

Congratulations on choosing the item at the ultimate bottom of everyone else's list.

Not mine, I think the voice acting is often terrible and immersion breaking.

[-Coulum- 35]

it'll probably be another pointless tech demo showcasing "high-res foliage" and "night-time glowsticks"

Concerning lack of AI demonstration you are probably right. I think there will be a lot more focus on playbiltiy, fluidity etc. rather than graphics however. But I doubt there will be much if any difference/mention of the ai.

But this shouldn't exactly be suprising. The devs have said a couple different times, in a varity of different ways, that there will be few changes to the ai, especially concerning their behaviour/decision making, when compared to arma 2. They pretty much said that they will only be making "config" tweaks.

That's not to say that they don't have any interest in the ai, I just think they have learned from previous iterations of the game that it is first necessary to have fully functional features and settings (animations, terrain, physics, etc.) before making an ai that can properly interact with all these things properly. So basically they want to have the rest of the game polished before they start to really go full fledge on ai improvement.

Thats my interpretation of things at least.

That being said there are a few things concerning ai that I am interested to know about, and hope to have answered in the Gamescom. Ie.

Will ai be able to use the new stance animations

and

How will the "tweaked ai configs" effect the ai's ability to spot, track and engage targets, especially those at longer range where point fire would not be a viable option.

[maturin 12]

Not mine, I think the voice acting is often terrible and immersion breaking.

In my opinion, making it acceptable (the procedural stuff, not the cutscenes) would take more resources than it is worth.

I don't know why anyone plays with voices enabled, ever. The AI's blathering is useful only rarely, and you can always glance at the subtitles.

[tpw 2315]

In my opinion, making it acceptable (the procedural stuff, not the cutscenes) would take more resources than it is worth.

I don't know why anyone plays with voices enabled, ever. The AI's blathering is useful only rarely, and you can always glance at the subtitles.

I know what you're saying, but it's an argument that could equally apply to any aspect of the game. Why bother with hi res textures when you can tell perfectly well what's what with low res ones. Why bother with better anims when the current ones allow a unit to move from A to B and fire a weapon. Etc etc. The problem is that as the fidelity of some parts of the game improve, the deficiencies of the parts which aren't improved become more glaring.

[chortles 263]

Unfortunately that means that basically it becomes a matter (for BI) of prioritizing whose immersion comes first.

[maturin 12]

Why bother with hi res textures when you can tell perfectly well what's what with low res ones.

Because take it from me, at 400m in a thicket, you can't.

Why bother with better anims when the current ones allow a unit to move from A to B and fire a weapon.

Because the current ones hamstring gameplay and give us too-fast launchers and MGs.

Immersion is best approached from a gameplay-centric perspective. Only linear shooters can have no flaws or oddities like ArmA's voices. Improving animations can improve gameplay and immersion, butthe most immersive voices would also be less useful than the current formulaic reports, and harm gameplay in the name of immersion.

[^Th0mas^ 10]

So first day at Gamescon almost done, and still they didnt show any AI? As far as I can see its the videos from E3! :(

[metalcraze 290]

Well they showed a bit of the infantry gameplay but it's so short and it's basically a fireteam running linearly forward while the chopper does all the job.

It would've been great to just watch 2 squads fighting each other inside the village, since AI doesn't have much problems outside of urban environment and it isn't as interesting to watch.

Of course what I've noticed however is that AI still doesn't seem to kneel to fire (apart from that ArmA2-style cover position by the rock?). Either standing or prone like in ArmA2. Especially visible when enemies were basically standing at the top of the hill.

[^Th0mas^ 10]

Well they showed a bit of the infantry gameplay but it's so short and it's basically a fireteam running linearly forward while the chopper does all the job.

It would've been great to just watch 2 squads fighting each other inside the village, since AI doesn't have much problems outside of urban environment and it isn't as interesting to watch.

Of course what I've noticed however is that AI still doesn't seem to kneel to fire (apart from that ArmA2-style cover position by the rock?). Either standing or prone like in ArmA2. Especially visible when enemies were basically standing at the top of the hill.

And thats probably why they are avoiding to show us any real combat gameplay with AI.

[Tonci87 163]

A guy I know has been to GC today and played A3. He said that the AI sucked. You could run i.to the open without getting hit and you were able to take a quite large ammount of hits before going down. My guess is that the Presentation runs on the lowest possible Difficulty level. I really don't know why BIS doesn't try to impress the visitors with some nice and deadly AI....

[tpw 2315]

Improving animations can improve gameplay and immersion, butthe most immersive voices would also be less useful than the current formulaic reports, and harm gameplay in the name of immersion.

Sorry, how the hell would improved voices harm immersion?!? Improving the procedural sentence generation would present the same information in a less jarring way. And in lieu of improving the procedural stuff, just getting the actors to read the lines in such a way that some semblance of prosody is maintained would be good.