ArmA3 AI

[tonymedkniven 10]

Playing Exile on my server for a week or two...

 

To start off, I easily learn any kind of modern coding language to a "script kiddie" level. I have no issues adding simple things to missions or scripts. - Exile well the convoluted code kills me it takes more than 45 minutes to understand the whole thing and I give up, I get payed to understand stuff at work not while playing. Easy stuff such as adding a XM8 script is ok. The other magic is beyond me, and please admit that the code in Exile is way more hardcore than most other "mods"

 

AI coding - no game has ever perfected this. And to be honest my coding limits are way off. AI will not be something I ever work on.

 

Arma genre - c'mon it's in the lower end of gaming AI. Installing MCC and confronting AI that actually always try to flank you simply changes your method of attacking, ie. it's not "AI" the basic AI is used but waypoints are made in a flanking "behavior" and that's simply different not "smart".

 

What I'm missing is not aim skill or such % stuff. I'd like to have a human AI playstyle.

 

1. If something is in the line of sight wait some time then drop the "hook".
   
2. It's dark/night/overcast, as a human player without night vision you see 20-40m, vanilla AI kills you from hundreds of meters even though they don't have night vision
   
3. It's dark, as a human player you can hear other combatants but you cannot aim solely from that sound, maybe AI got super ears? - btw. that audio is awful, is there a mod for this. This new "stereo" thing doesn't show at all atm. Real life you hear a shot, if you hear 5 more you KNOW the direction. In ArmA 3 you can easily mix up the source/impact since the sounds a very weak. In any other modern shooter you can almost aim using the sound alone. I'm really asking is there a sound mod fixing this?
   
4. MCC flanking then returning to "zone" is way better than vanilla follow forever (Exile - DMS - Vanilla AI)
   
5. MCC cover fire. If I drop to cover when being fired upon then AI should, using smoke if appropriate is sugar on top. It's still extremely basic.
   
6. Give any player or person a sniper rifle and a good scope and they will have a better "aim skill" compared to iron sight carbine "aim skill" where is that in the AI
   
7. Sometimes at total darkness while raining and overcast, you're blind and deaf AI is not, without knowing for sure I'd say this would need to be fixed by Bohemia, I find it hard to believe it's possible to script this kind of AI without killing most servers. ie. AI needs fixing from aim % to "brain" % and I do not believe it can be done by scripting.
   

 

The Exile "mod" has displayed "above and beyond" general and specific coding skill and with the exception of MCC to me seems to have the deepest knowledge on scripting for ArmA when it comes to delivering "fun gaming experience" outside Bohemia. What can be done within the ArmA 3 framework regarding AI without killing other stuff people want to add to their PvE missions. My layman guess is that it's very limited possibilities, the MCC method of "flanking" is the best that can be done, but then I have been amazed by MCC and Exile so maybe something can be done. It might be that someone here knows. To reiterate, MCC enemies are different but I haven't seen what the tin says "MCC have a dynamic AI system that called GAIA that gives AI more human like tactics while they flank, support and use CAS or artillery." Well they do flank but that's it. It's a good start.

 

Basic example of "broken" AI: Start the editor, add an artillery platoon and add an enemy recon squad, give waypoints that will cause them to attack each other, add a civilian as a player and watch the artillery platoon perform a rush attack firing on the recon squad more or less while moving. That's not how artillery works, they behave like tanks. I suppose there are tricks to make them behave better but still, it shows they are actually tank AI not artillery, add another squad 100m from the first one and they will not run to cover, it's artillery that should be standing still and killing them from faaar away, but then again since the artillery is tank AI firing from 200m not 2km why run...

 

Whats your thoughts on the ArmA AI and scripting vs. base game coding?

[max1944 16]

 

even though they don't have night vision

 

 

Within the campaign they all have night vision goggles on their helmets but on many night time missions their NVG's magically vanish. That is a (pretty dumb) logic gap.

I'm happy with the AI as long as it won't get worse. BI will fiddle change the AI without noticing the consequences. 

 

Be happy and pray that it won't get worse (like the eden editor corrups waypoints of the campaign missions).

[robowilso 40]

Until BIS fixes the AI being partially submerged under the terrain when prone i'm afraid to say there is no AI fix worth mentioning before that.

[froggyluv 2130]

 

AI coding - no game has ever perfected this. And to be honest my coding limits are way off. AI will not be something I ever work on.

 

 

 Especially open world sandbox 1000 unit AI in a 3d environment.

 

 

One of the cool things with the AI we decided to do was, we wanted it to be a dynamic AI, and this was done by creating, you know like American Football, they use playbooks. We thought we could do something similar to that, so we have lots of different playbooks and options for the AI to choose from depending on what you’re doing and what they’re doing and what the general overall battle is doing, because we don’t just have very basic scripts controlling them.

 

We have all sorts of things like, they have a threat level, they have a morale level, and various things that can affect these. Such as they have different perceived  threats, so the infantry see an enemy tank coming over the hill, obviously they’re going to go, “Oh, that’s a bigger threat,†and that’s going to have a knock on effect on their morale. If your fire team leader is shot and killed, that’s going to affect the morale. So, that can affect things like, what they decide to do... they may panic, they may flee. They might do a more controlled flee manoeuvre, which is, what they do is they’ll drop a smoke grenade and then do a tactical retreat, where they’re pointing towards the enemy, but then running backwards.

 

These rules are some tactical things that we took from the United States training manuals because we’ve had unprecedented access to all sorts of things like the Marines and asking them their advice and that kind of thing, because, again like I said before, for things like that we had to have authenticity, and we’re really proud of what we’ve got.

 

Sounds pretty good right? Those were the plans for the much maligned OFPDR. But...they did dream big for AI behaviour but the more I watch this industry -this will never happen.

 

Arma while having good AI in light of how many variables its dealing with, just isn't headed in the military direction like I'd like to see. Reason? Not enough people care and the cost and man hours of actually trying to create class & environment based behaviour just ain't worth it. Kind of ironic you coming from a mod that IIRC, is one of the survival themed ones..? would complain about AI behaviour..

 

 Life/Zombies/Wasteland are the current and most probable future of Arma sad as it is - pretty much cements that the future of AI is to be as pliable as possible for all of these themes +  a smattering of military. This takes huge workload off of AI developers digging deeper into legacy code and trying to start adding some new military behaviours. Cant really blame them as this is the state of all tac shooters today -forget expensive never good enough for the masses AI and make a kickass PvP or co-op versus zombies who require little AI in comparison. Had the masses been lighting up the sales chart with Swat 4 and Graviteam Tactics over BF/CoD/Dayz for years then yes, developers would be forced to go in this direction.