Arma2 AI the most advanced in the world?

[Balschoiw 0]

Sidenote:

I had problems with the missing ability of AIto move on balconies, terraces, roofs, etc in Arma.

It is like that because the buildings/segments miss the roadway surfaces on such buildings. This was a turndown but I guess that in Arma 2 the buildings will have proper roadway surfaces. At least I hope so.

[SASrecon 0]

This was a turndown but I guess that in Arma 2 the buildings will have proper roadway surfaces. At least I hope so.

Ooh i hope so, the Ai crossing-bridge problem was annoying! (isn't it fixed now though?)

I also didn't like it that the Ai could walk through walls in ARMA1, that made the game stupidly unfair  

[Balschoiw 0]

The bridge crossing problem is solved afaik and is not related to the problem I mentioned.

AI walking through walls was/is a problem of engine optimizing as the engine or pathfinding for AI was simplified in a distance to ensure performance. I don´t know for sure but I guess it has also been adressed in a patch.

[froggyluv 2135]

I almost feel that all sandbox games should be built from the ground-up with purely pathfinding and understanding of the total environment in mind as top priority. It really doesn't matter how good the rest of a game is if your guys just don't get it; ie. stuck in silly places, afraid to use stairs or navigate low-angled declines in the terrain.

That being said, I've also been impressed with a game in which (single-player CTI's) I've been able to order Tanks, Support trucks, Infantry and Air over miles of terrain and actually have them show up 70% of the time  

Even AI in tightly-knit tac's like Swat 4 are vunerable to total retardation.

[Second 0]

Download this mission and play it without any mods.

No thank you, i don't play Arma anymore. would you care to explain you point?

I can explain point of mine:

I put grunt into building (give him setcombatmode "red" to enable his cover seeking tendensy), then i reveal enemy to him. Now what happens? He starts to move out from building... However because combat.FSM (that bounding overwatch thingy FSM, dont' remeber it's name) interfers with it once per every second he does it slowly. But eventually (like minutes) he's lying behind something else that exterior wall of building, that something is something which AI understands as cover. Like bush.

Sure i can script it to use buildings (and so various different things). That is why i said that it's half true. As in the end they don't have logic or piece of code which tells them that inside building because there is cover (by default in Vanilla ArmA).

[Big Dawg KS 6]

would you care to explain you point?

Not really. If you don't want to play the mission then there's no point in explaining.

[Second 0]

would you care to explain you point?

Not really. If you don't want to play the mission then there's no point in explaining.

Okay. Fair enough

[Batstat 10]

I agree with second and others when they state that AI has some flaws, and in some respect the flaws are majors.

How to address that? Well in my opinion BIS has allready done the most important part. They have in some degree made an “open†framework to control the AI behavior (FSM). Also and thanks for that, the AI is not COD-hard coded, if it had been, some of us, not all, would not have been playing Arma at all.

One obstacle with the exposed part of the FSM, it do not contain BIS default AI behavior, witch raise one big problem, the community cant extend the BIS default work in a good and integrated way. If you code your own AI behavior with the FSM you don't know how or when it will be overrided by default BIS made AI behavior, only by looking at the code. You need to test it, to find out the basic principles, and you need to test it to understand when this will be overrided. This involve heavily use of time, with a uncertain outcome. I'm not aware of any good mission, or addon heavily based on community made FSM code.

One last thing, and as I see it, thats also good news, I belive BIS default AI behavior also are based on a framwork, not sure what they call it maybe BisFSM

Why not expose all the AI behavior to the community. My guess – property protection, but really I don't know. If it had been exposed then next version of COD could have been released with something similar to intelligent AI. Do BIS want to play out that card for free?

Use of FSM to code AI behavior is not uncommon, http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php?story=1862 and in spite of all the different property protection schema's running around, slowly the different companies are learning to control AI in some semi intelligent way. One day this could be common knowledge – maybe.

I would have liked more dynamic AI, and I very much praise DAC in this respect. I also believe it is possible to get the best from both word. I don't belive it is rocket science to code and make the AI and use of FSM, influenced bye editor exposed attributes.

Note: All my statement is based on reading, browsing and playing. I have newer coded any FSM og HFSM by myself. Worst case – all the above is nonsens

Regards

Batstat

[Heatseeker 0]

If you think about the i in a.i. most games dont have much (if any) of it, the bots dont treat their wounded, dont have a chain of command, they dont even run out of ammo..

I agree that improving movement and precision along with squad tactics is necessary for BIS a.i. but the "core" works great.

And i'd rather have the a.i. hardcoded, i dont want to fight scripted inteligence.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

And i'd rather have the a.i. hardcoded, i dont want to fight scripted inteligence.

Are you saying that the human that's designing the scenario doesn't know better than the AI?

If you've ever tried to make (or even played) good Singleplayer or COOP missions in ArmA with small bits of well scripted AI events, you would see that it greatly enhances the gameplay.

I don't understand why people think "scripted AI" is so bad. Yea it's good to have really smart and capable AI, but it's not worth anything if they don't do what the designer wants them to.

[Batstat 10]

Whats the problem, you can have both. Designer scripted AI and AI doing things for them self.

But what is scriptet, mostely it's the goal for the AI, normaly you dont want to micro managment via script how the AI reach the imposed goal. Guard, defend, move etc, etc..

You dont want to code the AI to go one more step forward, and then anoterher step, reload if emtpy etc.. (normaly). There is tons of tons of AI behavoiur you take for granted, and you dont want to think about it, and less code it. Form time to time you want to override som small part, put mostley you give them the ordres (obejctives). Or I do when i make missions.

[Michael_Wittman 0]

I think it happens in all levels ... its quite tricky to teach I.A. the basics of common sense. Like watching a bunch of comrades killed on the same spot and not avoiding the ambush.

[froggyluv 2135]

Good point Batstat.

I remember when BF2 came out and I was living in the jungle with no internet so I tried to play it in SP. Someone had released a larger map addon to make it more fun but guess what -the AI wouldn't go anywhere in the extended portion of the map    It seems the AI was so scripted without any basis for understanding that just walking 50 feet further in any given direction was outside of it's scope of comprehension.

[Deadfast 43]

AFAIK there has to be predefined walkable areas for BF2 AI.

[amadieus 0]

OMG, FarCry 2 has one of the most lame AI I have ever seen. They are just like you would play FPS from '95 or smt. They were supposed to fell down and whine if you shoot him in the leg and his buddys would come to help him and stuff like that. Well non of that happened. I was really annoyed by that they are sooo stiff and they do not go crouch or anything. They just rush you with that stiff stance and usually 1st bullet they fire, hits. Luckely, you are rambo and you can take like 10 hits or so before you are down. AI is shooting .50 cal on you and you are like "hey, shut up already and let me stab a knife in your stomach". Then you can actually run to him and knife him even if he had emptied whole box on you.

Well you are wrong on some points, on the hardest diffuclty a .50 cal kills you easily.

And they do help each other, like carrying wounded people to saver places, and besides the do flank and sometimes with succes. and yes sometimes they act dumb

[rstratton 0]

- They are absolutely incappable of going inside a building

they can and will go in a building to kill u if u use the DAC ai scripts

[M.Andersson(SWE) 4]

Just like in the REAL WORLD...

A good AI is Coded with BILLIONS

of "IFs" and "When´s"...

Thats nearly impossible to do with a game...

The only way i see is to write an AI engine

thats intuitive and capable of learning..

But that would take processor and memory like

we´ve never even dreamed of..

So the other chioce is a HARD CODED engine

combined with a LOT of scripted events..

And thats all I AM asking for..

[Michael_Wittman 0]

But they are absolutely incapable of utilizing that building as cover/defensive position unlike OFP 2.

That is absolutely not true.

As mission developer I HARDLY ENCOURAGE YOU to play Combat Mission Barbarrosa to Berlin of CMAK for a few month just to check out how many things in your thoughts are WRONG.

Most people dont play the game the right way...but also most of the mission makers dont have a clue of how to set strongholds....AT gun positions...MG positions...and so on,,,

So yes...we not only need a micro AI...we need tactical AI and strategic level AI.

It´s sad that we are in the hands of the comunity for developing maps and missions.... well if they would all think like ACE mod devs. i´d never have a problem...but that´s not the case.

So message for all that mission developers that want the player to pass through a bottleneck were they did set the ambush......... dont try to turn this into COD2012... although you could be a great worker for Valve making extra levels for Half -Life 2012 this game is not that way.

So as far as Ive seen how map devolopers set their maps I strongly recommend that they play tactical level games like Combat Mission (BB, AK) and only then start making map with some sense....just that.

Some people find that map developers try harder to be amateur movie directors than anything else.

[Second 0]

So yes...we not only need a micro AI...we need tactical AI and strategic level AI.

It´s sad that we are in the hands of the comunity for developing maps and missions.... well if they would all think like ACE mod devs. i´d never have a problem...but that´s not the case.

In fact latest Combat Mission (shock Force) got rid of strategic AI just because human as scenario desginer can handle things better and it's very hard to code AI able to handle tactical scale (company and above) things on modern battlefield on it's own... So just tactical AI remains in CMSF. The one which handles individual units, from squads, teams to vehicles. Map designer defines actual plan of battle.

[Jensen1 0]

I'm sorry but you can't call AI that lays on their stomach in the middle of a road as a Hummv slowly inches forward injuring the soldier with an enemy soldier just 10 feet infront of them doing that all to well known Slow-aiming/moving their weapon in the direction of the enemy smart. You just can't.

And to the argument that mission designers want scripted Ai over dynamic Ai: Just frieken have a script that disables the dynamic AI when ever you want to utilize your precious scripts.

Seriously! The point of Dynamic AI is to Make mission editing faster.

My prediction: The AI won't be improved much if at all for ArmA 2, andI'm pretty sure of that. Will that keep me from buying this game? No. I love ArmA but don't say the AI is smart, cause its not.

[Scrub 0]

I'm sorry but you can't call AI that lays on their stomach in the middle of a road as a Hummv slowly inches forward injuring the soldier with an enemy soldier just 10 feet infront of them doing that all to well known Slow-aiming/moving their weapon in the direction of the enemy smart. You just can't.

And to the argument that mission designers want scripted Ai over dynamic Ai: Just frieken have a script that disables the dynamic AI when ever you want to utilize your precious scripts.

Seriously! The point of Dynamic AI is to Make mission editing faster.

My prediction: The AI won't be improved much if at all for ArmA 2, andI'm pretty sure of that. Will that keep me from buying this game? No. I love ArmA but don't say the AI is smart, cause its not.

Tiscali GC Video 1. 2 years old

Slicing the pie?  Cover to cover movement?  Getting better.. I'm pretty sure (like to say I know, but can't) that they fixed the 'go prone,get up,go prone' issue.

[Second 0]

I'm not very sure how dynamic AI would make it easier to do mission, in the sense i understand dynamic AI. If we take Group Link, some suppression system or SLX as example (from which Group Link and SLX offer pretty dynamic system in my mind)... There is lots of things which i would not like AI to be able to perform in my mission as they don't fit into my idea of how battle should be fought.

I want AI to be able to perform basics well in combat. So that i would NOT  need to spent hours in tweaking their combat actions (in most cases i even can't do that), like use of fortifications and cover they offer or how to advance under fire . In other words I want individual fighting skills of AI to be as good as it gets, not necessarily good but "good", like in COD4 but with some tweaks... And i want a pony, but that is whole another issue.

Scripting (semi)dynamic counterattack for group is easy task. telling them to preserve themselves and present interesting&believable opponents for player as individuals is not.

[old raven nl 1]

Is there any information on if you can enhance or "learn" the AI new things.

I'm curious if you can add rules for them yourself.

I'm no programmer, but a friend of mine does a lot of AI programming.. plan is to go visit him when ArmA2 comes out to see if he's interested in running some experiments.

[Stryder 0]

Where are these videos demonstrating AI? Any recent ones?