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3dioot

Animation, skill level and a.i.

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Hi, something just struck me as odd. We just had quakecon and we did get some new information from it. Most repetitive as hell but still information ;) Overall im really pleased, the game looks great and there seems to have gone a whole lot of planning into it which is now paying off. JC himself stated that the development of doom3 is going much more fluid then previous games. Thankfully so cause this is a much larger undertaking aswell :D

Something that totally misses though is any info on the enemy ai. I dont think they will slack on it cause they payed so much attention to every other part of doom (even the story) but there just seems to be a total lack of info on it. I am not even certain what the name of the guy is that does the a.i. We keep hearing how they set their goal to scare the player, how that is done by the surroundings, the animation, the gui system and so on and so forth but no word on a.i.

All i can get from the interviews is some indirect information.

Something that i cant derive from the interviews though is wether any a.i. is used to make the monsters appear more alive. What i mean with thas is this. The whole doom3 universe is based around immersion. Realism if you will. A big part in this are the physics that are definately adding a lot. However, animation wise they made some big advancements as well. We allready got to see monsters looking at you (zombie that looks down on you after you killed the pinky that came through the wall) and i heard carmack talk about animatable pivot feet (feet and paws that align to the floor they are standing on).

Will the a.i. go beyond basic attack routines? Will monsters greet you with a threatening growl or will they just jump right at you. Will the bigger monsters walk in front of you and try to scare you before attacking (unless you fire first ofcourse). What about running and hiding from them, is that possible, if so how will they react when they 'loose' you. We all saw the hellknight at the end of the e3 presentation. This is probably a seperate 'cinematic' but behaviour like that would be cool in the game too. He first growls at you and then kills you.

Another thing that i was wondering about is how many attack routines each monster has and wether they are used 'random'. My hopes are high for this one. Best example is the tentacle guy that you see coming at ya in the reflection of a piece of glass. He kicks, hits and gives you the tentacle treatment. All in quick succesion and from what i could judge depending on your position accoring to his. So many attack routines were previously impossible because of memory limitations cause by vertex animation. They have skeletal now. Will all monsters have varied attacks? I certainly hope so. =]

And what about how the pain is inflicted. We know that hit detection is per polygon. How is that the other way around. From monster to player? Will claws actually have a hitbox that is sweeped across the scene according to the attack animation? Or will it be like in old games where its simply 'if player is in reach while monster does attack give him pain'. It seems to be a little more advanced then that. In the e3 demo an imp gets you cornered and starts to beat the shit out of you. While the player had godmode on (booh) he did manage to duck after a while which probably didnt make him receive no pain at all but at least (for the moment; he shot him right hereafter) seemed to minimise the pain. His view wasnt beaten all over the place anymore. Does this mean that if your quick you evade attacks by ducking ever so shortly? Those 'little' things would do a lot for the game.

With all the care going into the other stuff im just curious what they are doing or have planned for the ai. I also hope doom3 will be damn tough to play. It wont be scary if its too easy. Which also makes me wonder about how the difficulty level will be implemented. But ill stop here :p

GrtZ 3dioot

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AI: Has already been discussed to death on this forum, but then again, it's a long time since we last discussed it so how would you know?
Basically, the little we know for certain (what the id guys have said a long time ago) is that the monsters will have their different characteristics and behaviour. About the ai itself, it has been said that it won't be much of a focus - other games will have better ai.

To me it doesn't matter what the AI is like as long as the monsters don't use the same ol' run-in-zig-zag-patterns tactic.

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Apparently, id use demons, zombie etc. in their games, because their known for a lack of brains, so they don't have to work as hard on AI to make them believable.

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Meuh.

Monsters that have different characteristics and behaviour. Free translation: zombies walk and tentacle guys whip.

You call that info? The only thing you can read in that (which is practically a given) is that the monsters will be diverse in their forms and attacks.

As for your, 'i dont give a shit about monster a.i. as long as they dont come to me zigzagging'. What is the alternative to that? I would say some pretty advanced a.i. hence my interest in it. Carmack said he wasnt going to invest time into humanoid team/squad based a.i. He is right when saying that takes a lot of effort and research. The beautie with monsters is that you dont have any examples of behaviour you have to live up to so you will have a lot of creative freedom. If this doesnt work we can try that.

I dont think they will leave the a.i. at q2/3 level. Do you really expect them to spend so much time on for example the physiqs engine and character animation (they hired a new person JUST to create the system for animation) only to have that driven by unimaginative silly old q2/3 level monster a.i.? Dont think so.

3dioot

PS
Trasher; your right about that. But even a relatively stupid monster can have quite advanced a.i. for its different attack routines. Maybe it wont dodge or hide (in fact im pretty certain they wont, their evil big monsters who want to daddy you) but it still needs to get you in the first place and then whoop you without you simply being able to back off and keep firing. Thats part of the fun of zombies. They are supposed to be stupid. You can have fun with them. I dont expect to have fun with the real meanies. I expect to have serious fights with them.

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NiGHTMARE said:

3dioot: Being rude to Moderators = bad idea

I'll say!
3dioot: You just made me lose the little bit of respect that I had towards you - I stated my opinion in a neutral manner, I didn't FUCKING criticize you.

If you think I'll let this slip, then think again.

And there are ways to make enemies use a different tactic without having superb AI. Look at Half Life: The marines were pretty cool to fight because their behaviour was fairly well-scripted, but the AI in that game sucked balls.

Trasher; your right about that. But even a relatively stupid monster can have quite advanced a.i. for its different attack routines. Maybe it wont dodge or hide (in fact im pretty certain they wont, their evil big monsters who want to daddy you) but it still needs to get you in the first place and then whoop you without you simply being able to back off and keep firing. Thats part of the fun of zombies. They are supposed to be stupid. You can have fun with them. I dont expect to have fun with the real meanies. I expect to have serious fights with them.

This comment just shows what I have been suspecting since I read your first post: You don't know shit about what's ai and what isn't.

Afaik ai is the enemy's ability to "think" and navigate on its own. What you're talking about is behavior, which on one hand can be scripted and on the other hand can be coded into the AI - the latter option is the most technically advanced and I don't even think that such an advanced AI exists as of yet.

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I wasnt rude. Dont blow this out of proportions. No need to go stand on your stripes either. I didnt register here to be banned but if this is all the forum is about i wouldnt really care. I actually thought i contributed something by posting.

Remember you started with this:

AI: Has already been discussed to death on this forum, but then again, it's a long time since we last discussed it so how would you know?

Now who is being unfriendly to who? This forum is pretty much dead. I write my first reply here (i allready registered here once but the forum got changed and my account was destroyed). It isnt stupid nor simple minded. Its actually about something. I throw up a few questions, share my thoughts on it and i get a moderator who greets me like this. I didnt think you were a moderator. From moderators i expect enthusiasm, some seriousness and in general happiness when people actually use the board they connected themselves to.

Now, i know quite a lot of things about very diverse things but not about exactly whats a.i. and what is not. Ive read the discussions about routines and a.i. Neural networks. I shall give you a term i use for people that bring that kinda stuff up in a thread when people talk about a.i. in games. Wordfucking. Do you really care about the fact that i wrote a.i. instead of behavourial routines? You got what i meant didnt you?

Now i could have also started a thread about the 3d engine. I could have thrown it chockfull of slang and i assure you; it would be the correct slang. I dont really care about that though. I wanted to write something about the a.i. What directions they might be going with it or not and wether more people then me think its strange there is so little info on it. Even if the a.i. remains very simple there are still cosmetic things that can and probably will be done with the animation system in mind that are very interesting to me and i bet others aswell.

But now ive started to defend myself against a rude moderator. Ill quit. It would be a shame if this behaviour of yours killed a good thread. But i didnt expect much to come out of it anyway.

3dioot

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What better way to emulate stupid beasts by making the enemies stupid? That should give you a hint of the product of the final AI code or whatever, bah. And 3d, DSM...shake hands and make up please? Thanks.

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3dioot said:

I wasnt rude.

3dioot had previously said:

You call that info?

I didnt register here to be banned

No-one said that you would be banned (except you).

Remember you started with this:

AI: Has already been discussed to death on this forum, but then again, it's a long time since we last discussed it so how would you know?

Now who is being unfriendly to who?

How is that being unfriendly? He is saying that you're new, so he understands why you don't know it's already been talked about. He went out of his way to answer your question even though it had been asked countless times before, and you call THAT being unfriendly?

From moderators i expect enthusiasm, some seriousness and in general happiness when people actually use the board they connected themselves to

You seriously expect moderators to be happy with arrogant and obnoxious people being rude to them?

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I dont think there will be difficulty levels, its just SO MUCH WORK to work on levels

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Be cool, guys!

I think that Jean-Paul van Waveren did advance in his bot technologies (See: http://www.kbs.twi.tudelft.nl/Publications/MSc/2001-VanWaveren-MSc.html . John Carmack stated tha even he (!) did not understand these technologies. ANd I think that the monsters will be based on a bot like technology where they can make some advanced "choices". On the other hand John C. has also stated Id will leave the AI stuff to other companies.

But they will also realise that gameplay in a game like doom (spooky and slow) with really beautiful animation and models NEED nice AI.

For the eager learner: http://ai-depot.com/GameAI/

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The thesis I mention above does have a chapter (page 91) on Future Directions. This will give us an idea what we might expect.

19.3 Future directions

Although the Quake III Arena bot turned out to be a fairly good artificial player there is
room for improvements in several areas.
Fighting
The fighting behaviour of the bot could be improved by adding more and better
anticipation of enemies. While aiming, the bot could for instance predict which item(s) an
opponent is going for. The bot could then shoot missiles at locations along the predicted
path of the enemy. Currently, when the enemy is out of sight, the bot always assumes
the enemy will come back towards the bot, traveling along the shortest path. However,
the enemy does not necessarily have to move back towards the bot. ..........................

Read it!

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Ok, lemme explain what I meant:

dsm said:
AI: Has already been discussed to death on this forum, but then again, it's a long time since we last discussed it so how would you know?


The topic AI has been discussed many times in the past, but it is quite a while since we touched that subject before. Since you are a newcomer, you wouldn't have a chance in Hell to know this unless you felt like going through month old posts, so I bear over with you and accept this topic.

Basically, the little we know for certain (what the id guys have said a long time ago) is that the monsters will have their different characteristics and behaviour. About the ai itself, it has been said that it won't be much of a focus - other games will have better ai.

Like it says: We have been given a little bit of information (yes, I call that info - you shoulda seen how we used to tear the slightest comment from John Carmack about Doom 3 apart - compared to most of the info we got back then, this was really huge).

Mentioning that the monsters will have different characteristics reveals that the enemies will be more varied than in the old Doom games where they basically all did the same (walk, stop, shoot, walk, stop, shoot, etc.). No offence, but what did you expect? Stuff like Monster A will do so-and-so and monster B will do so-and-so? Buddy, this would give way too much info away about the game and spoil the surprises we might get in the final release.

To me it doesn't matter what the AI is like as long as the monsters don't use the same ol' run-in-zig-zag-patterns tactic.

All I did here was state that I don't mind if the monster AI isn't brilliant. It's not like I said: "J00 ST00PID N00B!!! G00D AI IS A WASTE OF TAIM AN J00 AH A RETAAHD!!!!"
See?

3dioot said:
From moderators i expect enthusiasm, some seriousness and in general happiness when people actually use the board they connected themselves to.

Excuse me, but my job is to try and prevent that aggressive/stupid/dumb idiots ruin the forum for everyone else by posting a) Old topics, b) flame material (personal attacks, attacks on the games Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom, etc.), c) useless posts.

You posted an old topic, but I can accept it since it hasn't been discussed for months - that was what I tried to tell you above. I showed enthusiams in your topic by continuing the discussion about AI.

Now I reacted pretty aggressively to your reply, because I interpreted it as aggressive and insulting towards me. I don't like people being aggressive, especially not when I try to act nice towards them.
OK?

So why don't we just kill this useless mud-fighting and get this stuff back on track?

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Just one little thing. I did browse most of the old messages just to see if this messageboard was alive and wether there were any discussions worth reading. Tried to get a feel for the forum. If you dont want to talk about things you call 'old' does that mean the forum should be dead or of topic untill new media is released? This is not to stab you in the back cause i never liked to 'get off the track' in the first place. But it just seems odd to me. Im done with it though if you are 2.

And zoost got my point in a few lines. (hurray for zoost) =]

"But they will also realise that gameplay in a game like doom (spooky and slow) with really beautiful animation (yes!) and models NEED nice AI."

This was also what i meant with cosmetic a.i. One example in q3 is when the player turns for example. Head first, then body, then legs where one leg stays planted and the other 'steps over'. You cannot create such animation properly by only depending on precanned animation. Some a.i. (or whatever) will have to be involved.

Glad im not alone.

3dioot

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dsm, try to tone it down a little bit. And 3dioot, don't take things so seriously.

It sure seems to me id are really putting much energy in monster behaviour and especially in animation. Fred Nilsson is working his ass off, and the AI seems pretty believable judging from the leaked vid.

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Hey 3dioot, nice to see someone else from maxforums here:D
But try and relax a little, this place is more laid back.

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well this was an intersting read.
the AI in Doom3 is that last thing that concerns me. scripting the imps to jump out of doors or drop from ceilings is easy enough. I just want 'lotsa' the following things: guns/monters/levels

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Oh yeah, one thing I hope we don't see: monsters that are confined to a certain area of a map.
Like in some fps games, monsters will not run after you if you pass a certain point. The monsters should be able to follow you from one end of the level to the other.

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DaJuice said:

Oh yeah, one thing I hope we don't see: monsters that are confined to a certain area of a map.
Like in some fps games, monsters will not run after you if you pass a certain point. The monsters should be able to follow you from one end of the level to the other.

Unless they see a hot impy momma and decide to ditch you for her.

I don't see why something like that would really matter in the game though. I doubt the game will have much repetative value to it so stuff like this wouldn't seem really important. However I also don't see why iD would need to confine certain criters to a particular area, but hey, who knows what they do.

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I'll tell you why it matters to me.

1) It takes away some of the fear factor if you know that a certain monster can't follow you past the next corner.
Imagine your low on ammo/health, and you just barley escaped a fight with Drooly.
Now, after running back to the beginning of the level, past the bodies of imps and zombies, your cowering in a dark corner hoping that it doesn't see you as you hear the heavy thud of its' footsteps approaching.
No safety baby.

2) It's fun to sometimes lure monsters into different parts of a map where they usually wouldn't go, or lure a whole bunch of monsters together, or other stupid stuff.

3) It breaks the suspension of disbelief when you see behavior like that.

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But by the time you know just about where these monster confinments end and start the game wont really be as scary anymore.

Anyway, you'll be able to retreat froma drooly attack regardless if you have a thing stopping him or not. Just run around some hallways or climb somewhere he can't reach because of his size or 'possible' inability to jump.

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There might be certain animations missing I've been suspecting that they can be thereotically done after I watched the leaked video. Throughout the video, has anyone ever noticed that during the process while the marine activating the switch or security lock, apparently marine's hands weren't shown anywhere in the video as it seemed so to me. Is this because the technology is still not capable to include hands performing more complex actions than simply punching repetitively? (well, fists were only shown since Doom) Other than showing hands perform realistically, could they also make the character acting more immersive as he shakes his head and hands from time to time, hands get all wet as he sweats therefore he cannot concentrate and hold the guns as steady as he always could? I'm really looking forward for these advancements in the near future as Doom 3 arrives.

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It's a nice idea, but doesn't really work all that well in reality. If they could do realistic hand motions, yeah, that'd be cool.. if they do, more power to 'em, right? I just doubt that'll happen due to how complex it could get and how little payoff it'd be.
The shaking/losing ability to aim thing just plain sucks, IMO. Why not simply rely on scaring the player so much that he's jerking the mouse all over the place rather than arbitrarily deciding to punish him?

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But that's what I'm saying, there should be NO confinements to the mosters movement.

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Xian said:

I dont think there will be difficulty levels, its just SO MUCH WORK to work on levels

Adding difficulty levels shouldn't be too difficult afaik.
And it would suck if Doom 3 doesn't have difficulty levels, as there are always people who are new to fps who would like to start up easily.
I remember when I first tried Wolf3d - I found it hard to move, aim, shoot at the same time, so naturally, I found the game quite hard at first even on easy skill settings. And nowadays FPS games make Wolfenstein seem like a joke when it comes to difficulty - not only are the controls more complex, but the opposition in these games is also tougher - not to mention all the environmental traps. Being a beginner in an fps with only a hard difficulty would be Hell.

I say make sure that there is a clear line between each skill setting. I'm too Young to Die = laughably easy (for total beginners) and Ultra Violence = Very hard (for us veterans) and Nightmare = Extra hard (for veterans who have grown tired of UV).

My idea of skill settings:
I'm too Young to Die: Lots of weak enemies, loads of ammo, little damage taken from enemies.
Hey, not too Rough: Same as above, but with less ammo and with more damage taken from enemies than above.
Hurt me Plenty: At many of the enemy placements, the weak enemies have been replaced by tougher enemies, not too much ammo, but still a substantial amount (I.e. far too much for those of us who understand how to conserve ammo), even more damage taken from enemy attacks.
Ultra Violence: Even more tougher baddies instead of weaklings than on easier skill settings, many more of the really tough enemies are used on this setting, little ammo (those of us who can conserve ammo will still be able to leave surplus ammo behind, but not much), heavy damage taken from the enemy.

As for nightmare, I don't have a clear idea - personally I'd hate to have respawning monsters return - these are plain simply annoying and take away the joy of killing the enemy because they don't STAY dead imho. What I'd like to see in Nightmare would be fast monsters, close to realistic damage from the enemies (I.e a point blank shotgun blast from a former human will take away at least 50% of your health if you are not wearing armour), all zombies get back up at you after getting killed at least three times.

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Dajuice,
I think the monsters will follow you everywhere you go. If they are allowed ofcouse (size, jumping ability). They use the navigation system that was used for the q3 bots which covers the entire level (it kinda makes a route for the bots when you compile the map). Q3 bots came everywhere they wanted to go so i have no doubts it will be the same for doom3's monsters.

Orion,
Repetative value. Ive been thinking about that too. All the enemies that have scripted arrivals would make playing the same level twice incredibly boring. Shoot in that dark corner, lob a grenade inside that airvent, walk with a large circle around that specific window. I hope they counter that by giving monsters paths to walk with a random ofset at the start of the level. This would make things much more exciting. You know a big bad monster is stomping around here somewhere but where exactly is for you to find out. I hope they implement something like this otherwise its replay value will go down the toilet.

999cop,
I think thats a design choice. They have fully animated hands holding the weapons so its not a matter of not being able to. DNF has a hand that pushes buttons when you press em. I personally dont mind not seeing my hand. Its not something you normally focus on anyway. You just want to click the buttons. I think it feels quite natural to use your real life mouse to click on a pad or computer screen in the game. =] On your hand tremble suggestion i agree with dislexic (or whatever his nick is). I know ive jerked my mouse in a stupid way cause i was startled by some fps and died afterwards cause i lost my orientation. Thats much more fun =]

DSM,
I wouldnt go as far as to change the actual enemies depending on skill level. It also seems to me they cant cause the enemies will be introduced at certain points in the game. They might even be part of the story. What i do like is simple paramater changes. Like the faster monsters and more painfull attacks you suggested. I also think this is the most controllable way of making difficulty levels. Otherwise each level will need to have seperate item and monster placement for each skill level. I was also wondering about the ammo comment. It would definately make things harder and more tense if every bullet counts. Just would be hard to implement. The only way to do that while keeping item placement the same is by lowering the damage each weapon does. But, when you are used to your weapon dealing out a certain amount of damage i think it will start to feel like a pea shooter if you choose a harder difficulty level thereby robbing you of the fun. You would feel handicapped instead of tough for taking on meaner monsters.

GrtZ 3dioot

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3dioot said:
DSM,
I wouldnt go as far as to change the actual enemies depending on skill level. It also seems to me they cant cause the enemies will be introduced at certain points in the game. They might even be part of the story. What i do like is simple paramater changes. Like the faster monsters and more painfull attacks you suggested. I also think this is the most controllable way of making difficulty levels. Otherwise each level will need to have seperate item and monster placement for each skill level. I was also wondering about the ammo comment. It would definately make things harder and more tense if every bullet counts. Just would be hard to implement. The only way to do that while keeping item placement the same is by lowering the damage each weapon does. But, when you are used to your weapon dealing out a certain amount of damage i think it will start to feel like a pea shooter if you choose a harder difficulty level thereby robbing you of the fun. You would feel handicapped instead of tough for taking on meaner monsters.

Well, I basically prefer the different difficulty settings to be as much like the old Dooms' difficulty settings as possible - I know that it is no longer an option to throw more monsters into the game for each higher difficulty setting, because the technological limitations leave the game with only few monsters (that means that there will be only few monsters in the highest skill setting - it's no use lowereing that amount further).

It's just that I hate the simple parameter change that I've seen in games like RtCW. I want a different way to make the game more challenging for each setting, preferably by replacing SOME (not all the monsters) with tougher monsters, e.g. you play on 'Hey, not too Rough' and you round a corner to come face to face with three imps - in 'Hurt me Plenty' this could be changed so that you'll find two imps and one Hell Knight at the very same spot - that would be more in the spirit of the old games and imho the best way to increase the challenge per difficulty setting by far.

About limited ammo: Well, there are two ways to do it. One way is to make a box of shotgun shells give you 40 shells on the easiest setting and only ten on the most difficult. Another way to do it is by simply placing more ammo boxes on easier skill settings (I've seen that done before - can't see why that wouldn't be possible). But you may be forgetting that tougher enemies = more ammo spent, so if the skill settings works so that some monsters are replaced by tougher monsties, you will automatically spend more ammunition.

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