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Arbiter

Modern engine limitations

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Now that we have seen drastic improvements in graphics over last 3 decades, what technical limitations are left in FPS engines that are yet to be overcome?

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Grand Scale Enemys figths without being scripted or need a ultra memory and processor CPU.

Slaugthermaps are still king on this and performance.

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It takes ever more labor and resources to make these games, which means that they have to appeal to an ever broader audience and take as few creative risks as possible. And it sounds like an especially abusive industry to work in.

 

Maybe toolchains and technology will start to make this less of a problem. AI-assisted asset creation, 3d scanning, that kind of thing.

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Interestingly, modern engines made for modern hardware may end up being more limited than older software. Compare how many enemies you can have at once in TruDoom compared to NuDoom.

 

The reason for that is greatly increased complexity -- graphics, physics, AI, etc. -- that ends up forcing a reduction in "width" due to the increase in "depth".

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Realising that pushing visuals at this point is completely unnecessary and probably counter-productive to making your videogame regardless of what style of game it is.

 

I do feel AI certainly is a field that could benefit a lot from continued innovation but that progresses at a crawl compared to most other things, and honestly if it ever truly develops it would have better uses than just in FPS games.

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1 hour ago, scalliano said:

Friendly AI.

 

Name me ONE single escort mission that was fun.

I was thinking about this in regards to @hybridial post earlier. I don't know if advancing AI would really help games get better. My earlier thoughts were that if you were say, playing a military shooter, having better AI would make the game worse. Because most people aren't military trained. So if the enemy soldiers were military, paramilitary, what have you, and they actually used combat strategy, most people couldn't beat the game. At best they might take down one or two enemies before they got their asses handed to them. If enemies behaved like logical humans, you couldn't have hundreds of them. And then the game wouldn't be the power fantasy that most people want, and people wouldn't buy it.

 

In most escort missions, or generally with friendly AI, they share the same AI as the enemies. Which makes sense, I hate escort missions because I expect them to be able to find cover or fire back, or climb up a damn ladder. But if they did, then the enemies would be just as competent, and then I couldn't beat the game. I hate escort missions, but it makes sense that you have to babysit the person you're escorting. In the case of Resident Evil 4 and Ashley, she's a 16 year old girl, and Leon is a trained officer who has killed zombies before. It makes sense that she has no idea what to do, but really she handled herself better than most escort missions. I'm reminded of Half-Life, and escorting the scientists. Who themselves had no military experience, but relied on Gordon (who was a scientist) to escort them to safety. Didn't make sense in that setting. Or Superfly and Mikiko in Daikatana, who were supposedly excellent soldiers but had to be hand held throughout the game.

 

I think it would be a really hard edge to balance on. And a very strenuous one for the developers to get right. Either make the enemy AI better to the point that they player stops playing because they're getting killed, or make the teams AI better to the point where they feel like they're not even playing. And I've had that feeling in later Call of Duty games especially; I'm trying to kill the enemies, but my AI teammates shoot them first and all I'm doing is walking to the next setpiece so they can kill the enemies again.

 

It's an interesting discussion, but I don't think advancing AI further, at least as far as videogames is concerned, is a good idea. I've played games with enemy AI where I just get my ass handed to me. They have to program the computer AI to fail at killing the player, because it would be easy to program the game to always kill the player, and I've played games like that. Finding the balance is hard, but I think there's quite a bit of nuance to that. 

 

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1 hour ago, scalliano said:

Name me ONE single escort mission that was fun.

 

At the risk of being escorted to the gallows, (see what I did there?) Resident Evil 4? Ashley is no genius or anything, but she does take cover behind when you aim your weapon. Also as a bonus, you could tell her to take cover in "conveniently placed" trash bins. Out of all the games I've played that have any sort of escort objective to them, RE4 seems to me the smoothest and most manageable. 

(and just as I'm about to post this, I see that @Jello beat me to the punch. Glad to see I'm not alone in my little opinion boat)

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@Jello

 

In terms of what you're talking about, those are all good points.

 

What I had in mind was more narrative style games where maybe there's finite states in the design but you can really refine how an AI character would react to things you do in the game based on a range. It's really more RPGs, adventure games and even VNs I think could benefit a lot from this. 

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Proper volumetric liquid / blood physics. I won't be satisfied until I can see realistically simulated entrance/exit wounds that will drain blood for hours across any surface. 

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