It's not about the number of enemy types, Id.

[DooM_RO]

29 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Also, I don't understand why would the OP don't need the new enemies. It is a Doom 2-style situation, so why not introduce new enemies?

 

I'm totally not against new enemy types at all but twice as many new kinds of enemies? It might be too much.

 

Plus, they seem to think that just adding new enemy types will fix the problem. I'm not so sure about that.

[hardcore_gamer]

5 hours ago, Caffeine Freak said:

 

You really don't know anything, do you.

 

I tried to look for it but wasn't able to find it but I remember some years ago reading an article that said AI doesn't consume any considerable resources compared to other things like graphics, physics etc and that the only reason AI hasn't improved very much for decades is because devs don't care enough to make good AI. Consider for example that now ancient games like FEAR have better AI that most modern game.

 

Granted, maybe if you had very complex AI then having thousands of them might be harder to calculate all at once. But even it would still be a joke compared to the other things. Any decent modern CPU would not have any problem calculating even complex AI enemies in a video game.

[bloodshot]

2 hours ago, DooM_RO said:

 

I'm totally not against new enemy types at all but twice as many new kinds of enemies? It might be too much.

 

Plus, they seem to think that just adding new enemy types will fix the problem. I'm not so sure about that.

 

You do realize them adding new enemy types is not just "here's x problem, lets fix it with y!"

 

This is not at all how a big developer works. Unless they specifically say the problem and that they added double the enemy types to "fix" a specific problem I can guarantee it you are vastly oversimplifying their thought process

[hardcore_gamer]

2 hours ago, bloodshot said:

 

You do realize them adding new enemy types is not just "here's x problem, lets fix it with y!"

 

This is not at all how a big developer works. Unless they specifically say the problem and that they added double the enemy types to "fix" a specific problem I can guarantee it you are vastly oversimplifying their thought process

 

My point was that AI consumes way less resources than other stuff so lack of horsepower for AI calculations isn't the reason why we no longer have lots of enemies on screen.   

Edited August 20, 2018 by hardcore_gamer

[Cacodemon345]

@hardcore_gamer, things change over time.

[geo]

I was always fine with Doom 1 having limited enemies. Arkham's games have like 3+ enemy types with different skins and they're all deadly and versatile, even if designed to be stupid... hey our friend is unconscious!

 

Doom 4 did have quite a lot of enemy redundancy. I just wish you could deal with them in new different ways rather than "locked in a room... here are the same enemies you've fought for the past 10 hours." To be fair the rooms were all different and in a circular configuration so you'd never get stuck. The problem is you'd fight them the same way over and over again and it takes so long to kill them rather than run past them. Perhaps their goal was to have you fight X, Y Z and mix it to have X A Z, but they just constantly had what felt like the same batches of enemies at the same time. They all can move, leap, traverse so they're not sitting ducks.

 

Anyway, new enemies are always welcome as long as they don't overlap their attacks.

 

I've heard / read that the old enemies will have new attacks depending on the damage they've taken. Hey that's great... but I'd rather just kill them. Having short range, long range and other ranged attacks and different variations of the same enemies with different attacks would be good.

Edited August 20, 2018 by geo

[Caffeine Freak]

7 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

 

I tried to look for it but wasn't able to find it but I remember some years ago reading an article that said AI doesn't consume any considerable resources compared to other things like graphics, physics etc and that the only reason AI hasn't improved very much for decades is because devs don't care enough to make good AI. Consider for example that now ancient games like FEAR have better AI that most modern game.

 

Granted, maybe if you had very complex AI then having thousands of them might be harder to calculate all at once. But even it would still be a joke compared to the other things. Any decent modern CPU would not have any problem calculating even complex AI enemies in a video game.

 

It not consuming nearly as much resources as rendering doesn't make AI insignificant by any stretch. Saying 'lol so what, it's not nearly as demanding as rendering' is stupid and ridiculous. Even if AI were just 5% of the performance on average, that's a chunk that could still drag your performance down if poorly programmed. AI is immensely more complex these days than the simple 'move towards the player character and try to smack him' routine from a couple decades ago. Watch this breakdown of the AI logistics in DOOM 2016: 

 

 

[Cacodemon345]

4 hours ago, Caffeine Freak said:

It not consuming nearly as much resources as rendering doesn't make AI insignificant by any stretch. Saying 'lol so what, it's not nearly as demanding as rendering' is stupid and ridiculous. Even if AI were just 5% of the performance on average, that's a chunk that could still drag your performance down if poorly programmed. AI is immensely more complex these days than the simple 'move towards the player character and try to smack him' routine from a couple decades ago.

Prove what you are saying, because I am yet to hear a game that had poor performance due to poorly-programmed AI.

[Edward850]

22 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Prove what you are saying, because I am yet to hear a game that had poor performance due to poorly-programmed AI.

You can't prove your side of things with a negative, either. You need to show us extensive whitepapers about low-cost-yet-complex-videogame-AI.

 

Also as a programmer myself who has had to deal with computationally expensive AI in a video game, I can attest to the fact that AI in a video game can be computationally expensive even if it's well designed. There's your statement.

[Caffeine Freak]

1 hour ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Prove what you are saying, because I am yet to hear a game that had poor performance due to poorly-programmed AI.

 

Very well then. The most obvious example I can think of to prove my case would be Doom 3. If you're not familiar, id Tech 4 (the engine that Doom 3 uses) uses something called the 'area awareness system', or AAS, to guide the AI around levels. Successive generations of id Tech use this system as well, but since I'm most intimately familiar with id Tech 4, it's the example I'm using.

 

The AAS uses pre-compiled geometric data from the level, collected during BSP, to generate a .aas file, that can be either very large (as in, comparable to the size of the .map file itself) or very small (10% or less the size of the .map file). The size of the .aas depends on factors such as the size of the level, how many different spaces enemies occupy, and most importantly, how well the AAS has the collision mapped out for it. If the collision isn't properly mapped throughout the level, you can end up with a messy situation where the AAS is compiling a ton of geometric detail it doesn't need to, and then the AI will often end up very confused during gameplay. This causes a *noticeable* drag on performance. In fact, the engine has a hard-coded limit where the game will crash if the AAS passes some numerical limit of reachable areas in a given section of the level. So there you go. Put another way, there's no way a programmer like John Carmack would put a hard limit on something in one of his engines unless he had a very good reason to.   

 

I know both id Tech 5 (Rage) and 6 (Doom 2016) used the AAS as well, though I don't know if 7 uses it. And even though the AI in id engines has evolved a lot since Doom 3, I can only imagine that it's even more resource-intensive now, what with FAR more geometric detail in their levels, and much more versatility in the way the monsters operate. If AI calculations were really no big deal, why would Snapmap be restricted to 12 active monsters at any given time? That isn't just because of rendering restrictions, otherwise it would be no problem to have 11 active monsters in one room, and 4 more active monsters in a room the player can't see. But Snapmap doesn't even allow that. Because AI calculations DO matter. And if there wasn't some limit set, you'd have idiots going crazy with 40 monsters spawned all at once, and Snapmaps constantly crashing. 

 

Hell, if you watch the documentary NOCLIP made on Doom 2016, Jerry Keehan even mentions that part of the reason for the frequent demonic lockdowns throughout the game is because it would drag on performance to carry all that AI into other parts of the level.

 

https://youtu.be/r0nOsuaPDeg?t=6m30s 

Edited August 21, 2018 by Caffeine Freak

[Cacodemon345]

14 hours ago, hardcore_gamer said:

I tried to look for it but wasn't able to find it but I remember some years ago reading an article that said AI doesn't consume any considerable resources

I think that article was full of misinformations, lol.

 

Also, you should take a look at the code in mods like BD. It is possible for it to drag on performance in GZDoom in slaughtermaps where you would be thrown about 200 active monsters at one, just because of its more complex AI.

Edited August 21, 2018 by Cacodemon345

[Cruduxy Pegg]

L4D2 has a 30 common infected limit. You will never have hundreds of zombies on-screen without console.

[Dear Hoplite]

In case we forgot, Doom 2 included two new enemies to keep things fresh.

[Cacodemon345]

4 minutes ago, Dear Hoplite said:

In case we forgot, Doom 2 included two new enemies to keep things fresh.

Not two, but like 6 new enemies.

 

Also, I wish GZDoom actually introduced an limit on how many monsters can be active at the same time.

[seed]

7 minutes ago, Dear Hoplite said:

In case we forgot, Doom 2 included two new enemies to keep things fresh.

 

Innacurate, much more than just 2.

 

Chaingunner, Hell Knight, Revenant, Arch-Vile, Pain Elemental, Mancubus, Arachnotron, none of them are part of the original Doom. + Commander Keens and the SS from Wolfenstein, but I wouldn't count those.

[Dear Hoplite]

7 minutes ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Not two, but like 6 new enemies.

 

See? Any Hell on Earth style Doom games are bound by tradition to add more assholes to kill

[Dear Hoplite]

2 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

 

Innacurate, much more than just 2.

 

Chaingunner, Hell Knight, Revenant, Arch-Vile, Pain Elemental, Mancubus, Arachnotron, none of them are part of the original Doom. + Commander Keens and the SS from Wolfenstein, but I wouldn't count those.

 

I'm fairly new to Doom, I've only had a Doom game for about 2 years. I started with D2 so I wasn't sure about who was new in Doom 2

[geo]

If we're talking about poor performance, I'm still wondering how Arkham Knight performs so poorly about 6+ hours in. I think it starts with the dirigibles being entire levels, but outside. I wonder if it's having so many random tanks and random drones each with their own AI and vision cones coupled with a possible entire city being available with exteriors and complexity. There's far less enemies in Arkham Knight than DOOM, but the enemies survive a lot longer. There's far more details and minute interaction than DOOM. Then again... Unreal 4 tends to have terrible performance and Arkham Knight is based on Unreal 4 even if it's their own engine on top of it. Even more mind boggling are all the settings with Arkham Knight and yet they still do little to nothing after the 6+ hour mark. I would blame it on the rain and shimmer effects, but it was smooth at the start. As city unlocks more the performance gets worse and worse.

Edited August 25, 2018 by geo

[seed]

1 hour ago, geo said:

If we're talking about poor performance, I'm still wondering how Arkham Knight performs so poorly about 6+ hours in.

 

Man, that game had a bad PC port to begin with.

 

It was outsourced to a team of 9 or 10 people who didn't have much experience. The only reason it passed the QA process was because it appeared to run decent at lower resolutions. That port was so bad they pulled it from stores and gave refunds, and even after it eventually returned it was still bad, in addition to Mac (or Linux? Both?) ports getting cancelled.

[Edward850]

3 hours ago, geo said:

Arkham Knight is based on Unreal 4 even if it's their own engine on top of it.

Unreal Engine 3. Extensivly modified to do open world map streaming, which UE3 was never meant for.