The end of the year upon us, it’s natural for us to look back on the past 12 months and search our souls for an answer to the questions “What was the best game AI of the year?” “What does the trajectory set by 2005 tell us about 2006?” “What titles most influenced the way you think about AI?”
Certainly, it was an interesting year for characters. I can think of two games that had, in one way or another, a novel character technology at the heart of their gameplay experience: God of War (in which character-on-character interaction was made the central mechanic, and which reminded us all how fun vidding a single button can really be) and Shadow of the Colossus. I’m always excited when games explore new character interaction design space, because the AI-space is always correspondingly extended. When we first implemented boarding for Halo2, the next and most logical step was “Now the AI should be able to board you BACK!” And very little (ironically) makes AI look smarter than a canned animation played back at a particularly appropriate time.
Anybody else have any thoughts on this? What AI or character work struck you in 2005?
Posted by naimad at December 11, 2005 01:59 PMWell, since I haven't played neither God of War nor Shadow of the Colossus, I'll get to my most active playing ground: PC Games.
And in that, F.E.A.R. absolutely wins over anything else. It's the first game since Half-Life was made (with it's scripted mobile actions) that I've feel like "man, this is real!".
Computer enemies (soldiers) just act as if they were real. Running from grenades, flanking you, going through windows while shooting you, if you cover behind a truck they'll get to their knees and shot from under the truck, they cover with boxes and shoot without seeing (just the arm with the rifle shooting to where they "think" you are)...
You should play it and see yourself. It may be or not very advanced AI (I think it is), but the "feeling" is that they're real. Also it's a spooky game :D (first FPS-Horror title)
IMHO
Posted by: Kartones at December 11, 2005 05:29 PMNintendogs.
Posted by: Paul T at December 12, 2005 01:17 PMGTA LCS for the PSP was excelent to me. I didn't notice any of the stupid bugs where people walk into walls etc, and seem to interact in a very natural way. You are right, canned animations can make characters seem inteligent. just my 2 cents.
Posted by: Ronin at December 15, 2005 09:29 AMI play mostly XBox/XBox 360 titles and I've been kind of upset with how poorly I feel the AI turned out for Condemned... having said that, the best AI for the games I've played so far this year is probably COD2, which is probably easier to program given the limitations on what can be done (compared to more complex games like RPGs).
Posted by: Michael at December 27, 2005 09:10 PM