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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcable com> wrote:
> Its likely to get more and more complex as AI
> goes from simpler scripting to more detailed stuff.
It's rather telling how difficult good AI programming is (especially for
real-time games, where you have a small slice of a 20-millisecond time
period to calculate all the AI of all the NPCs currently interacting with
something in the game) when some games boast about having new and innovative
AI, but when you play the game, it's nothing impressive, really. Might be
slightly better than in older games, but you can still notice the patterns
and the "artificial stupidity".
What is really happening is that the developers took some time and effort
to get a few steps forward in game AI programming, which was really difficult
and required a lot of work. Thus they themselves see it as a huge effort and
a big step forward, so they naturally use it to advertise the game. However,
the players cannot see the amount of effort and code put into it, they only
see the noticeable patterns and stupidity of the AI, and thus they are usually
not very impressed.
--
- Warp
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Warp wrote:
> real-time games, where you have a small slice of a 20-millisecond time
> period to calculate all the AI of all the NPCs currently interacting with
How does one normally handle this? I would think it might be best to cycle
through (say) three sets of nearby AI, evaluating a third of the AIs and
taking up the whole amount of time. It's not like real humans don't have a
60ms delay in their reaction times. :-)
I've been amused when I noticed (for example) that the AIs in the older
thief games keep moving when they're far away, but they stop walking. As in,
they'll just skate back and forth until you get close. There's only a couple
places in the game with line of sight straight enough to see it, tho.
And in bioshock, it's not unusual to hack a turret, walk away, come back 20
minutes later, and find a big pile of bodies and a half-broken turret,
indicating that the game at least *seems* to keep running all the AIs and
spawning enemies even in areas where you aren't.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
back to version 1.0."
"We've done that already. We call it 2.0."
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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Btw, do you know what I think is the closest thing to a role-playing game
> among computer games? The Sims, and its sequels.
I guess so, yes.
> The only thing it doesn't have is dungeon crawling and monster fighting,
> but otherwise it's difficult to get any closer to actual role-playing in
> a computer game.
Well, in that case it would even qualify as *fantasy* role-playing. But even
without the fantasy part, it still constitutes role-playing.
That's some other strange association people have: RPG == fantasy.
SciFi-RGBs have proven this connotation to be wrong.
This reminds me of a German point-and-click adventure, "The Book of Unwritten
Tales". Set in a fantasy world, one scene to encounter in the course of the
storyline is a magician and a merchant busying themselves with a role-play game
called "WoB: World of Bureaucracy" :D
(I don't know if there's an English version out there, but in case there is: If
you loved stuff like the famous Monkey Island series, then this is definitely
one to go and get!)
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clipka wrote:
> That's some other strange association people have: RPG == fantasy.
> SciFi-RGBs have proven this connotation to be wrong.
^^^
You know you've been ray-tracing too long when...
> called "WoB: World of Bureaucracy" :D
http://dragonstuff.com/images/gallery/bw/full/houses_and_humans.jpg
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
back to version 1.0."
"We've done that already. We call it 2.0."
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> How does one normally handle this? I would think it might be best to cycle
> through (say) three sets of nearby AI, evaluating a third of the AIs and
> taking up the whole amount of time. It's not like real humans don't have a
> 60ms delay in their reaction times. :-)
Yeah, I suppose the game doesn't need to execute the AI routines for
every single AI entity in the entire game at each frame, but each entity
could indeed get its turn eg. each 10th frame or so (the in-between frames
are simply linearly interpolated, if the action it's performing needs to
be continuous).
However, it can still get pretty complicated, especially when the number
of AI entities grows. Think about a real-time strategy game with armies
consisting of thousands of individual soldiers...
--
- Warp
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clipka <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> That's some other strange association people have: RPG == fantasy.
> SciFi-RGBs have proven this connotation to be wrong.
Well, scifi is a peculiar kind of fantasy, where you have races (well,
more precisely species), jobs, advanced technology (which, when advanced
enough, is indistinguishable from magic, as the saying goes), fighting
(usually between spaceships rather than between characters, but sometimes
also between characters), fantastical creatures, and so on.
I suppose that what you meant is that RPGs are usually associated with
so-called sword-and-sorcery fantasy and high fantasy.
--
- Warp
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Darren New wrote:
> I've been amused when I noticed (for example) that the AIs in the older
> thief games keep moving when they're far away, but they stop walking. As
> in, they'll just skate back and forth until you get close. There's only
> a couple places in the game with line of sight straight enough to see
> it, tho.
>
Less to do with AI than with animation limitations. The more things you
have moving at the "best" rate, the harder your hardware needs to work.
EQ2 you can adjust this from "everything is moving at best frame rate
and best graphics resolution, but no machine in the universe will give
you better than a frame rate of like 0.001 fps doing this", to, "Stuff
uses almost no animation, textures look worse than Ultima VII, when
games ran at 640x480 and 8-bit color, and you can't see more than 20
meters in front of you." lol
In general, since you never see more than about 20 people, and 20 mobs,
and most don't move around a lot in EQ2, you can place the animation on
high, as well as the textures, and not take much of a hit. I tried
setting mine far higher on the new card I have, (which is well past what
was available at the time it came out), and only got brief lag in
"certain" stages of combat, or when moving from a low mob part of a
region to one where I could see a "lot" of them. But, its a basic
optimization that "position", and "activity" be computed, which is not
terribly high cost, compared to loading all the textures, animating the
skeleton/mesh, etc.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I'd rather watch a virtual aquarium all day long or even play Wii Sports than
> watch this virtual soap.
Btw, 20th Century Fox has bought the rights to make a The Sims movie.
This is honestly something I cannot comprehend. The Sims has no story,
and even its setting is mundane: Raise a family, get rich, build a house,
advance in your career. There are no distinguishing or peculiar features
in the game series. (Ok there are a few, such as the occasional alien
child, but those things are not the main idea in the game nor something you
could build a movie on.)
How can you make a movie about The Sims? Almost *any* boring, realistic,
almost documentary-style drama could be a "The Sims movie".
The only other alternative I can think of is not making a movie about
the game universe itself, but about people playing the game (there are
a few movies like that). However, I can't figure out how you could make
an interesting movie about people who play The Sims. There's nothing
special about people who play that game specifically.
OTOH, given Hollywood's custom of making game movies which have absolutely
nothing to do with the game itself (apart from some names and a very loosely
similar setting), I'm not wondering that they would do this. Especially in
this case, as said, almost *anything* could pass as "The Sims movie", so
why not.
--
- Warp
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Less to do with AI than with animation limitations. The more things you
> have moving at the "best" rate, the harder your hardware needs to work.
Is that really true? I thought the whole (visible) scene got pumped out to
the graphics card on every frame. Hence the need for AGPx8 and such.
Or are you talking about the CPU calculating angles of elbow and knee joints
and such?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
back to version 1.0."
"We've done that already. We call it 2.0."
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Warp wrote:
> How can you make a movie about The Sims? Almost *any* boring, realistic,
> almost documentary-style drama could be a "The Sims movie".
http://strangerhood.com/archive/?id=85
You could make it a meta-movie, where the characters don't know they're Sims
but the audience does.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
back to version 1.0."
"We've done that already. We call it 2.0."
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