Dino behavior, interaction and A.I

[Prof. Awesome]

Hello there Folks,

after playing quite a bit of the release version of ARK i must say there is a lot of things that are pretty bad but most of all, i am pretty disappointed by the Dinosaurs in ARK, which are one if not the biggest feature in ARK.

Let me explain.

Back in the days the Dev's talked about how Dinosaurs supposed to live their lives and interact with each other. Letz be honest there is little to no interaction between Dinos.

The only interaction is "i am a carnivore, there is a herbivore - MUST EAT". That makes the Dinosaurs imho pretty dull and unnatural. AND YES i am aware that the behavior of the Dinos might not be to important for PVP Server since people playing there only want to tame and fight with them. Singleplayer, PVE and PVE/RP on the other hand should be interested in a improvement.

Behavior:

- Dino should not randomly move in a little circle around their spawn, they should "travel" along the beach or through the jungle maybe even in packs and stop every once in a while to find food or water.

- Herbivores should be able to realize that a carnivore is about to find them and try to avoid contact, instead of standing still until they get attacked by something.

- certain Dinos(like Bronto) should eat leafs from the top of Trees and grass from the ground.

- Dinos should actively walk up to water sources, stop there and drink from it.

Interaction:

- Dinos should interact with each other, like animals do, rubbing and touching each other.

- Dinos should "talk" with their mates.

- Dinos should maybe even mate with an actually animation (not to important tho :D )

- If a carnivore kills a other Dino they just eat them within 10 seconds and INSTANTLY go after the next, what they should do is killing one, feeding on that one way longer and if they just eat a whole BRONTO not attack something right after. Its so stupid to see a raptor kill and eat 15 dinos withing 2 Minutes.

A.I:

- Dinos stuck absolutely EVERYWHERE, wild or tamed dinos should get a lot of path finding improvements. It is extremely annoying how often you have to back track to find your stuck dinos.

- If a a slight bigger Dino fights a smaller one, they should not kick them away like they a water balloon. Also if they kick a targe of a cliff they just jump down the same cliff and cant get up afterwards anymore.

- If a Dino walks up in to a campfire because it follows you, it will stand in that fire till it die, COME ON.

- the Pathfinding is so bad i am gonna put it on this list twice.

So, i would love to see some of this in the near future, so the whole Ark world feels more alive and natura, i have no idea how realistic this request is but i at least wanted to write it down.

Cheers.

[Mi]

Agreed. Absolutely.

[RaptorNatho]

agreed

[Xee]

Yeah, dino's should also travel in packs when moving from place to place. Obviously there are limitations to this due to some small islands and such, but a group of 3 or 4 trikes should be able to form some sort of pack, stick together, move as a herd in the same direction etc.

Also they should fix the clipping issue. You don't need accurate dino meshes for this, you can have a separate simple box mesh on a dinos head that prevents him poking his head or tail through a wall.

[D3545t3r]

HAHA welcome to ARK and his special AI ;)

Oh moment that's no AI its only a lot of stupid scripts they told an AI.

This game is dying look at the patch notes!
Now a week is gone and no information about what is going wrong and why the patch is not comming

They don't think about us so handle the game like it is that's what i have learned about ark in 2 years

[Mashed Potato]

I add this to the list:
- Mesophethicus should rund on trees if they are scared and throw poop
- 50% ~ less creature spawn. Sometimes you have to many creatures on a smal spot ...
- Sharks, rays don't attack you, if your riding a shark or bigger creature
- Shark hunt ichtyosaurs or mantas, Ichytyosarus hunt Coel.

The Patch is no coming beacause of the hurricane guys ...

[Prof. Awesome]

Originally posted by Seb:

I add this to the list:
- 50% ~ less creature spawn. Sometimes you have to many creatures on a small spot ...

nice to see iam not the only one, i actually DID change the amount of dinos on my Singleplayer Game to 0.5 - because i feel it should be more "special" to find dinosaurs, like it was in Jurassic park ;)

[Metal_Masher]

I also agree Prof. Awesome said as well in regards the pathfinding as well ai behavior between predators and herbivores should be sorted out as well creating pack behavior depending on the species, the dev's should listen to what the people have been saying and fix the Damn bugs as well performance issues in the game that I have been seeing posted here as well on the official site and forums instead of adding in new content which I believe is unneeded at this point in time and they should focus the Bugs as well Stabilize the games performance issues first before adding in new content.

[-BritishEcho-]

A.I need work, that much I agree with. I think it could be better than it is, but no where near what you are suggesting. I don't think it is possible with current server hardware to do what you are suggesting...

To do what you are suggesting you would need an absurd amount of CPU processing power avaliable on a, single, server... Something that would be expensive and therefor illogical from a business standpoint.

Consider the fact there could be 100's of dino's on a server at a time, in render distance, both tamed and wild. Every one of those Dino's require the CPU to 'function' as the game coded it to. Even basic behaviors use resources.

To make them all dynamic, to make every single dino think for itself, interact with the enviroment and each other? Yeah... That's a big ask... You name a game that has that level of A.I. Put that in a already dynamic world and yeah, I don't think there is a CPU to do what you are asking, not one that would be affordable on a massive scale anyway...

[Lv1 Magikarp]

Originally posted by D3545t3r:

HAHA welcome to ARK and his special AI ;)

Oh moment that's no AI its only a lot of stupid scripts they told an AI.

This game is dying look at the patch notes!
Now a week is gone and no information about what is going wrong and why the patch is not comming

They don't think about us so handle the game like it is that's what i have learned about ark in 2 years

Far from dying, just saddly filled with idiots like you that pull claims out their rear end.

[Humpenstilzchen]

100 % agree.
What we have currently can´t be considered an AI. It´s Idling, attacking and fleeing. That´s it.

[Danny-NL]

Originally posted by Lv1 Magikarp:

Originally posted by D3545t3r:

HAHA welcome to ARK and his special AI ;)

Oh moment that's no AI its only a lot of stupid scripts they told an AI.

This game is dying look at the patch notes!
Now a week is gone and no information about what is going wrong and why the patch is not comming

They don't think about us so handle the game like it is that's what i have learned about ark in 2 years

Far from dying, just saddly filled with idiots like you that pull claims out their rear end.

1+
This game is not dying just WC official servers are.

[DK]

+1

[The Pixelman]

I almost want to say that, as far as the pack AI goes, the devs could learn a lot from Left 4 Dead or Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator. Though I won't pretend to know how easy or hard something like that would be to apply to the Unreal Engine.

[Prof. Awesome]

Originally posted by BritishEcho:

A.I need work, that much I agree with. I think it could be better than it is, but no where near what you are suggesting. I don't think it is possible with current server hardware to do what you are suggesting...

To do what you are suggesting you would need an absurd amount of CPU processing power avaliable on a, single, server... Something that would be expensive and therefor illogical from a business standpoint.

Consider the fact there could be 100's of dino's on a server at a time, in render distance, both tamed and wild. Every one of those Dino's require the CPU to 'function' as the game coded it to. Even basic behaviors use resources.

To make them all dynamic, to make every single dino think for itself, interact with the enviroment and each other? Yeah... That's a big ask... You name a game that has that level of A.I. Put that in a already dynamic world and yeah, I don't think there is a CPU to do what you are asking, not one that would be affordable on a massive scale anyway...

Well take GTAV Online for example 100s of random people roam the city, react to you, take photos, flip you off, have fights, drive boats and "chat". I think that its not that hard to to something like that, maybe the UT4 is a problem but i dont think its impossible.

[D3545t3r]

Originally posted by Lv1 Magikarp:

Originally posted by D3545t3r:

HAHA welcome to ARK and his special AI ;)

Oh moment that's no AI its only a lot of stupid scripts they told an AI.

This game is dying look at the patch notes!
Now a week is gone and no information about what is going wrong and why the patch is not comming

They don't think about us so handle the game like it is that's what i have learned about ark in 2 years

Far from dying, just saddly filled with idiots like you that pull claims out their rear end.

And full of ignorant ppl like you that don't want see the truth ;)