Enemy Ai and battle stratagem

[76561197988072846]

Perhaps I am just too jaded and cynical, or learned and elderly, regarding videogame combat, but I think that heightened AI awareness could easily be implemented into this game.

Some simple tactics which could be utilized by AI would be laying in wait for ambushes (after hearing gunshots nearby), hit and run tactics, diversion tactics (so as to allow another enemy to broadside the player), 'playing dead' ambushes (Though this would require bodies to be a permanent fixture, as well as corpses litering the stages to begin with) and perhaps even setting up traps, etc.

As it is now, the AI is stone-age at best. this is 2018. If you can't up the ante on your AI in your game with Quake eta graphics, what's the point?

The current paradigm of the game is static. Every encounter will play out almost exactly the same. The fireball man will shoot fireballs, the chainsaw guy will run at you, etc, etc, etc.

If you added a level of dynamicness into it, that would be ideal. The current AI can be broken down as so:

Chainsaw man - Run at player. (Perhaps give him a lunging attack, etc. He needs to close the distance, and he can either do this with tactics/strategy or with a lunging jump... or with both. Also, an instantaneous attack wouldn't hurt, either. Maybe give him a weaker "tackle" or "shoulder rush" 'attack, where-in if he touches the player they take dmg, and he then follows it up with his super slow chainsaw swing))
Fireball KKK - Miss every shot, wish he had AOE fireballs like a real wizard. (Don't make him flinch from bullets. Or, give him a charge-shot attack that increases the speed and size of the fireball and makes him immune to flinches.can fire this special attack once every 7 seconds.)
Demon Goat - Is the only enemy with hit-scan weaponry (???), gangster as ♥♥♥♥, but useless. ((Implement tall grass that the goat can hide in and take pot shots from.))
Rats - Same as chainsaw man. ((Implement poison Damage Over Time from bites to make them actually good.))
Scarecrow - Worthless because he waits until the player is standing infront of him to come to life. (Why not wait until the character has walked away and then shoot them right in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ back????? HMM?? WHY NOT BE LETHAL, HMMMMMM???))
Scarecrow Lady(??) - Not bad. (Could utilize pre-emptive firing. If a player just ducked behind a corner, this lady should fire a bolt or two door the hallway where the player was last seen. Should also just fire their bolts down hallways in general.)
Swat Armry Dude - Rubbish, really. It seems they have the same HP as any other enemy, yet they're clearly wearing body armor and helmets. Armor. Helmets......... ((Give them more Hp, armor and decreased headshot dmg. Grenades wouldn't hurt to give them, either. And better AI and team coordiniation.)

And that's as far as I've gotten.

My question to you is this... Why settle on mediocre?

Every encounter should have a 70-80 percent chance of reducing the player's HP by SOME margin. Even if the player runs into just one chainsaw man, that ONE chainsaw man should have a 70-80 percent chance to hit the player once before dying. And the way you accomplish those odds are through tactics and stratagem.

Maybe during the first 1 or 2 levels the AI can be a little dopey and stupid, but after that the rest of the game should feature enemies that are totally alert and set-up, ready to jump the player

[Manniacc]

simple ≠ medicore/easy

[www.chimp-games.com]

i dont think making individual enemies super intelligent would work for dusk. its not trying to be like unreal where even one enemy is a threat, its more about fighting hordes of simpler enemies, and the challenge comes from the different combinations of enemies and their number. the enemies are supposed to be consistent and easy to understand, so 20+ of them can be thrown at you without it being completely BS and unfair. dusk is emulating combat like doom and blood, not quake and unreal.

and the changes you are suggesting are by no means "easy to implement". you can't just add a few new animations and change some numbers in the code to make this stuff work, you would need to program new ai for every enemy, program all of their new attacks, program when they know to do these attacks, redesign and rebalance every single level and encounter in the game to accomodate the new enemies, rebalance the weapons and character movement to accomodate the new enemies, remake the navmesh for every single level, and then go through months of QA and polish and playtesting for said redesigns.

and all of that for pointlessly complex AI that wouldn't work well with dusk's gameplay at all. the "mediocre" AI is what allows the games encounters to be so fast and fun. if you're overhauling the enemies this much, your practically going to have to make a new game.

if you really want to see this kind of AI be in the game, wait until the SDK comes out and mod it in, or play a different game entirely.