This game really needs more focus on the AI

[Mikayari]

It's been frustrating having to deal with these bots that go past each other and exchange points, or surround an entire point defending it only to stay in their position as one or two enemy AI capture the point and the whole garrison inevitably getting massacred. The sheer incompetence and lack of basic intellect makes it hard to play the game because you're ALWAYS gonna have to carry the whole game, which is especially difficult in maps especially that have incredibly wide fronts.

It'd be more interesting if the AI could hold off on their own, which makes the whole point of your activity a means of creating an opening for your own allies and weaken the enemy, making for some interesting battles rather than you having to carry the ENTIRE MATCH dealing with capturing, defending capture points and juggling between the two every damn minute.

[Varefal]

I agree! At least the enemy is equally bad, I guess.

[Tundra C.]

The game has just updated, maybe play again to see if there any changes in your experience.

[BeYonD]

Just this game? Most games we play the AI is crap or very limited. Devs know that to create extremely capable AI takes great talent and an equally great budget to support that talent.

AFAIK there are a handful of games available today with well developed AI. Alien Isolation is one of them. Since the mid 2000s EA sports started using neural networks to power the AI of all their sports games. Fear is also another game with very complex and lifelike AI.

In 2021 RockStar made a patent for proprietary AI technology that will be used to power the NPCs of GTA 6.

And now in 2024, Intel is in the process of releasing the Lunar Lake CPUs with built in AI chips (NPU) Neural Processing Unit. Now when CPUs for devices all start rolling out AI NPUs this will change the gaming scene for good.

Basically hardware is what limits devs from creating well developed AI for games. Its the physical machine limitation. But soon hardware will be built around the NPUs.

This will change gaming, first of all these games we play now that uses scripted AI (limited AI) will be obsolete. This will either make games like this die out forever, or the devs of these games we play now will have to upgrade the game to support the NPUs. We will still be able to play these soon to be obsolete games on the new AI hardware, but who will play them when there will be games with LLMs AI (Gemini, OpenAI, Llama).

Its like DOS games, people still play DOS games. But the majority don't. People will play games like Ravenfield with scripted AI. But as tech advances they will slowly die away because their will be games made with better technology.

I look forward to the future of gaming.

TL DR:

AI will get much better in the future because hardware will be able to support it. All the games we play now will be obsolete because AI games will dominate the industry. Single player games will outshine multiplayer games. Who needs real players when the AI will do a better job.

[Sasha Mason]

I feel like at this point, it is kinda misleading to call it AI, seeing as what AI actually means nowadays. Ravenfield is also very far away from having actual "AI" implementation. I do agree though that creating capable CPU opponents is no easy task.

Originally posted by BeYonD:

Who needs real players when the AI will do a better job.

I do disagree with this, though.
The reason why people play multiplayer games is largely because it is just more fun to play with and against other people. Coop games especially, you get a whole social aspect to it. AI would not be able to deliver that. Actual players are also bound to make mistakes and can be outsmarted. I don't think playing against an AI that is just a better and stronger player would be more fun and appealing to play with if you end up just being outsmarted by the game.

[BeYonD]

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

I feel like at this point, it is kinda misleading to call it AI, seeing as what AI actually means nowadays. Ravenfield is also very far away from having actual "AI" implementation. I do agree though that creating capable CPU opponents is no easy task.

Originally posted by BeYonD:

Who needs real players when the AI will do a better job.

I do disagree with this, though.
The reason why people play multiplayer games is largely because it is just more fun to play with and against other people. Coop games especially, you get a whole social aspect to it. AI would not be able to deliver that. Actual players are also bound to make mistakes and can be outsmarted. I don't think playing against an AI that is just a better and stronger player would be more fun and appealing to play with if you end up just being outsmarted by the game.

Look at it this way, the bosses of giant corporations and business would all rather hire AI workers to replace human workers. Why? Because AI workers really do a better job. AI workers don't take breaks, don't need a salary, don't complain, are never late for work. AI workers won't spit in your food, and are not racist. There is much more to say about this.

I have been gaming on PC since the mid 80s. I avoid multiplayer games. Disgruntled or mean players. Hackers. Censorship. I don't play them now mainly because of hackers. Then there are multiplayer games, so many of these types of games with absolutely no singleplayer support. These games only rely on real players to get a match going. Oh look, there are thousands of these types of games that are dead because no real players are playing. Why? Because there are thousands of these games to choose from so the population is already dispersed.

AI will solve all these problems. I agree about the social aspect. But I strongly disagree that AI won't be able to provide a social aspect on par with real players,

Have you tried the GPT powered games yet? There are a few of them. Not many. I am beta testing one now, and there is an NDA.

Microsoft has an AI bot called Voyager that can play Minecraft the same way a human does. Its using GPT LLMs to power it. I have played these demos, and as an example I told one NPC using this technology that another AI NPC said that he smelled. They both got into an argument/discussion, non scripted and open ended about how soap is not available in the game world as an item.

As for Ravenfield, this game would be on fire if the NPCs were powered by LLMs. I would be playing this game way more if this were possible. If you do some searching there are already APIs on Github that can make this happen.

[Sasha Mason]

I dunno, as someone who likes meeting and befriending people I meet in games and on various social platforms, I don't think AI is going to ever be "on par" with actual people. I would rather socialize with actual people or an actual community of people rather than a computer, but that's just me.

[BeYonD]

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

I dunno, as someone who likes meeting and befriending people I meet in games and on various social platforms, I don't think AI is going to ever be "on par" with actual people. I would rather socialize with actual people or an actual community of people rather than a computer, but that's just me.

I don't. I don't like people in general.

[nanoqian]

im assuming all AI is on a predetermined path for performance reasons
But yeah, I have less fun with the game because of this. Less AI(around 16) becomes more game like

Can we please focus on traditional game AI like state machines, etc? We could have some actually helpful feedback for ravenfield, not for the state of the entire industry

[Sasha Mason]

Originally posted by ifarnafactu:

im assuming all AI is on a predetermined path for performance reasons

Kind of.
Ravenfield's bots use navmeshes to calculate their paths, so it's not entirely predetermined, there aren't any hand-placed waypoints which the AI follow. Instead, a navmesh is generated which the AI uses to navigate from any point on the map to any other point on the map, which allows the bots to follow you around to pretty much anywhere.

Only exception would be specific waypoints for where helicopters can land (I think, maybe?) and I think also where boats can land on a beach. I think most, if not all those special cases are to do with water interactions but other than that, it's navmeshes, and the exact path that the bots follow to get from Point A to Point B is always calculated at runtime.

The problem is, I think also for performance reasons, the bots tend to calculate that path once and then just follow it until they reach the flag, oftentimes regardless of what else they run into so you can regularly see bots just walking through each other because they're still on their path.

[nanoqian]

Originally posted by Sasha Mason:

Originally posted by ifarnafactu:

im assuming all AI is on a predetermined path for performance reasons

Kind of.
Ravenfield's bots use navmeshes to calculate their paths, so it's not entirely predetermined, there aren't any hand-placed waypoints which the AI follow. Instead, a navmesh is generated which the AI uses to navigate from any point on the map to any other point on the map, which allows the bots to follow you around to pretty much anywhere.

Only exception would be specific waypoints for where helicopters can land (I think, maybe?) and I think also where boats can land on a beach. I think most, if not all those special cases are to do with water interactions but other than that, it's navmeshes, and the exact path that the bots follow to get from Point A to Point B is always calculated at runtime.

The problem is, I think also for performance reasons, the bots tend to calculate that path once and then just follow it until they reach the flag, oftentimes regardless of what else they run into so you can regularly see bots just walking through each other because they're still on their path.

Main point being that AI complexity really effects performance. There are probably some methods that RTS games have figured out for years regarding AI that could make combat better

[Ulysses]

I think the AI is fine. Its not too complicated for framerate