Fighter AI vs. AI

[OnkelGuppy]

I know I'm not the only one with the strange preference for watching the computer play itself. Lately, I've taken an interest in fighter games, but I'm not overly familiar with them.

So, an easy question: Which fighter games for PC have a decent AI vs. AI mode? It would need several characters with diverse characteristics to get interesting, of course. Reasonably attractive graphics is a plus, but requiring a specialized gaming computer is not.

[C4Warr10r]

Hmmmm....I can give you some good examples, even great ones, but it depends on how loosely you determine the term "fighter."

For straight-up fighter genre AI I don't know enough of them to be helpful. Mortal Kombat and Soul Calibur, mostly. They are generally mediocre. The AI is slow, even against itself, and it leaves too many openings without anticpating anything. My guess is because it has to be, it's made to fight humans, not AI. If it didn't leave openings, nobody could ever win. It would end up like having a good chess engine always play itself, it always ends up in a draw.

If you really want entertaining AI vs AI, you have to look at adaptive models. Insofar as I'm aware, there are no fighting games with such a thing, which is not to say they don't exist, but they may be difficult to get copies of.

Games which feature adaptive AI tend to make it trainable, and that's where you want to look. Off the top of my head, Armored Core Silent line had a good one, if you want to watch robots fighting. Of course, you have to train it first, which takes at least 200 repetitions or more, you have to play the same way every time, and it will get better than you, but if your mech or tactics suck it's going to get owned.

Then there's Dragon's Dogma, which I'll drag up for the billionth time. Same concept, fewer repetitions and the pawns really do some entertaining stuff when they fight each other. Problem is, pawns don't naturally fight each other except during one point of the game. Even worse, it doesn't work unless you have two trained pawns, and most people won't train theirs right. But when you do have the requisite elements, prepare to be amazed, right after getting the hell out of the way. They're so fast, so well-adapted, that they can counter and cancel before either of them does anything. Then one AI or the other messes up and it's either a one-shot kill or a stagger-raep-fest. GG.

Beyond that, I'd suggest maybe Skyrim or Fallout. The AI doesn't really learn in those games, but it does fight with skillsets given it, and it just takes a console command to make NPCs fight.

I know none of that is exactly what you were looking for, but hopefully it can help a little.

[OnkelGuppy]

Not exactly what I was looking for, no, but still a very interesting exposition! Machine learning is fascinating, and if my post can inspire an interesting discussion that's cool too.

My definition of "fighter" is fairly strict, I guess. A straight fight between two fighters, or teams, with an eventual winner. You mention MK, is there a version of that which allows AI vs AI? I have Komplete Edition, but that will only allow you to watch short sequences when you're inactive during the opening screen, no complete fights.

I certainly don't mind if the AI is slower and less anticipating than the CPU could manage - I think otherwise it would be even less entertaining than your example with the ever-drawing chess engine. It might be a similar eternal draw situation, or a win that was too fast to follow for the spectator. No, as long as the quality of play isn't moan-inducingly worse than a human player (and given what a noob I am at fighters my standards here are pretty low) I'm good, as long as the mode is satisfactory - that is, the ability to pit a variety of fighters against each other in complete matches.

[Radical Left Lunatic]

Theres this game called salty bet, it requires no gaming computer.In fact you can play it on your phone through twitch.
http://www.saltybet.com/

[OnkelGuppy]

Hah! That's... interesting...