Welly well well... guess who comes crawling back? - by lost_soul
demagogue on 10/3/2011 at 03:11
I'm on board with more attention on AI. (I actually posted that earlier and I lost my internet connection when I hit send.) Both in scale and depth. Having 1000s of autonomous bots could lead to some epic gaming situations, like a juiced-up Total War-type of game on a much grander scale where you have entire cities and armies simulated over the whole world. And in depth, just flat-out better AI ... better algorithms, smarter, trickier, better able think moves ahead, and adjust their tactics as the situation changes.
Wormrat on 10/3/2011 at 03:16
Regarding AI, I now remember reading that Bungie could afford fewer raycasts in Halo 3 than in Halo 2 because the geometry had become significantly more complex. Even setting aside ZylonBane's point about expenses, I have to admit that staying at the cutting edge of graphical realism may have downsides that can't be fixed by simply spending more time on them if the computing power isn't available yet.
Dresden on 10/3/2011 at 03:47
The animation in Oblivion is actually nice. It's just that the engine has no animation smoothing which makes them look odd when they switch.
ZylonBane on 10/3/2011 at 05:20
The problem with "better" AI is that when people say that, what they usually mean is "human-like AI". For all but the most insanely complex 4X strategy games, it's apparently pretty easy these days to make an AI that has no trouble kicking your ass. But getting your ass kicked isn't fun, so the challenge for coders is to make an AI that's dumb in a human-like way.
And then there's the separate issue of how much AI an enemy can even demonstrate when it has a lifespan measured in seconds.
demagogue on 10/3/2011 at 06:15
That makes sense.
It reminds me of the Euphoria animation system, where they take into account natural human reactions in the animations. There might be an AI equivalent, that takes into account natural human psychological reactions too.
On the short lifespan issue, though, that reminds me of another angle on AI in gaming... having games that involves AI in a deeper way than just their twitchy physical reactions. There is some of that in RTS and strategy & war games, where the AI are involved in constructing shit and rationally deploying it, so they have to make trade-offs, or in Elite-style sims where AI are out there autonomously trading and pirating. But what about games where the whole goal is to work with the AI and their state of mind, like get them to become a follower of you, or do something on your behalf or in your interest, and you have to game their motivations and interests. Maybe the Sims tries to do something like this, but not very well. I have a suspicion really interesting gameplay might come out of it if somebody came up with a cool concept and got it to work, but no one's really trying to make AI-centric gameplay like that. Or the AI seems broken when some games toy with it (like the diplomacy parts of Civ, etc).
Shadowcat on 10/3/2011 at 09:09
I think animation has generally been the #1 deficiency in game graphics for the past decade or more. You can make the textures bigger and the models more detailed until the cows come home, but your game will never look real while the movements are awkward. In the majority of cases, if the animation isn't motion-captured and/or meticulously hand-crafted, it just looks wrong.
I'm glad that folks like the Euphoria team have taken up the (admittedly difficult) challenge of making things better, because almost no one else has tackled this.
Malf on 10/3/2011 at 10:04
Rockstar really do seem to think that animation is one of the more important fields that needs addressing. The animation in the videos I've seen for LA Noire seems to be as much of a shift as Euphoria was in GTA IV, if not more so.
And I'll echo the sentiments of others here by admitting that I'm more than happy that almost every game recently released on PC that has also been released on console has performed flawlessly on my 3-year old system. I'm not keen on the idea of getting back onto the upgrade treadmill. As I get older, justifying the cost of a £300 graphics card every year and a half becomes harder.
Something else that I think will impact the focus on graphic fidelity is the amount of resources required to make even a single art asset for one of these new engines. Unless you're willing to exploit your workforce that is; I can already see companies farming out costly 3D artist work to burgeoning economies.
242 on 10/3/2011 at 10:15
Quote:
As console hardware ages game developers are again turning to the PC to showcase the jaw-dropping visuals
I haven't seen any advantage of even latest PC games compared to console games technology-wise so far. And I don't care about technological demos on PC they often call games nowadays anyway.
Quote:
The PC simply has more of a visual wow-factor than the long in the tooth consoles
Theoretically only. Practically it's more often on the contrary than not. It will change obviously sooner or later as the current gen consoles will grow even older, but new gen will appear eventually. PC upgrades simply cost more, one can afford a whole PS3 or 360 system for a price of a hi-end PC videocard (not TOO hi-end though ;) ).
Thirith on 10/3/2011 at 10:49
Quote Posted by 242
Theoretically only. Practically it's more often on the contrary than not. It will change obviously sooner or later as the current gen consoles will grow even older, but new gen will appear eventually. PC upgrades simply cost more, one can afford a whole PS3 or 360 system for a price of a hi-end PC videocard (not TOO hi-end though ;) ).
I've had as many "Wow!" moments on my PS3 during the last year as on my PC. In terms of tech bells and whistles, the latter wins most of the time, but by being restricted to a specific hardware devs are forced to focus more on optimising the tech and on design/artistry. For all of its wobbly framerate and low resolution,
Shadow of the Colossus has featured some of my favourite video game visuals ever; I've also been more impressed by
Uncharted's visuals than by 90% of the PC games I've played in the last year or two.
DDL on 10/3/2011 at 13:57
Re: AI, it's also not really (I suspect) a hardware issue, it's more of a man-hours issue. It's just incredibly time-consuming to account for all the variables an AI might encounter, work out plausible responses to those variables, accounting for additional extraneous variables, code them in, and then (as ZB points out) allow for fuckups in this process so as not to essentially be superhuman. If you can get your AI to a point where it's 'good enough', then..well, it's generally good enough. Sure, you may end up with some oddities in specific situations, but the majority of people probably won't be paying enough attention to spot them.
It's just that TTLG has a high percentage of the kind of gamer that would spot AI bugs (mostly because it's often hilarious, I suspect -like the grunts in crysis that swim up to you, shout, but then promptly drown because they were shouting, not swimming).
