Always fascinating to listen to somebody talk about their very specific field. And the process of trials and errors that lead to a satisfying result for them. And I didn't even play any Uncharted game, but that was a great talk, accessible enough to be an intro to the topic and deep enough to be really satisfying.
"It's better to start from the player's perspective. What experience do you want the player to have? What decisions do you want the player to make". 100%. Nail this and everything else will follow.
What a great talk! Was just going to take a quick look, but ended up watching the whole thing. Super informative, and with great visuals to support it.
This makes me want to make an AI director for a multiplayer team shooter. Team Fortress 2 where the AI is giving you directives - "hold this position", "try to move to that vantage point", "flank left on my signal" - so humans are doing the actions but following the AI's oversight with the AI working on a system vaguely like this.
@@thomashewitt8104 The original concept for TF2 was to have a human commander on each team doing that kind of role, but apparently they found it wasn't very fun for the commander.
Yeah, that was kinda the problem Natural Selection 2 ran into. If you had someone who liked being a commander it was really fun, but if they were just kinda phoning it in or didn't have a mic the whole game devolved into a regular shooter, and a poorly optimised one at that. It'd be cool if the game could essentialy fill in that role with a bot. Idk if the technology's there yet though.
God damn! That could possibly solve the problem of players not playing as part of squad! Just like a commander or leader asking all the squad members to do certain stuff! Big problem is coding that is simply very very hard...
Great talk, especially in the era when "procedural-everything" is all the rage. Will definitely keep in mind some of these tips for striking a good balance, not just in combat AI, but social/narrative AI as well.
I find that even on moderate difficulty, the enemy AI is annoying, especially during stealth. Sometimes they're oblivious, and other times, they can spot you in their peripheral from a yard away. Other times, I was hiding behind this one wall, expecting the enemy to go the other way, but instead, he flanks behind me and almost alerts all the enemies.
This happened to me in TLOU all the freaking time. Really stood out and made me hate the game AI was super predictable and annoying about forcing player movement all the time
Uncharted 4 and the last of us 1/2 have the best fighting arenas I have ever played. They are so much fun because everytime you play the outcome can be different. And the possibility of stealth/platform increases the replayability.
The AI was the worse part of UC4 aside from the lack of big set pieces typical of the earlier games. AI enemies could consistently throw grenades to the very edge of a cliff you're dangling from, or even worse, throw it such that it rolls off the cliff and rests on your shoulder until you switch ledges. That sort of pinpoint accuracy breaks any sense of immersion. Also why are all of the AI baddies as agile as Nathan Drake? Isn't his ability to clamber around one of his defining traits? Yet the AI are often just as agile and are set up in the most remote of environments. The dumbest thing in the game is where you come across a desert fortress with a moat and drawbridge in front of it and the AI just JUMPS across the moat to engage the player. Do the level/AI designers know what moats are for?
@@Emulcool Because not all soldiers are trained as mountaineers? The game takes place in a lot of extreme terrain, Nathan Drake is used to this because he's spent his whole life in this sort of terrain- why are a bunch of mercs just as nimble? In previous games there always seemed to be a clear difference between the fortune hunters and the bad guys, now- seemingly not so much.
@@koalabrownie I really don't see what your problem is , since all allies can climb too and most ennemies usually climb down to an area they are assigned to. and it wouldn't make sense for TRAINED SOLDIERS to be unable to do basic jumps or climb stuff. I fail to see how shoreline soldiers , trained by nadine , wouldn't be able to move around and how that is immersion breaking . There is little to no point in the game when ennemies take the off path , like drake does , so they don't have to use the extreme set of climbing skill drake has , just basic ones any solider would. Unless rope climbing is such an insane skill they shouldn't have for some reason. Climbing basic stuff is something everyone has in this world.
@@Emulcool You think all soldiers are trained in mountain climbing? Don't think so mate. That sort of thing is for specialized forces, not the average joe. Climbing over a wall in boot camp isn't the same as mountaineering. Many of the UC4's locations are just so remote to make soldier deployment there impractical. Now if the level designers had included temporary bridges or ladders or obvious shoreline additions that allowed the average guy to traverse it, then sure. But most of the time it's just a bunch of broken pillars of rock with death drops all around with a zip line here or there. As for jumping, you don't think there's something dumb about a guy being able to jump over a moat? A moat being a defensive feature specifically designed to keep people on the other side of it?
I haven´t played UC4 but I played the old ones (the first two as demos) and as you say the AI was really bad. I remember shooting an enemy at a door and the rest of them kept coming throught that same door and the bodies kept piling there. It was funny but in the wrong way.
Always fascinating to listen to somebody talk about their very specific field. And the process of trials and errors that lead to a satisfying result for them.
And I didn't even play any Uncharted game, but that was a great talk, accessible enough to be an intro to the topic and deep enough to be really satisfying.
"It's better to start from the player's perspective. What experience do you want the player to have? What decisions do you want the player to make". 100%. Nail this and everything else will follow.
What a great talk! Was just going to take a quick look, but ended up watching the whole thing. Super informative, and with great visuals to support it.
This makes me want to make an AI director for a multiplayer team shooter. Team Fortress 2 where the AI is giving you directives - "hold this position", "try to move to that vantage point", "flank left on my signal" - so humans are doing the actions but following the AI's oversight with the AI working on a system vaguely like this.
That’s a neat idea!
@@thomashewitt8104 The original concept for TF2 was to have a human commander on each team doing that kind of role, but apparently they found it wasn't very fun for the commander.
battlefield 2 had that with a player commander
Yeah, that was kinda the problem Natural Selection 2 ran into. If you had someone who liked being a commander it was really fun, but if they were just kinda phoning it in or didn't have a mic the whole game devolved into a regular shooter, and a poorly optimised one at that.
It'd be cool if the game could essentialy fill in that role with a bot. Idk if the technology's there yet though.
God damn! That could possibly solve the problem of players not playing as part of squad! Just like a commander or leader asking all the squad members to do certain stuff!
Big problem is coding that is simply very very hard...
At 8:35 Matthew mentions another talk from 2014, but I can't find that in your channel @GDC. Can you upload it?
They haven't put Travis's talk on UA-cam yet but it is in the GDC Vault: www.gdcvault.com/play/1020338/The-Last-of-Us-Human
Great talk, especially in the era when "procedural-everything" is all the rage. Will definitely keep in mind some of these tips for striking a good balance, not just in combat AI, but social/narrative AI as well.
Fun fact: The game Rage didn’t have anything procedurally generated.
This is cool 26:29
Another Nughty dog dev talk...fuck yeah
Hey Mat! If you read this. Hi! It's me Pat! From mat vs pat
I find that even on moderate difficulty, the enemy AI is annoying, especially during stealth. Sometimes they're oblivious, and other times, they can spot you in their peripheral from a yard away. Other times, I was hiding behind this one wall, expecting the enemy to go the other way, but instead, he flanks behind me and almost alerts all the enemies.
This happened to me in TLOU all the freaking time. Really stood out and made me hate the game
AI was super predictable and annoying about forcing player movement all the time
Uncharted 4 and the last of us 1/2 have the best fighting arenas I have ever played. They are so much fun because everytime you play the outcome can be different. And the possibility of stealth/platform increases the replayability.
36:17 global combat params
I am impressed to see lisp used in a real project, lol.
What happened to the last pac man enemy example 😂😂, *btw* this is a video with a ton of insights 💯💯💯💯
The AI was the worse part of UC4 aside from the lack of big set pieces typical of the earlier games.
AI enemies could consistently throw grenades to the very edge of a cliff you're dangling from, or even worse, throw it such that it rolls off the cliff and rests on your shoulder until you switch ledges. That sort of pinpoint accuracy breaks any sense of immersion. Also why are all of the AI baddies as agile as Nathan Drake? Isn't his ability to clamber around one of his defining traits? Yet the AI are often just as agile and are set up in the most remote of environments. The dumbest thing in the game is where you come across a desert fortress with a moat and drawbridge in front of it and the AI just JUMPS across the moat to engage the player. Do the level/AI designers know what moats are for?
Why would trained soldiers unable to move around effectively in a level ? That's exactly what they wanted to avoid .
@@Emulcool Because not all soldiers are trained as mountaineers? The game takes place in a lot of extreme terrain, Nathan Drake is used to this because he's spent his whole life in this sort of terrain- why are a bunch of mercs just as nimble?
In previous games there always seemed to be a clear difference between the fortune hunters and the bad guys, now- seemingly not so much.
@@koalabrownie I really don't see what your problem is , since all allies can climb too and most ennemies usually climb down to an area they are assigned to. and it wouldn't make sense for TRAINED SOLDIERS to be unable to do basic jumps or climb stuff.
I fail to see how shoreline soldiers , trained by nadine , wouldn't be able to move around and how that is immersion breaking . There is little to no point in the game when ennemies take the off path , like drake does , so they don't have to use the extreme set of climbing skill drake has , just basic ones any solider would. Unless rope climbing is such an insane skill they shouldn't have for some reason. Climbing basic stuff is something everyone has in this world.
@@Emulcool You think all soldiers are trained in mountain climbing? Don't think so mate. That sort of thing is for specialized forces, not the average joe. Climbing over a wall in boot camp isn't the same as mountaineering. Many of the UC4's locations are just so remote to make soldier deployment there impractical. Now if the level designers had included temporary bridges or ladders or obvious shoreline additions that allowed the average guy to traverse it, then sure. But most of the time it's just a bunch of broken pillars of rock with death drops all around with a zip line here or there.
As for jumping, you don't think there's something dumb about a guy being able to jump over a moat? A moat being a defensive feature specifically designed to keep people on the other side of it?
I haven´t played UC4 but I played the old ones (the first two as demos) and as you say the AI was really bad. I remember shooting an enemy at a door and the rest of them kept coming throught that same door and the bodies kept piling there. It was funny but in the wrong way.