Dynamic A.I

[Diango12]

So Alien Isolation is out and I think game developers will mostly be interested in the game's dynamic A.I.

I had an exchange with Thomas on his blog, right after Amnesia's success. I thought there were two problems with the game. One, I didn't like that the enemies were scripted and followed a predictable patrol path and also were restricted to preset areas. Secondly, there were no consequences for your actions in the environment. Evasion simply entailed staying out of sight.

I thought the game would have been far scarier if the enemy encounters were dynamic. For example, accidentally knocking over a pot and breaking it could attract attention and bring something into the area that would investigate. Also, I wished the enemies had an A.I that would search for you, instead of just move in a patrol path until they spot you. Thomas didn't believe that an A.I like that was possible and he thought it would create too many problems with inconsistency. Well, after playing Alien Isolation all of yesterday and today, boy, can I tell you it is possible. This game nailed it.

[Googolplex]

I really like how the "enemies" in Amnesia walk. This is not a bad A.I. rather this is like it should be. The goal is not to get haunted by enemies to death. The A.I. is created that there is a chance to escape, which is the goal.

I also want to say that horror is not just always about the enemies. The Alien doesn't look scary - I think it ruins the scary atmosphere. It looks like a fantasy monster (big, powerfull and evil) but not disturbing as it should be.

And don't forget you are not completely defenseless in Alien Isolation.

[Newsman Waterpaper]

And don't forget you are not completely defenseless in Alien Isolation.

Yeah but

Spoiler below!

you can only use weapons on the androids, The Alien can't be killed. I don't get how The Alien looks like a "fantasy monster" and are enemies in horror games supposed to be big and powerful?

[Diango12]

I find monsters that are 'disturbing' to be too cliche for me to

1) take seriously
2) find scary

I laugh whenever a play Silent Hill games for this exact reason. Its funny to me because its so overdone, to the point of trying too hard to be scary, and that to me is unscary. When I see a ghost peeking around the corner or the sound of children playing in the background, I can't help but roll my eyes because I can't take an entity that reduces itself to puerile behavior to be in any way scary.

Having said that, the Xenomorph is the epitome of scary for me. For the first time since early childhood, I had a nightmare right after playing this game. I woke up today in a sweat. The Alien is a unique kind of enemy. Its a predator. I can't get the sounds of its loud and heavy thumping footsteps as they get faster and faster and you can only wonder why. Did it smell you? Is it coming after you right now? Oh my god, I can't outrun it, I can't fight it. This is a small space. This game touches on the primitive fear elements that we have evolved with as an early species.

The Alien also adapts. After evading it successfully enough times, it will begin to behave like an ambush predator. Waiting in the vents, you can sometimes see its sick silicone drooling seeping out. It waits for you to make the wrong move, to come closer. To knock something over, or get stuck trying to hack a door open. If you trick it enough times with the flash bangs, it will learn to stop being tricked. It is frightful what they have done with this A.I.

You are completely defenseless in Alien Isolation. Go ahead, use that pistol. Make that noise, I dare you. Thanks to the dynamic A.I of this game, everything has consequences.

[Rapture]

Seems more like the Alien is just a glorified library of Reactions.


For example, a square box room filled with 3 containers that you can hide in. (An enemy will come in and search for you)

(1) A basic scripted enemy AI would always come in through one door.

(2) The next step would be for the enemy to come in any of the 4 doors.

(3) Another step would be if it started his search starting clockwise around the room or counter-clockwise.

(4) Other additionals can be timer scripts that if he is within a certain range of the player, he will play sounds or animations made to freak the player out.

(5) Any other fun things can be timer scripts based on how long you are hiding in one particular spot which will make the enemy find you regardless. (Which I'm guessing Alien Isolation uses)

(5a) You can have timer scripts that roll a dice in code that makes it check out a container at Random. (Which I'm guessing Alien Isolation also uses)

(5b) I've read in reviews/stories, if you were to distract the Alien with sounds or tools it wouldn't react to them the same way next time. You can have separate scripts based on how many times you have used "said item" to distract which display different effects, which gives it the illusion of Intelligence.
Then if the Player tries to abuse this, you will call a script after a maximum number of uses that forces the Alien to immediately kill the Player.

(5c) If you are to far away from said Enemy, the game will get your Player's Position, and make the Enemy search at your last known location. (People seem to complain the creature has an unnatural attraction to you)



Can you link the specific Blog you mentioned with a snippet of it?

You might be confusing what he means by "Thomas didn't believe that an A.I like that was possible and he thought it would create too many problems with inconsistency"...

In Alien Isolation and 99.9% of other games, the game is mostly if not exclusively run on a 2-D plane, as in your not giving full access to the Z (up&down) axis.

It's a lot easier dealing with AI that moves in this situation from a Programmer's perspective.


But it's also a hell of a lot easier from a Animator's perspective. It would be a nightmare creating a unique animation for every possible twist, turn, wall, ceiling movement possible out their.


If Thomas said that, it would be better if he said it isn't "Practical", you can make the most complex creature AI in the world, but you can't spend 10 years perfecting it.

[Diango12]

Seems more like the Alien is just a glorified library of Reactions.


For example, a square box room filled with 3 containers that you can hide in. (An enemy will come in and search for you)

(1) A basic scripted enemy AI would always come in through one door.

(2) The next step would be for the enemy to come in any of the 4 doors.

(3) Another step would be if it started his search starting clockwise around the room or counter-clockwise.

(4) Other additionals can be timer scripts that if he is within a certain range of the player, he will play sounds or animations made to freak the player out.

(5) Any other fun things can be timer scripts based on how long you are hiding in one particular spot which will make the enemy find you regardless. (Which I'm guessing Alien Isolation uses)

(5a) You can have timer scripts that roll a dice in code that makes it check out a container at Random. (Which I'm guessing Alien Isolation also uses)

(5b) I've read in reviews/stories, if you were to distract the Alien with sounds or tools it wouldn't react to them the same way next time. You can have separate scripts based on how many times you have used "said item" to distract which display different effects, which gives it the illusion of Intelligence.
Then if the Player tries to abuse this, you will call a script after a maximum number of uses that forces the Alien to immediately kill the Player.

(5c) If you are to far away from said Enemy, the game will get your Player's Position, and make the Enemy search at your last known location. (People seem to complain the creature has an unnatural attraction to you)

I'm confused. Are trying to disparage the A.I system in Alien Isolation? What is your point here besides a hollow procedural attempt at a dynamic system? First of all, if your plan for an A.I system is to create binary procedural scripts and timers and triggers, laced with all kinds of dirty globals, then you're already off to a bad start.

Since you already beat the drum, I guess I'll have a go at sounding like a pretentious tosser. As with most A.I systems today, Alien Isolation most likely has an event based architecture, similar to event sourcing in CQRS with a pub sub layer over a public message bus, possibly also employing fuzzy logic. Player interactions produce events that are picked up by publisher module, and registered domain elements, like the Alien A.I, subscribe to those events. You get a cleaner architecture that doesn't rely on procedural gunk, but more importantly, you can easily slap on a suite of unit and integration tests on those domain subscribers and the publisher.

Can you link the specific Blog you mentioned with a snippet of it?

You might be confusing what he means by "Thomas didn't believe that an A.I like that was possible and he thought it would create too many problems with inconsistency"...

In Alien Isolation and 99.9% of other games, the game is mostly if not exclusively run on a 2-D plane, as in your not giving full access to the Z (up&down) axis.

It's a lot easier dealing with AI that moves in this situation from a Programmer's perspective.


But it's also a hell of a lot easier from a Animator's perspective. It would be a nightmare creating a unique animation for every possible twist, turn, wall, ceiling movement possible out their.


If Thomas said that, it would be better if he said it isn't "Practical", you can make the most complex creature AI in the world, but you can't spend 10 years perfecting it.

So now that you've annoyingly dismissed my post under the assumption that I'm an idiot - that isn't capable of properly recalling past conversations - I'm now supposed to run off and collect your homework for you? How about you lay off the scott mate, it damages many aspects of your brain. Like being polite, and engaging conversation in sincere humility. Not shoving yourself in and declaring "I used game editors before! I am an expert on these matters and dismiss everything!".

[7heDubz]

Spoiler below!

Seems more like the Alien is just a glorified library of Reactions.


For example, a square box room filled with 3 containers that you can hide in. (An enemy will come in and search for you)

(1) A basic scripted enemy AI would always come in through one door.

(2) The next step would be for the enemy to come in any of the 4 doors.

(3) Another step would be if it started his search starting clockwise around the room or counter-clockwise.

(4) Other additionals can be timer scripts that if he is within a certain range of the player, he will play sounds or animations made to freak the player out.

(5) Any other fun things can be timer scripts based on how long you are hiding in one particular spot which will make the enemy find you regardless. (Which I'm guessing Alien Isolation uses)

(5a) You can have timer scripts that roll a dice in code that makes it check out a container at Random. (Which I'm guessing Alien Isolation also uses)

(5b) I've read in reviews/stories, if you were to distract the Alien with sounds or tools it wouldn't react to them the same way next time. You can have separate scripts based on how many times you have used "said item" to distract which display different effects, which gives it the illusion of Intelligence.
Then if the Player tries to abuse this, you will call a script after a maximum number of uses that forces the Alien to immediately kill the Player.

(5c) If you are to far away from said Enemy, the game will get your Player's Position, and make the Enemy search at your last known location. (People seem to complain the creature has an unnatural attraction to you)

I'm confused. Are trying to disparage the A.I system in Alien Isolation? What is your point here besides a hollow procedural attempt at a dynamic system? First of all, if your plan for an A.I system is to create binary procedural scripts and timers and triggers, laced with all kinds of dirty globals, then you're already off to a bad start.

Since you already beat the drum, I guess I'll have a go at sounding like a pretentious tosser. As with most A.I systems today, Alien Isolation most likely has an event based architecture, similar to event sourcing in CQRS with a pub sub layer over a public message bus, possibly also employing fuzzy logic. Player interactions produce events that are picked up by publisher module, and registered domain elements, like the Alien A.I, subscribe to those events. You get a cleaner architecture that doesn't rely on procedural gunk, but more importantly, you can easily slap on a suite of unit and integration tests on those domain subscribers and the publisher.

Can you link the specific Blog you mentioned with a snippet of it?

You might be confusing what he means by "Thomas didn't believe that an A.I like that was possible and he thought it would create too many problems with inconsistency"...

In Alien Isolation and 99.9% of other games, the game is mostly if not exclusively run on a 2-D plane, as in your not giving full access to the Z (up&down) axis.

It's a lot easier dealing with AI that moves in this situation from a Programmer's perspective.


But it's also a hell of a lot easier from a Animator's perspective. It would be a nightmare creating a unique animation for every possible twist, turn, wall, ceiling movement possible out their.


If Thomas said that, it would be better if he said it isn't "Practical", you can make the most complex creature AI in the world, but you can't spend 10 years perfecting it.

So now that you've annoyingly dismissed my post under the assumption that I'm an idiot - that isn't capable of properly recalling past conversations - I'm now supposed to run off and collect your homework for you? How about you lay off the scott mate, it damages many aspects of your brain. Like being polite, and engaging conversation in sincere humility. Not shoving yourself in and declaring "I used game editors before! I am an expert on these matters and dismiss everything!".

You were off to a good start with the top bit. But then you got down to where you start to be unreasonable.

He isn't saying you aren't capable of recalling past conversations. He is looking for proof and context.

The burden of proof is on you, not him. You claimed something it is completely reasonable for him to ask you to present proof.

[Kreekakon]

Whether, or not Rapture was misinformed is still up for debate. But I can without hesitation tell you this: He was definitely being completely polite in his post without any personal sort of degrading statements in it beyond simple genuine questionings of your previous posts.

Diango, you're the one who is starting to be impolite, not Rapture. I hope you can calm down a bit.

[Diango12]

No he wasn't reasonable or genuine. He was dismissive and that is rude. I don't appreciate the tone policing. All I see here is ingroup derogation.

[Kreekakon]

What Rapture did was disagreeing, and presenting his own version of how he believed the Alien acted. If something like that was to be considered rude, and dismissive, then I don't see how we could ever have any sort of discussion on anything ever without being "rude".

Also, even IF Rapture was being rude to you, then the worst thing that you could do is be rude back. It will just potentially, and needlessly continue the line of drama.