Physics and AI

I've seen a lot of posts recently that include physics and AI along with graphics as things that make the Wii 'last gen'. However, I often doubt that the people who make these posts know what they are talking about. So I was wondering what are examples of processor and/or memory intensive examples of AI and physics.

I'll give two examples to start:

1) Dead rising - I'm sure that the number of different AI entities require a significant amount of power

2) Destructable environments - But often these are only visual in nature ie havoc FX

What?

ANY PHYSISCS ENGINE WILL require power, one look at the stranglehold demo is an example of physics in action, although, just as gears does, the environments are small and the aren't alot of charaters on screen. The better and more complex the engine the more power is required and I think that we've yet to see real power limiting examples of this on a console.

Bioshok has good AI, but I dont think you willl really see power being sapped from consoles until Mass effect, Alan wake, Halo 3, Cod4 and Battlefield Bad company hit, and other titles like these.

Give it a couple more years till your question is really answered

you're right, there are many examples out there of increased power leading to physics and AI that we have not seen anymore.

The problem is that right now it seems like those examples are just devs flexing muscles that they didn't have last gen. It hasn't made a significant difference to evolving games. Even dead rising.

Maybe in the future there will be games made that absolutely require all that physics and AI, and couldn't have existed in any form last gen

ANY PHYSISCS ENGINE WILL require power, one look at the stranglehold demo is an example of physics in action, although, just as gears does, the environments are small and the aren't alot of charaters on screen. The better and more complex the engine the more power is required and I think that we've yet to see real power limiting examples of this on a console.

Bioshok has good AI, but I dont think you willl really see power being sapped from consoles until Mass effect, Alan wake, Halo 3, Cod4 and Battlefield Bad company hit, and other titles like these.

Give it a couple more years till your question is really answered

the1stmoonfly

you're right, there are many examples out there of increased power leading to physics and AI that we have not seen anymore.

The problem is that right now it seems like those examples are just devs flexing muscles that they didn't have last gen. It hasn't made a significant difference to evolving games. Even dead rising.

Maybe in the future there will be games made that absolutely require all that physics and AI, and couldn't have existed in any form last gen

GunSmith1_basic

I was in a shootout with some Chimera on resistance. The Chimera tries to flank you. Sometimes it will hide so you can't kill him. So you rush up and the Chimera pop out at the last minute and start shooting.I had to waste extra ammo and lost unncessary health due to the sneaky Chimera. If AI up to par with human player. No, but the AI has improved after 2-3 yrs from what I notice.

[QUOTE="GunSmith1_basic"]

you're right, there are many examples out there of increased power leading to physics and AI that we have not seen anymore.

The problem is that right now it seems like those examples are just devs flexing muscles that they didn't have last gen. It hasn't made a significant difference to evolving games. Even dead rising.

Maybe in the future there will be games made that absolutely require all that physics and AI, and couldn't have existed in any form last gen

gamenux

I was in a shootout with some Chimera on resistance. The Chimera tries to flank you. Sometimes it will hide so you can't kill him. So you rush up and the Chimera pop out at the last minute and start shooting.I had to waste extra ammo and lost unncessary health due to the sneaky Chimera. If AI up to par with human player. No, but the AI has improved after 2-3 yrs from what I notice.

With the so-called better physics this gen, I hope flight sims gets better. I would like to play something like comanche on the PC or a Wing Commandeer type, or Falcon game.

[QUOTE="GunSmith1_basic"]

you're right, there are many examples out there of increased power leading to physics and AI that we have not seen anymore.

The problem is that right now it seems like those examples are just devs flexing muscles that they didn't have last gen. It hasn't made a significant difference to evolving games. Even dead rising.

Maybe in the future there will be games made that absolutely require all that physics and AI, and couldn't have existed in any form last gen

gamenux

I was in a shootout with some Chimera on resistance. The Chimera tries to flank you. Sometimes it will hide so you can't kill him. So you rush up and the Chimera pop out at the last minute and start shooting.I had to waste extra ammo and lost unncessary health due to the sneaky Chimera. If AI up to par with human player. No, but the AI has improved after 2-3 yrs from what I notice.

[QUOTE="GunSmith1_basic"]

you're right, there are many examples out there of increased power leading to physics and AI that we have not seen anymore.

The problem is that right now it seems like those examples are just devs flexing muscles that they didn't have last gen. It hasn't made a significant difference to evolving games. Even dead rising.

Maybe in the future there will be games made that absolutely require all that physics and AI, and couldn't have existed in any form last gen

gamenux

I was in a shootout with some Chimera on resistance. The Chimera tries to flank you. Sometimes it will hide so you can't kill him. So you rush up and the Chimera pop out at the last minute and start shooting.I had to waste extra ammo and lost unncessary health due to the sneaky Chimera. If AI up to par with human player. No, but the AI has improved after 2-3 yrs from what I notice.

AI takes more processing power, but only as much as needed for how it's scripted.

In the end it comes down to who makes the AI and how hard they work on it. An example of this is Dawn Of War, the AI in dawn of war is piss poor however there's a mod group that's been working on an AI skirmish mod for years, the mod raises the AI to new wonderful levels.

The AI in the mod has multiple strategies and thought patterns- rather than just being harder or faster the AI actually has many avenues to allow thought based on the situation, which is where truly wonderful AI shines.

The more varibles the AI has to conceder, the more separate AI's running at once, and the refresh rate(how often it thinks about what to do next) of the AI, puts more stress on the processor.

What I'm saying is a better processor is like a cup, the cup might be big but if the devs can't fill it up it won't matter- AI development is a long processes and is often over looked in games. What's more important right now is making the game look shiney for the graphics whores.

The worlds most powerful chess computers can barely beat grand masters...and those things are HUGE and capable of doing billions of calculations per second (or something crazy like that).

THAT is AI. Most of what passes for AI in videogames is little more than glorified if/then statements.

If you want proper physics you need to look at "simple" things like water and wave effects, simulating the spread of fire, or lighting effects like ray-tracing.Particle effects are nothing compared to properly simulating these things.

I am a believer that physics and AI are the wave of the future. You can only get so far with polygons and texture mapping and I think we are already getting to the limit. Games are already starting to look quite realistic. However, it is the little details that suck all the power from consoles or PCs...and those are always dependant on AI and physics.

[QUOTE="the1stmoonfly"]

ANY PHYSISCS ENGINE WILL require power, one look at the stranglehold demo is an example of physics in action, although, just as gears does, the environments are small and the aren't alot of charaters on screen. The better and more complex the engine the more power is required and I think that we've yet to see real power limiting examples of this on a console.

Bioshok has good AI, but I dont think you willl really see power being sapped from consoles until Mass effect, Alan wake, Halo 3, Cod4 and Battlefield Bad company hit, and other titles like these.

Give it a couple more years till your question is really answered

GunSmith1_basic

Didnt play it so couldnt comment, but Bio isnt a bad example of improving AI on the 360. PC's lend themselves to better AI though, partly because of increased power, but also because their processors are more capable than the console ones (all that out-of-order execution malarky).

Physics is something you'd require more power for if you want to do more. Particle effects and physicaldebree rather than animated are simple examples.

AI can be pretty simple to build. But from what I've learnt from some here that there are many different ways of creating AI algorithms. One would do a action to drink a cup of water like:

if(cupWater > 0){ //Cup having water inside it...

Action Drink;

}

Or they could make it more comlex and have it so that the AI drinks a set amount and waits for an amount of time. Or go deeper and have a thirst meter. Advanced AI should really be used when necessary.

When many talk about it here it seems gospel. But we all should know that even with the most physics and AI calculations aren't nothing without a good gameplay ethic and balance.

I was in a shootout with some Chimera on resistance. The Chimera tries to flank you. Sometimes it will hide so you can't kill him. So you rush up and the Chimera pop out at the last minute and start shooting.I had to waste extra ammo and lost unncessary health due to the sneaky Chimera. If AI up to par with human player. No, but the AI has improved after 2-3 yrs from what I notice.

gamenux

I wonder how much of that is really just scripted. I remember the first time that I fought the marines in the original half life I was amazed at how they worked together, took cover, used grenades to flush you out. The first time I was actually surprised by AI in a game. However, for the most part it wasn't true AI at all, just scripted sequences which were triggered by certain player actions.

Personally I would just be happy if the AI was smart enough to consisitently know it is being shot. I have played too many games where an enemy responds to getting shot by just standing against the same wall with the same small part of his body visible to me.

Personally I would just be happy if the AI was smart enough to consisitently know it is being shot. I have played too many games where an enemy responds to getting shot by just standing against the same wall with the same small part of his body visible to me. actionquake

I tell you... I wouldn't be a happy bunny if I hit an enemy square in the chest for it's next move to be evading the next attack.

That's almost "Break the controller" fustration. :(

I suppose there are some key genres that would really benefit from AI upgrades

strategy (replace assistance to the computer with some actual smarts), rts, fighting (anyone remember guile from the original street fighter 2? how things have changed)

[QUOTE="actionquake"]Personally I would just be happy if the AI was smart enough to consisitently know it is being shot. I have played too many games where an enemy responds to getting shot by just standing against the same wall with the same small part of his body visible to me. Teh_Stevz

I tell you... I wouldn't be a happy bunny if I hit an enemy square in the chest for it's next move to be evading the next attack.

That's almost "Break the controller" fustration. :(

We have our friends over at Havok to thank for changing all that. It was tough to back to most single-player FPSs (except classics like Deus Ex and SS2) after Far Cry/HL2 were out because I couldn't stand the lack of physics.

[QUOTE="actionquake"]Personally I would just be happy if the AI was smart enough to consisitently know it is being shot. I have played too many games where an enemy responds to getting shot by just standing against the same wall with the same small part of his body visible to me. Teh_Stevz

I tell you... I wouldn't be a happy bunny if I hit an enemy square in the chest for it's next move to be evading the next attack.

That's almost "Break the controller" fustration. :(

I'm talking about where the enemy is up against the wall and just his leg for example is showing. So you shoot him in the leg. He does whatever getting shot in the leg animation is required and then resumes standing against the same wall in the same position with his leg still showing so you can shoot it again.

Even worse is where an NPC scripted action is interupted by gun fire or something and the NPC carries on talking as though he isn't getting shot repeatedly. This was annoying as hell in Godfather on Wii, but I'm sure it could have been solved with maybe two lines of code.