*spin-off* Naughty Dog, SPUs, Radiosity

[Xenus]

There was some of that in the PS2 era but you couldn't really kill the NPC's or anythign to change the world like that. Also I want my JRPG's to finally have gear that changes the main characters appearence. So many have weapons which change but changing armor or anything doesn't alter their appearance at all.

And I'm not advocating going the PS3 route again with a powerful CPU and a weaker GPU. I want something like if Cell had been in a system with the Xenos. I like balance not one part having to make up for deficiencies of another.

 

[jlippo]

I want an RPG where NPCs have daily schedules like in Ultima 7.

I want persistent AI to go with it, all characters and mosters simulated all the time.
Would be quite a shock for most players when NPC remembers and tracks you down after you have stolen their goods. (Zombie infection in the world would be nice as well..)

 

[archangelmorph]

I want an RPG where NPCs have daily schedules like in Ultima 7. The bakerman wakes up, goes to his bakery, puts the flour and water together to make bread, then you can buy it from him. Rob his house while he's away, kill him in his sleep, or make bread yourself.

This has very little to do with hardware capability & everything to do with man-power & production resourcing...

If we can invest time/money in building toolchains which support the behavioral elements via action sets + semantically tagged props in the world & allow designers to script up these behavioral patterns (or event better, procedurally generate them..) then we can do that yesterday...

However good luck trying to convince your publisher to invest in building something like this as it's extremely unlikely they'll consider the cost vs benefit worth it given it won't be creating a USP for the product that is immediately obvious to the consumer / in a screenshot. Not to mention the fact that it makes life harder for marketing over otherwise fancy gfx which inherently market themselves...

As an aside, I distinctly remember Morrowind having that aswell though...

 

[KKRT]

I want an RPG where NPCs have daily schedules like in Ultima 7. The bakerman wakes up, goes to his bakery, puts the flour and water together to make bread, then you can buy it from him. Rob his house while he's away, kill him in his sleep, or make bread yourself.
It's been what, 20 years ago? I realize it's a lot more complex to do with 3D graphics and skeletial animation and speech and sound effects - but still, that world felt so much more alive than a lot of stuff we have today. And every time there's a choice, it's always about remaking the same dumb NPC with more polygons and textures and whatever else contributes to the looks, instead of trying to create the illusion of life through actions.

Skyrim will have similar AI, probably less advanced than You want, but still quite good. They said that when You kill shopkeeper, someone from his family will takeover his business and if wont get caught they wont have problem with interacting with You or if You wont make a quest that threatens village, population can drop and resources/items in shops will drop or prices will increase.

 

[patsu]

While on the topic of AI:
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...s-real-battleground-for-the-next-gen-consoles

Ubisoft is investing $200,000 a year for the next five years with the aim of developing "other ways of thinking" about game production. Jacquier demonstrated the group's work in the field of procedural AI, telling GamesIndustry.biz that innovation in this area is vital to the future development of videogames.

"AI has always been the real battleground. The challenge is that, if you see an AI coming, you've failed. And that's a problem we have to overcome as we create the impression of flawless, seamless worlds."

In the past, consoles have been marketed principally on the strength of their graphical capabilities. The Wii broke this trend, and Jacquier believes that the next generation of consoles will all follow suit.

"In general the industry expects that graphics will not be a strong feature any more... Obviously, graphics are better for marketing purposes because you can show things. AI you can't show."

"Our challenge with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox [360] is that we're extremely limited in what we can do. It's a challenge for the engineers to provide nice graphics and nice AI and nice sound with a very small amount of memory and computation time."

"We think that the next generation of consoles won't have these limits any more. Games might have more realistic graphics and more on-screen, but what's the value of making something more realistic and better animated if you have poor AI?"

Jacquier's comments chime with those made by id Software's John Carmack in a recent interview with Eurogamer.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

He kinda contradicts himself though with the content created this gen. Last gen the same complaints could have been made of limited RAM and power in PS2 and XB and GC. This gen doesn't 'have those limits' and yet the underlying tech isn't advancing a huge amount more than graphics. Okay, that's probably not true with AI in FPSes etc. being markedly more sophisticated than last gen. The point is though that it's not the technological limits that prevent advancement in areas other than graphics, but the way devs utilise the programmability. That's not going to change next gen. Next-gen isn't going to have an abundance of processing power that devs will be free to throw at non-graphics tech any more than any other generation. The ball has always been in their court, but very few devs have tried something like PixelJunk Shooters fluid physics or From Dust's procedural world creation.

 

[assurdum]

He kinda contradicts himself though with the content created this gen. Last gen the same complaints could have been made of limited RAM and power in PS2 and XB and GC. This gen doesn't 'have those limits' and yet the underlying tech isn't advancing a huge amount more than graphics. Okay, that's probably not true with AI in FPSes etc. being markedly more sophisticated than last gen. The point is though that it's not the technological limits that prevent advancement in areas other than graphics, but the way devs utilise the programmability. That's not going to change next gen. Next-gen isn't going to have an abundance of processing power that devs will be free to throw at non-graphics tech any more than any other generation. The ball has always been in their court, but very few devs have tried something like PixelJunk Shooters fluid physics or From Dust's procedural world creation.

I concur here. Every gen this complain or every the same company who claim the same things again and again... I mean, sure the console have reached its limits actually, by the way I can't forget the lot of promises about the sophisticated AI of first AC or far cry 2 thanks the no limits at the start of this gen... are really sure the problem is only in the machines? IMHO

 

[patsu]

Well, open world games like GTA4 and Red Hot Redemption have large scale AI in their game world.

Incidentally, I found an article today regarding AI on Mass Effect 3:
http://www.computerandvideogames.co...bioware-on-intense-combat-and-overhauling-ai/



I believe NaughtyDog did the first SPU dynamic path finding implementation in Uncharted 1. It went into the PS3 SDK and were used by Killzone 2 + 3, Uncharted 2 and others. Havoc and AutoDesk middleware also support SPU path finding solutions.

Modnation Racer and Starhawk should have even more sophisticated path finding needs. In MNR, the user creates arbitrary tracks from scratch, the kart AI has to be general, power-ups aware and competitive enough. In Starhawk, user can erect their own facilities. Besides path finding in and out of the multi-storey buildings, the NPCs need to know how and when to operate the new facilities, plus how to destroy them like regular RTS.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Modnation Racer and Starhawk should have even more sophisticated path finding needs. In MNR, the user creates arbitrary tracks from scratch, the kart AI has to be general, power-ups aware and competitive enough. In Starhawk, user can erect their own facilities. Besides path finding in and out of the multi-storey buildings, the NPCs need to know how and when to operate the new facilities, plus how to destroy them like regular RTS.

I'm actually not really expecting much more than the same kinds of dumb horde of drones you'd see in any tower defence game. Not that i doubt the devs skills, but i can just imagine that trying to do super complex AI in such a variable environment would be so difficult that they'd end up putting in a few subroutines that just try to make the enemies LOOK smarter than they really are (of course that's what all VG AI is).

 

[patsu]

Yeah... I don't think game AI means strict application of hardcore AI algorithms. Making NPC look and play smart is exactly it.

In Starhawk's case, I believe a "standard" RTS logic + dynamic path finding + awareness of environment (e.g., estimated time/distance to reach a friendly turret, line of sight from enemies, getting out before a building explode, ...) may suffice ? They can cheat by observing the player too. I suspect enemy RTS strategy may be more difficult to implement and balance. Would be interesting to hear from RUSE and Under Siege folks. We don't get a lot of RTS on consoles. T_T

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

And I'm not advocating going the PS3 route again with a powerful CPU and a weaker GPU. I want something like if Cell had been in a system with the Xenos. I like balance not one part having to make up for deficiencies of another.

Aren't the only things Xenos is better at are vertex processing and fillrate (in certain cases)?

 

[Prophecy2k]

Well, open world games like GTA4 and Red Hot Redemption have large scale AI in their game world.

Incidentally, I found an article today regarding AI on Mass Effect 3:
http://www.computerandvideogames.co...bioware-on-intense-combat-and-overhauling-ai/

I'm sorry patsu... but this cracked me up waaay more than it should have

Sounds like the name of the naughty parody version ;-)

 

[patsu]

I guess that's a freudian slip.