LE [REQ] Improving Skyrim's dumb ai

[Midicow]

I'll say it right off, coming from the various stalker games, the ai in skyrim seems incredibly dumb and static.

 

It's to the point where I wonder how they can even call it a dynamic ai with a straight face.

 

I wanted to make a long monologue, so if you want to skip all the jibber jabber and go directly to the request, ctrl+f or whatever and search for [request].

 

I'll give you an example from a modded shadow of Chernobyl. Using Oblivion lost ultimate pack, which includes the faction warfare mod among other things.

 

This only is a speculation on what happened, from what I could piece together afterward, because it took me by complete surprise.

 

Let me set up the scene, you can skip this if you've already played the game.

 

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You're a stalker and unnamed at the time because of storyline reasons, you're simply called the marked one because of your tattoo. There's a Rookie Village, a little camp consisting of a few mostly broken down houses along a lane, with about two mini bunkers where people sometimes take cover, and a large bunker down the ways where a fat trader resides.

The village is surrounded on one side by a hill or two, and the other side by dangerous anomalies and mutant animals. Pretty basic but 'defensible', as far as stalker locations go.

They reside in a large zone of alienation, created by the Chernobyl explosion in an alternate universe to our own. To protect the world from the dangers of the zone, the military has set up as many outposts around the edges as they can, considering the dangers involved, and generally spend their time shooting at people who try to break their way in.

 

The few that manage to get past the military make their way inward, in the case of various crime cartels and misc interests you have mercenaries and bandits. In the case of self-interest or no affiliation you have loners and splinter militaristic factions like duty and freedom.

 

Just down the road from this Rookie camp, where you see rookie loners hanging out or playing music, generally being Russian.. you have a small outpost of military folks, who regularly send patrols most of the way up the road but rarely ever close to the rookie camp, seeing as they get shot at. You'd figure they'd raid it every so often but they generally don't. I'd guess that the fat trader bribes them or that they don't really want to screw with the anomalies.

 

In the other direction from the Rookie camp, lays an abandoned farm stead and an abandoned small factory. Usually home to bandits who use the farm as a stopover before amassing and trying their luck with the bridge further down, and monsters, as well as anomalies. A little bit further down and you encounter a bridge, of which the only 'easy' way to get under is to go through a detachment of military. You can bribe them, or shoot them, but they don't shoot the main character on sight unless you screw around with them or try to barge past.

 

 

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That said, one day I happened to be heading towards the bridge for the first time when I happened across a traveling mercenary squad. Their leader was named Doc Ravage and was afit with a nice shooter and a fancy exosuit, and they were in progress of clearing out said bandit farm. I helped out, watched them use cover tactically and use cover/elevation/group tactics to overwhelm the bandits. The bandits were kinda derpy, like untrained militia, and fell rather easily. I got some loot out of it and noticed the leader moving towards the bridge, so I followed. The entire squad went toe to toe with a trained military force of equal size, and I had some trouble staying out of the crossfire due to being a bit tactically inept myself.

 

Eventually, possibly part luck and part because the mercs were better armed and armoured, the mercs won out with moderate casualties. I did my best to beat them to looting but sometimes they were quick on the draw, grabbing valuable bandages and ammo when they needed it.

 

Being the greedy stalker I was, I spent the time amassing loot and filling a single body with it, using them as a meat duffel bag to very very very very slowly (but faster than if I carried it all myself) drag the loot back to the trader.

 

I did this, was in the process of selling things and sorting it all out when I heard shooting above ground. My thoughts? "Huh. Thats rare, must be a mutant that got too close".

 

After that, I realize that the shooting was definitely heavy, and poked my head out of the trader bunker to see wtf was going on.

 

Turns out as I was toting my meat duffel bag, that the mercenary detachment happened upon a few chimeras (mutated bears), and in the process of dispatching them, ran into a small military patrol. Confusion ensued, and some of the merc folk even went as far as chasing the wounded fleeing remains of the patrol back and taking out some of the military outpost there.

 

I'm guessing the merc leader decided that was enough, and lead the remains of his squad back to the rookie village for supplies. One of the squad mates deposited a few goodies in the camp chest, and the leader sad down and started playing music on his guitar around the camp fire.

 

This is about when I arrived at the rookie camp, to which I then slowly ambled underground.

 

While I was busy, it seems the military outpost wasn't pleased with the affair, and sent a large detachment of troops to attack the rookie village. They definitely didn't just run at the village though, no. They moved in two groups, one snuck up the backside of the hill for a critical position while the other approached from the front side, using bushes to hide in. When everything was set, they all opened fire in tandem and took a few loners by surprise. The mercs, however, were much more skilled and took cover in buildings. An epic firefight ensued, which the military again lost for whatever reason, but not before inflicting massive casualties.

 

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I very literally had no say in this series of events, and I'm no expert but it seemed mostly unscripted. I never expected this, and only knew what happened after doing some investigation myself.

 

And this is the ai of the first stalker, just modded a bit. They do this sort of thing in every map too, running about and finding anomalies, artifacts, fighting eachother, shooting at mutants, drinking vodka, etc.

 

The third installment of the series vanilla (let alone modded) has even more advanced tasks that ai does, and more often then not you'll stumble across a group of stalkers or bandits that will be in the middle of doing a varied number of tasks.. from mutant elimination to artifact hunting, even to ambushes, or just to go to a safe spot. You can also ask if you could come with and help them to a degree.

 

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So, To the [request] part of this rather lengthy post.

 

 

1. Make npcs want to go outside. Form groups with leaders, loot unowned objects and bodies outside of own, split loot and raid dungeons. Gather alchemical ingredients, hunt (and actually pick up the pelts and meat instead of leaving their kill there to rot), fish, trade. Take items they find back to trade for cash and essential items. Obviously not every npcs going to want to do these things themselves, so have those ones hire other npcs to do it. Form merchant caravans to bring supplies about.

Apparently the dragonborne is the only person who ever considered actually doing things!

 

2. Bandit factions would need to move about, follow the money and traders. It struck me as odd that one day I happened across a bandit camp, and the journal of the leader mentioned that they "had just arrived a few days back" and they were "going to get what loot they could and leave", but they never did, and they never will. As long as you avoid triggering certain scripts, the player could literally sit in a chair and wait for 500 ingame years, and those bandits would still be there for the most part.

 

Guilds and the various necromantic or otherwise 'illegal' factions would probably endevour to further their research or activities while remaining within their abilities.. You probably wouldn't see a few necromancers raiding a major town when they'll probably get smashed.. unless they come explicitly prepared for it.

 

You could probably also join said groups, and help them out. For a bit of flavour. Remember that mercenary you found traveling along the road, going to check out a disturbance? Why couldn't you ever offer your help there?

 

3. On the note of journals, we need at least the 'leaders' of these groups to keep journals. Nothing fancy, really, but at least some logbook of things they did. Things like "Adinhal, that jerk didn't want to split cash, so we split his neck and took his share for ourselves.", or "We encountered a number of wolves along our way to <fort>, dispatched them but took a few losses."

 

Resource wise in the engine, I'd expect most of the processing for this to be tracked and probably based on probabilities in a simplistic fashion some how, while npcs in cells loaded by the player would function more actively script-wise.

 

4. It's been said a bunch before so I'll keep it brief, but yielding npcs need to actually yield, and heavily wounded npcs should end up in a state of "not-dead-but-bleeding-out-on-the-ground", where if the player chooses to help them, they might earn a few kudos, or a stab in the back.

 

5. Alright so, say I'm some strapping warrior, dressed in full daedric armour, toting around the scales from the two dragons that I just took out with little effort not far away, and I pass a camp of bandits. What do they do? They don't even bother accosting me for toll money or eyeing my valuables; They charge at me like crazed beasts and expect to win somehow. Alrighty.

 

It's like when you're retrieving those three books for the mage library, and you make your way to the boss chamber. The boss there complains that you busted your way in and interrupted experiments, killing their underlings. Well did they even give you a choice? Jeez.

 

Npcs shouldn't have 'enemy radar' which instantly identifies your affiliations even through walls and floors, and Npcs should have to at least visually identify you before leaping to the conclusion of "kill them", unless its the sort of npc that will kill just about anything for no reason!

 

This would give speechcraft a major buff, as you could use diplomacy and money to win your way through, the proverbial pacifist route.

Especially if you could show your faction based on clothes.

You could disguise yourself as a bandit or a trader and they'd have to inspect you closely before realizing that you're not what you seem.

So, some form of 'clothes make the man/woman', if you're wearing mage robes then they treat you like a mage. If you're wearing fancy nobles clothes then they treat you like you're a noble. etc

 

6. On that note, besides guards nobody ever tries to capture you, or imprison you, or just beat you into submission till you pass out and steal your valuables, or capture your werewolfian body for research. Everyone wants to kill kill kill, and while it makes sense in some situations, it doesn't in others.

 

7. Group tactics. Formations. Where are they? All I see are a bunch of crazy headless chickens. So much for imperial might.

 

8. Animals. They hunt, to some degree. I guess they eat to some degree too but I never really get the chance to observe them.

There's a number of improvements that could be made in this department too, but the main thing I'd like to see is them dragging kills to dens or at least chowing down.

I'll never forget the time I happened across a pack of pseudodogs near the bar. They had recently killed a lone stalker, and were in the progress of jerking the corpse around by the teeth and dragging them off to a lair for probably not nice activities.

 

 

So what do people think? Am I just being a blathering fanboy of stalker?

Edited November 17, 2011 by Midicow

[Midicow]

Self serving bamp, I'd like to know what other people think.

[HeX16]

Ok i read it all(somehow =/)

 

I have played all the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games (Call of Pripyat not so much)

But i can say the AI is decent but it isnt completely unscripted like most elder scrolls games. I would love some of those improvements but some just are too difficult for some lone developers(almost any 3rd party person) as AI is extremely hard to code. I know this from scripting multiple AI behaviours for a warcraft 3 map a while back.

 

If Bethesda(also bad at AI it seems) would release an AI update i could see most of it possible, otherwise i can see improvements is combat mainly and object avoidence(absolutely useless at the moment).

[Midicow]

Ok i read it all(somehow =/)

 

I have played all the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games (Call of Pripyat not so much)

But i can say the AI is decent but it isnt completely unscripted like most elder scrolls games. I would love some of those improvements but some just are too difficult for some lone developers(almost any 3rd party person) as AI is extremely hard to code. I know this from scripting multiple AI behaviours for a warcraft 3 map a while back.

 

If Bethesda(also bad at AI it seems) would release an AI update i could see most of it possible, otherwise i can see improvements is combat mainly and object avoidence(absolutely useless at the moment).

 

Sorry. I can get pretty wordy.

Vanillia Stalker ai is pretty boring too, but various people have figured out how to tweak it to do the sort of things I described.

 

You're probably right though, and even after the creation kit comes out, the most I could hope for is maybe some behaviour changes, which kinda sucks.

 

Maybe when the script extender matures a bit for skyrim, someone will find a way to modify ai packages on the fly and in the background, and tie them into scripted world tasks.

[HeX16]

Sorry. I can get pretty wordy.

Vanillia Stalker ai is pretty boring too, but various people have figured out how to tweak it to do the sort of things I described.

 

You're probably right though, and even after the creation kit comes out, the most I could hope for is maybe some behaviour changes, which kinda sucks.

 

Maybe when the script extender matures a bit for skyrim, someone will find a way to modify ai packages on the fly and in the background, and tie them into scripted world tasks.

 

Well i think as a start first to be fixed is the useless object avoidence, fixing the AI being unable to spot you when sneaking(pretty much) and improved combat tactics. All of which are probably pretty straight forward to improve.

 

Im hoping the new scripting which now allows for more/easier scripted events and the added features allows for a more dynamic AI. I cant wait to see the CK and fiddle around with it(fixing the self-adjusting arows -.-). I believe most of the usual NPC's behave rather naturally compared to past games.

WIth the combat/hostile NPC's left with little to no updates, dragons can also use a better targeting system so they dont fly off and attack useless creatures while you fire 10k arrows in to its back.

[Midicow]

Hah. I'm always so busy harvesting ingredients that I usually don't spot the random encounter dragons till I hear "flap flap BRWOOWAR" and get my pants singed.

 

Sneaky ass fat dragons.

 

The worst is when I'm playing a melee character and a random encounter dragon takes a pot-breath at me, then gets distracted and flys off into the distance as I furiously wave my hittystick at them.

 

 

Seeing imperials use formations against groups of enemies, and seeing melee users with shields protecting archers and casters, casters healing their friends, and yeah.. smarter ai pathing.

 

Those sort of basic things would be nice to start with.

 

Add in some npc irresponsibility and unleash them across the land in search of calipers.

Edited November 17, 2011 by Midicow

[dra6o0n]

Hah. I'm always so busy harvesting ingredients that I usually don't spot the random encounter dragons till I hear "flap flap BRWOOWAR" and get my pants singed.

 

Sneaky ass fat dragons.

 

The worst is when I'm playing a melee character and a random encounter dragon takes a pot-breath at me, then gets distracted and flys off into the distance as I furiously wave my hittystick at them.

 

 

Seeing imperials use formations against groups of enemies, and seeing melee users with shields protecting archers and casters, casters healing their friends, and yeah.. smarter ai pathing.

 

Those sort of basic things would be nice to start with.

 

Add in some npc irresponsibility and unleash them across the land in search of calipers.

Lol if your companions can start healing you when your hp is low, or healing themselves when hp is low, so they don't BOW down and let all the enemies RAPE you.