i dont use followers becouse of AI

[CrazyShadowDami]

skyrim, made in 2011: they are heavily bloking in thight places, they allways go on traps, they cant find their way around a corridor, somethimes they simply run around like mindless flies, they cant jump, they cant jump, they wont make a 1 inch fall to continue with you, somethimes they dont even follow you through cells....

 

 

F.E.A.R., made in 2005: heavily advanced pathfinding system, they CAN find a way around a corridor, the will jump over stuff, they will use advantage points, like high grounds or defending tight places that are hard to go through, they wont mindlessly charge at you, they will take advantage of cover, they communicate and make plans, THEY FLANK, they make guys with shotguns go close to you, guys with assault rifles at normal distance, guys with snipers at large distance, they split up into one group laying suppresing fire, and the other one going charging at you and flank you, they send "hevies" to charge at you and distract you, they will spot you if you are crouching right next to them, they can recognize from what direction are the gunshots coming from (the human ear can do the same thing, with a mistake of 3 deggres)...

 

so, i guess this is 6 years of AI advancement?

Edited May 19, 2012 by CrazyShadowDami

[GrindedStone]

You are over thinking it. You shouldn't pay attention to them. If they run off and/or get killed... So what? The AI you speak of is actually highly configurable. You are already highly motivated. You are looking at less than a months work to go from being a complete idiot to the foremost advanced specialist in AI on this game. The research is basicly reading a few pages of information then applying that to the game in a mod for testing. Practical application of knowlege. Whatever game you want to compare these gamebyro engine games too, none of them will be as highly moddable. Yet you have done nothing about this. *Humph*

 

The AI in this game are packages. These have flags an settings along with more advance ways of control typicaly used for scenes an quests. These scan from the top of the list to the bottom looking for a true or result = 1. Also there are packages built into the engine. Combat, flee, sleep, eat, sit, and pretend they are doing something. The interesting part here for your issue is the follower package which can be set to do a number of things. Also much more fun is the combat package. Typically you have default combat used which is why it's so lame. However you can set a combat style to change it to something very interesting.

[McclaudEagle]

The AI was never Bethesda's strong suit, and probably never will. The AI on Skyrim is just as bad as it was all the way back in Oblivion, and there was Fallout 3 in between, which had dire AI. Unfortunately, Bethesda doesn't seem to like keeping with the 'now' when it comes to the way their games are made, such as:

 

• LOD - Even in 2011, Bethesda can't make their games load more cells smoothly and without too much performance loss like many other games can. The LOD itself is awful as, rather than loading in smoothly, a large chunk will instead suddenly change. The actual detail to the LOD meshes/textures is also pathetic when you compare it to many other modern games which have more detailed LOD.
   
  
• HDR - Bethesda might as well not bother with this, because it's almost like they don't use it at all. With proper use of HDR, the sky and landscape is supposed to be bright and vibrant, not dull and dark like Bethesda make it. If you want to see a perfect example of HDR done right, look at Red Dead Redemption.
   
  
• AI - As you pretty much summed it up, the AI is atrocious. It's especially bad on Fallout 3 because the game primarily uses guns. You will have melee users running right at you whilst you're hitting them with bullets. You'll see other gunners walking towards you whilst firing instead of using cover/firing. Most of the AI will even blow up their allies just to kill you. Another thing that really bothers me is how short-sighted everyone is on Fallout 3. You can be jumping up and down 50m away, and they won't notice you. Also, even if you shoot them, they will not attack you (even with a gun) until they're about 40m away from you.
  

All in all, Bethesda does both a terrible and good job on their games. I love their games, the stories, worldspaces, etc...but I hate the things I listed above.

[scot]

My followers never triggered a trap, I thought their AI avoided traps :S and I saw my follower fall from a small edge to follow me but this doesn´t allways happens sometimes they indeed go around to get to me even if they have to go around an entire mountain -.- not just companions I agree that skyrim´s AI is nothing special, before the game came out bethesda said oh the new AI is amazing and all that, and to me is just the same as oblivion and fallout wich doesn´t stop me from enjoying those games x) Edited May 19, 2012 by scot

[GrindedStone]

Learn to read... Create your own AI in less than a month.

[Stemin]

skyrim, made in 2011: they are heavily bloking in thight places, they allways go on traps, they cant find their way around a corridor, somethimes they simply run around like mindless flies, they cant jump, they cant jump, they wont make a 1 inch fall to continue with you, somethimes they dont even follow you through cells....

 

 

F.E.A.R., made in 2005: heavily advanced pathfinding system, they CAN find a way around a corridor, the will jump over stuff, they will use advantage points, like high grounds or defending tight places that are hard to go through, they wont mindlessly charge at you, they will take advantage of cover, they communicate and make plans, THEY FLANK, they make guys with shotguns go close to you, guys with assault rifles at normal distance, guys with snipers at large distance, they split up into one group laying suppresing fire, and the other one going charging at you and flank you, they send "hevies" to charge at you and distract you, they will spot you if you are crouching right next to them, they can recognize from what direction are the gunshots coming from (the human ear can do the same thing, with a mistake of 3 deggres)...

 

so, i guess this is 6 years of AI advancement?

 

What makes you think that a single company's achievements marks the benchmark for the entire industry?

 

F.E.A.R. was a first person shooter. While I've never played it, I presume it was linear like all FPS action games?

 

TES is an open world type of game where the AI pathing you speak of is just a small portion of the game. That means they're clearly not going to spend as much time on it as the developers that wrote F.E.A.R.

 

You guys have to stop demanding perfection on everything in this game if you expect them to continue to make these large open world games. You can either spend hundreds of hours perfecting one little thing, or you can make it work and add a bunch of other features to try out. That's how it works. Software is the same as any other industry. Their goal is to make money and they have deadlines.

 

AI is a very small portion of this game and it functions. Maybe it's not the best out there, but it mostly works. Why would Bethesda spend tons of hours perfecting a feature that some of us don't even use?

 

I personally can't stand followers. They rob you of experience points for your own character and potentially make the game easier.

[VileTouch]

there is a mod that makes the followers ai a bit less dumb and generally more interesting in combat

you might want to try it out: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=16349

[Perraine]

Let's not try and polish a turd here ... You can sprout all you like about how "open" the game is, but ultimately that doesn't excuse the lax nature of development. The simple truth is that to create a better game requires:

 

Storage Capacity -> For having multiple story arcs, multiple scenes, multiple scripts, multiple resources, multiple options, based on current in game events.

Memory -> To keep track of current in game events and pre-cache possible future events based on current in game events.

Processing Power -> To execute and decide the viability of multiple scripts and packages and to compress and decompress multiple resources based on current in game events.

 

PC's now have these things in more than adequate quantities, Gaming Consoles do not! = Skyrim was developed and (un)optimized to function within the limited capabilities of Consoles

[Stemin]

Let's not try and polish a turd here ... You can sprout all you like about how "open" the game is, but ultimately that doesn't excuse the lax nature of development. The simple truth is that to create a better game requires:

 

Storage Capacity -> For having multiple story arcs, multiple scenes, multiple scripts, multiple resources, multiple options, based on current in game events.

Memory -> To keep track of current in game events and pre-cache possible future events based on current in game events.

Processing Power -> To execute and decide the viability of multiple scripts and packages and to compress and decompress multiple resources based on current in game events.

 

PC's now have these things in more than adequate quantities, Gaming Consoles do not! = Skyrim was developed and (un)optimized to function within the limited capabilities of Consoles

 

All of that is irrelevant. There's still development hours to account for. The number one cost to any company is usually man hours. That's simple economics.

 

You create a list of goals and you go down the list. If you have time to go back and polish something you do.

[GrindedStone]

We are lucky games like this get developed at all.