Two words; Peter Molyneux
Beth lied about radiant AI in OB, will they lie about it in
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 12:22 pm
Two words; Peter Molyneux
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Emmie Cate - Posts: 3372
- Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2007 12:01 am
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 10:04 pm
It would be great for immersion. Lets hope it is true this time.
^ This.
I agree, Radiant AI kicks serious a**, plus it helps with the "immersion" factor, so lets hope it is truth.
*crosses so many fingers that Uriel is running around crossing other peoples fingers...*
bliviongate: -
Sebrina Johnstone - Posts: 3456
- Joined: Sat Jun 24, 2006 12:58 pm
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 1:46 pm
I guess you could call them "schedules". They weren't really schedules like those in Oblivion. In those games, it was just "This mob only appears here at a certain time or walks out of a building at a certain time". It was as basic as a schedule could get really. I didn't say that they were the first game with a schedule but they sure did it far better than previous games.
Well did you play Ultima or Gothic before, thats not only "This mob only appears here at a certain time or walks out of a building at a certain time", in Majora's Mask NPC schedules even major part of game, definitely not simple traveling of mobs.
I think Ultima has better NPC schedules than Oblivion has, Oblivion will be better if vanila NPC work like in http://www.moddb.com/mods/npc-with-jobs seems in Skyrim developers greatly improve schedules for NPC.
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Rik Douglas - Posts: 3385
- Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:40 pm
» Tue Oct 19, 2010 12:27 am
Just watching the video seem to show about a billion ways that AI would have gone wrong. You would have people walking down the street setting their dogs on fire or paralyzing them. Moreover, since everyone has to eat or find items, they would be constantly picking around boxes and barrels or getting in the way at shops.
In other words, the AI would have been a menace. Image some old woman sees a barking dog and she casts fireball, but the dog stands next to a knight so that when she cast the spell it hits the knight. The knight then attacks the woman, but as we know from Oblivion NPCs are always getting in the way so the knight attacks the old woman but hits a town guard as well. In about ten minutes, the whole town is dead because the whole situation escalates into the whole town fighting.
Emergent game play through better AI would be great, but there needs to be sophisticated checks and balances to make sure the world does not go out of control. If they had use that Radiant AI there would be movies on You Tube showing how you could shove one person with a bad disposition into one knight with a bad disposition... and five game days later everyone in the game is dead. Moreover, you might not even know you cased some cascade failure until your game was ruined.
In other words, the AI would have been a menace. Image some old woman sees a barking dog and she casts fireball, but the dog stands next to a knight so that when she cast the spell it hits the knight. The knight then attacks the woman, but as we know from Oblivion NPCs are always getting in the way so the knight attacks the old woman but hits a town guard as well. In about ten minutes, the whole town is dead because the whole situation escalates into the whole town fighting.
Emergent game play through better AI would be great, but there needs to be sophisticated checks and balances to make sure the world does not go out of control. If they had use that Radiant AI there would be movies on You Tube showing how you could shove one person with a bad disposition into one knight with a bad disposition... and five game days later everyone in the game is dead. Moreover, you might not even know you cased some cascade failure until your game was ruined.
They actually had problems like that.
Questions about Radiant AI: Okay, here's the thing with Radiant AI... If you ask, "Can the NPCs do this? Or can they do that?" They answer is yes, with RAI, they can do a ton of stuff. But the player is unlikely to see some of it for a variety of reasons. For example, if the player hits an NPC with a spell and they get poisoned, would the NPC try to purchase a cure posion potion? Well, no, not likely, because he's going to be too busy trying to kill the player, and besides, the poison probably won't last that long.
And, in some cases, we the developers have had to consciously tone down the types of behavior they carry out. Again, why? Because sometimes, the AI is so goddamned smart and determined it screws up our quests! Seriously, sometimes it's gotten so weird it's like dealing with a holodeck that's gone sentient. Imagine playing the Sims, and your Sims have a penchant for murder and theft. So a lot of the time this stuff is funny, and amazing, and emergent, and it's awesome when it happens. Other times, it's so unexpected, it breaks stuff. Designers need a certain amount of control over the scenarios they create, and things can go haywire when NPCs have a mind of their own.
Funny example: In one Dark Brotherhood quest, you can meet up with this shady merchant who sells skooma. During testing, the NPC would be dead when the player got to him. Why? NPCs from the local skooma den were trying to get their fix, didn't have any skooma, and were killing the merchant to get it!
And, in some cases, we the developers have had to consciously tone down the types of behavior they carry out. Again, why? Because sometimes, the AI is so goddamned smart and determined it screws up our quests! Seriously, sometimes it's gotten so weird it's like dealing with a holodeck that's gone sentient. Imagine playing the Sims, and your Sims have a penchant for murder and theft. So a lot of the time this stuff is funny, and amazing, and emergent, and it's awesome when it happens. Other times, it's so unexpected, it breaks stuff. Designers need a certain amount of control over the scenarios they create, and things can go haywire when NPCs have a mind of their own.
Funny example: In one Dark Brotherhood quest, you can meet up with this shady merchant who sells skooma. During testing, the NPC would be dead when the player got to him. Why? NPCs from the local skooma den were trying to get their fix, didn't have any skooma, and were killing the merchant to get it!
The demo wasn't scripted. Not that the OMG THE DEVS LIED people will believe it, but oh well.
The video is the same thing we showed at E3. It's pieces & sections of existing game content and a lot of stuff made specifically for the E3 demo (for example, the entire sequence inside the bookstore -- including all of the dialogue -- was made for E3 in order to demonstrate some of the things you can do with RAI.) The player character was beefed up, and the enemies seriously nerfed (to the point of one or two hits to kill) for the demo.
As far as the bookseller sequence. No, the entire thing was not scripted -- not in the sense that it represents a designer typing in hundreds of lines of script code. In the sense that it's a sequence of events that happen in a particular order, you might consider it scripted, but the way you set up those events, and how the actors accomplish them, is not scripted.
For example, the target practice. All she's told to start practicing (basically) is "fire a certain number of arrows at this target from this location." That's it. There's a bow in the room, so she automatically goes to get it first. There's also a quiver in the room, so she goes to get that. She then equips the items, walks over to the firing point, and shoots a few arrows. The arrows miss the target not because she has been scripted to shoot at points away from the target, but because her marksman skill is low.
That's the difference. She's given a basic goal, and figures out how to accomplish it based on what she has available to her and her stats.
The sequence is a set of examples of the kinds of things you can do with RAI -- including grouping a sequence of AI packages together to produce a tight, deterministic sequence of events.
For example, the target practice. All she's told to start practicing (basically) is "fire a certain number of arrows at this target from this location." That's it. There's a bow in the room, so she automatically goes to get it first. There's also a quiver in the room, so she goes to get that. She then equips the items, walks over to the firing point, and shoots a few arrows. The arrows miss the target not because she has been scripted to shoot at points away from the target, but because her marksman skill is low.
That's the difference. She's given a basic goal, and figures out how to accomplish it based on what she has available to her and her stats.
The sequence is a set of examples of the kinds of things you can do with RAI -- including grouping a sequence of AI packages together to produce a tight, deterministic sequence of events.
Considering what was posted [and is still being posted], I'm glad there was nothing about this game until it was almost done. Any information the devs posted about Oblivion was shredded into fragments, and taken out of context at every opportunity. I believe that is why they don't post much anymore, and never post about the game the way they did Oblivion. If they don't post anything, it can't be taken out of context, or ranted about if a feature had to be taken out of or changed in the final build. Too bad for the people who would like to know what is going on as far as what they are working on, but I can see their side too.
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Zualett - Posts: 3567
- Joined: Mon Aug 20, 2007 6:36 pm
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 4:04 pm
That video... it was all lies!
copied and pasted from the last time this identical topic came up:
"Welcome to our demo" [notice it wasn't "Welcome to the final build/gone gold version of our game".]
If they had said that was definitely in the game, then it would have been a lie. They created a set area for the demo; it was for E3 and they had 20 minutes to show off the whole game. It was set up with the pc ubered with the console, starting out with high skills and 10,000 health and magic and the enemies were nerfed so they would be one shot kills. The 20 minute demo that had to show off the world, the combat system, the magic system, and the npcs that, again, had the settings changed with the console for the demo. To show off the AI, they set the schedules to run in a very short span of time. It wouldn't have been much of a demo watching the bookseller wake up, open her shop, stand around for a few in-game hours, head off to lunch, go back to work for a few more in-game hours, head off to dinner, and go to bed, to start over again the next day. Or they could have followed David Surile to work in his vineyard all day. That would have taken a lot longer than 20 minutes, and could have proved to be rather boring, as well. The AI had to be toned down because the npcs were screwing up quests. Finding a deserted town because the inn ran out of food and everyone left to find lunch, or finding a lot of dead npcs because one was supposed to do a job that needed a rake, and the other npc had it, so the first one killed him for it and the other npcs joined in wouldn't have made players happy after the first "OMG that is funny" reaction. Enough people complained when they themselves broke a quest, if the game was breaking the quests all by itself, there would have been a lot of complaints. They took out the shadows because there were problems with it. They changed the UI from the demo because they thought it could be improved. The persuasion interface was changed. Nothing said at any point said that everything in the demo was in the game.
Its also one of the reasons I'm happy they said nothing about the Skyrim until it was almost ready. The fewer things they released, the fewer things people could complain about if they had to take it out of the game at some point. Early build of the game does not equal finished build of the game that goes gold.
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Kevin S - Posts: 3457
- Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:50 pm
» Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:39 am
actually now i can see why they scrapped that ai it was to erratic take a look at how the imperial woman behaves and youl understand not 1 activity she does lasts more then a few seconds
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daniel royle - Posts: 3439
- Joined: Thu May 17, 2007 8:44 am
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 3:08 pm
Oh Beth those lying bastards...
Remember when they showed you parts of Fallout 3 that never got into the final game?
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Neither do I.
People are already complaining how it's just "changing the texture".
Excuse me for the profanity, but NO [censored]! Expecting actual snow to accumulate is beyond today's technology level. Also most other part of the Dynamic snow are the snowflakes, that now actually seem to act natural, flowing in the wind, and not phasing trough ceilings.
Remember when they showed you parts of Fallout 3 that never got into the final game?
...
Neither do I.
To actually answer the topic question
Dynamic snow is my guess so far.
Dynamic snow is my guess so far.
People are already complaining how it's just "changing the texture".
Excuse me for the profanity, but NO [censored]! Expecting actual snow to accumulate is beyond today's technology level. Also most other part of the Dynamic snow are the snowflakes, that now actually seem to act natural, flowing in the wind, and not phasing trough ceilings.
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Cayal - Posts: 3398
- Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2007 6:24 pm
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 9:31 pm
The only proof came in the way of the video and dev posts on the forum. Later those same devs (several who talked to us frequently and share often with us and none do now) informed us up front what problems they had encountered and told us they feared they would have to scale the AI back for the game to work properly. They then told us they did indeed have to scale the AI way back for a stable game. They were very disappointed about it but were up front and honest about the changes. The game was not released until after them telling us of the scaling back of the AI. Same with shadows, they were in and they had problems. They shared that with us as well both when they were implementing them in the game and when they found it was using much to much memory and needed to be scaled back.
Fans that had a need to find fault raged about the video being a "lie" but conveniently did not let out one peep about them being up front and honest when they encountered problems and had to scale it back. Interesting isn't it?
How do I know this? I was here. I read every word a developer would write and I read their posts both when it was part of the game and when it had to be removed. But some people act as if those posts later and before release stating the problems they encountered and why they had to remove some of what they had tried to provide us in the game were never made.
And the result of all this is that we no longer have much input from the devs during develop anymore and they tell us nothing until it's set in stone. Thus we don't get to share in the development process anymore. And quite frankly that really saddens me because it was fun to know what they were working on and what they were trying to do. We have fans who like to bash Bethesda by using partial truths and word twisting to thank for that. And as a fan, I'm not thankful for it. I miss the "sharing during development". I miss having a couple of years to watch development and hear about the game rather than the less than one year notice.
But I so understand after seeing how hostile some so called "fans" can be.
And there was enough of the AI left in Oblivion to see what trouble it might have caused. Stealing bread and a death sentence was a left over tale tell taste of it.
Fans that had a need to find fault raged about the video being a "lie" but conveniently did not let out one peep about them being up front and honest when they encountered problems and had to scale it back. Interesting isn't it?
How do I know this? I was here. I read every word a developer would write and I read their posts both when it was part of the game and when it had to be removed. But some people act as if those posts later and before release stating the problems they encountered and why they had to remove some of what they had tried to provide us in the game were never made.
And the result of all this is that we no longer have much input from the devs during develop anymore and they tell us nothing until it's set in stone. Thus we don't get to share in the development process anymore. And quite frankly that really saddens me because it was fun to know what they were working on and what they were trying to do. We have fans who like to bash Bethesda by using partial truths and word twisting to thank for that. And as a fan, I'm not thankful for it. I miss the "sharing during development". I miss having a couple of years to watch development and hear about the game rather than the less than one year notice.
But I so understand after seeing how hostile some so called "fans" can be.
And there was enough of the AI left in Oblivion to see what trouble it might have caused. Stealing bread and a death sentence was a left over tale tell taste of it.
Isn't that exactly what I said? :tongue:
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Marcin Tomkow - Posts: 3399
- Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 12:31 pm
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 11:26 pm
It seems like a lot of the RAI's problems had to do with the fact that NPC's were a little too willing to mete out death (or die trying). Perhaps the toning down could have come in the form of slightly more refined choices (in addition to killing, perhaps)
I can understand taking it out of Oblivion, since it would have required a lot of rework - and people would have been angry if an AI glitch ruined their game. However, most of the problems described could be solved with better scripting, and AI tweaks. Hopefully, the system will be expanded in Skyrim - as it sounds like the AI is tremendously powerful, and could really make for some powerful role playing experiences.
That, and I would find the emergent behavior to be quite amazing, so long as it didn't break anything too badly.
I can understand taking it out of Oblivion, since it would have required a lot of rework - and people would have been angry if an AI glitch ruined their game. However, most of the problems described could be solved with better scripting, and AI tweaks. Hopefully, the system will be expanded in Skyrim - as it sounds like the AI is tremendously powerful, and could really make for some powerful role playing experiences.
That, and I would find the emergent behavior to be quite amazing, so long as it didn't break anything too badly.
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cassy - Posts: 3368
- Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 12:57 am
» Tue Oct 19, 2010 12:35 am
Maybe they lied about spears being out. D: !
I would be more concerned about them leaving nudity in the game, and then branding all the modders 'hackers' for simply activating the file. I don't think I've ever forgiven them of that..?
I would be more concerned about them leaving nudity in the game, and then branding all the modders 'hackers' for simply activating the file. I don't think I've ever forgiven them of that..?
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Motionsharp - Posts: 3437
- Joined: Sun Aug 06, 2006 1:33 am
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:05 pm
Maybe they lied about spears being out. D: !
I would be more concerned about them leaving nudity in the game, and then branding all the modders 'hackers' for simply activating the file. I don't think I've ever forgiven them of that..?
I would be more concerned about them leaving nudity in the game, and then branding all the modders 'hackers' for simply activating the file. I don't think I've ever forgiven them of that..?
I wouldn't be too concerned about that. Modders have so far not only introduced nudity, but in such incredible detail that it you wouldn't want your PC to parade around naked in public. It would be a waste of developers time to do it themselves, since they would have to contend with a possible AO rating.
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Alex [AK] - Posts: 3436
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2007 10:01 pm
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 1:49 pm
"Immersion blah. Blah blah immersion blah immersion blah blah immersion immersion immersion blah."
Everybody says it, but http://www.thefreedictionary.com/immersion before some of you say it in every godamn post, because it seems a lot of people get in the habit of using the word in place of "good". Then maybe even take a few http://thesaurus.com/browse/immersion for a spin.
[/rant]
Yes and no. They haven't exactly been lying, but they will end up removing a lot of it for a quicker solution like they did for Oblivion, but ah well. It will still be nice enough
Everybody says it, but http://www.thefreedictionary.com/immersion before some of you say it in every godamn post, because it seems a lot of people get in the habit of using the word in place of "good". Then maybe even take a few http://thesaurus.com/browse/immersion for a spin.
[/rant]
Yes and no. They haven't exactly been lying, but they will end up removing a lot of it for a quicker solution like they did for Oblivion, but ah well. It will still be nice enough
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clelia vega - Posts: 3433
- Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2007 6:04 pm
» Mon Oct 18, 2010 5:40 pm
I hope they don'y stuff up again!
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Petr Jordy Zugar - Posts: 3497
- Joined: Tue Jul 03, 2007 10:10 pm