Obviously scripted and overdone.

NPCs don't say it when they are 'just about to lock up the store' and say nothing about the time of day except 'good morning/day/evening'.
Most NPCs barely have a personality besides their initial greeting and city topic, and they don't invite you upstairs.
I don't think NPCs in the normal game interact with pets at all.
Fortify marksman potions aren′t in the game! And I don′t think the skill affects accuracy.
NPCs can't and won't do that many actions in one hour. It was obviously scripted step for step.

A quick look in the construction set shows that the AI is pretty simple, and is nothing like what was mentioned. 24/7 schedules? They have a few actions in the week, most of the times they stare at the wall or initiate generic conversations with other NPCs doing nothing. General goals? Oh yes. Is an NPC is supposed to sit down and eat at a tavern? Then on his own he can decide which chair he'll sit in. Wow!

I also don't buy that the AI was incredibly good before but that they had to dumb it down a whole lot because NPCs were killing each other.

It's better than Morrowind's obviously, but nothing like what it claimed to be.

the AI is fine. it could use some tweaks here and there, some buffing, some cleaning, but on the whole it's as good as any other system, and better than quite a few.

more animations would be nice. different variations of eating and drinking and reading and writing, maybe. more jobs would be neat. sweeping, raking, painting, hunting, all that stuff is neat, but NPCs need more - cutting down trees, building things, stuff like that. even if they don't do anything, even if it's just for show. they need more things to do between random spells of standing around and looking at each other, like leaning against walls or smoking or something (oh, wait a minute). they need to piece conversations together more randomly, with more branches in topic so things stay interesting.

none of that has to do with the AI itself, though. really, all of that could be done RIGHT NOW (if not in Oblivion then certainly in Fallout) if the resources were available.

the shop closes at 6. it's 5:30.
is the player still in the shop?
- "hey, i'm closing up soon. is there anything i can help you with?"

did the player just come in, and does the shopkeeper like them?
- "hey, i was just about to close up! since my disposition to you is over 75 i GUESS i could keep it open a bit longer if there's anything you need."

did the player just come in, and is the shopkeeper neutral towards them?
- "hey, i'm closing the shop in a bit. come back tomorrow!"

A few?!?

It's missing at least these four huge chunks of what a proper AI should have:

* A planning and goal-solving engine ("My goal is to become the king of Colovia, now how do I achieve that?", or in a smaller scale "Today I need to earn my food, let's see what work is available to me ...").
* Senses. Yes, NPCs notice corpses and other NPCs, and they switch to combat AI when they get hit. But that's it - they don't notice whose corpse it is, nor do they care if the PC is dancing naked in front of them.
* Memory.
* Reasoning engine. Feeding back and from the memory, it would allow for stuff like "I know Blah is Blubb's wife, and Blubb is living in Mannimarco Street 13, so most likely Blah is living in Mannimarco Street 13 too."

Most NPC AI isn't even processed in details when you're not in the same area. I think it keeps track of the location where they are supposed to be, but nothing more. I don't think we'll see something like that any time soon.

It's more like everyone is 'acting' when the player is watching, and then they all take a break when he isn't.


At the very least enemies should notice it if their friend just got killed by an assassin with a bow in front of them. Oblivion NPCs are Oblivious.

At least Morrowind's actors had special greeting lines for naked players.

Put that away!
You are a fool to walk around like that!
I am not amused.
I like what I see.
Oh, you're naked. Spare me!
Why does it have no clothes?

I really didn't like the Radiant AI. It seems totally pointless to me.

I wish you had an opportunity to record that scene! :clap:

I thought the radiant AI in Oblivion was fairly well done. Sure, they had to tone it down from what they originally intended, but even so it was much better than static NPC's who never sleep, close shop, talk to each other, ( even if all they have to say is about mudcrabs ) etc. It's only logical that they would improve upon it for Tes V. But if it stayed the same I would still be fine with it.

The fact that they had to tone it down for Oblivion gives me high hope for TES:V.

Since they ALREADY have better technology for RAI, they could simply improve on the implementation of it into the game, not on the AI itself. Maybe TES:V will feature the same RAI that was in Oblivion, just not "toned down." Use it to its full extent, with no limitations.

I'm only really into playing RPGs and some strategy/city building type games, and when I first played Oblivion I was completely blown away by the fact that NPCs did stuff of their own accord. I didn't really follow any pre-release announcements, so I suppose I missed hype that might have raised my expectations. But when you consider that pretty much all of the games I played prior to that just had NPCs standing in one spot in perpetuity, the first time I saw an NPC sneak and steal some bread then get into a fight with the innkeeper, with absolutely no intervention on my part, I pretty much fell off my chair laughing.

The AI may have had some flaws (especially with regard to combat), but it was way better and more natural than any RPG I'd played prior to that, so I wouldn't say it failed. I'm hoping that TES V gets it completely right and irons out the wrinkles.

uhh, are you kidding? You guys are really confused.. There was very little radiant AI. Almost everything was scripted (X chance that the person will follow this script when he wakes up, Y chance he will follow that script etc). They go to the same places, do the same things (more or less) and act the same way every single day.

there is no diversity.. Sure, you may influence them by for example replacing the food they are supposed to eat with a poisoned apple, but that's how far it can go.

Yes it’s scripted, however much of it is just giving the NPC orders like eat and he search for food, socialise and he search out other in the area and talk about mudcrabs.
Not very advanced but it give the illusion that it’s normal activity.

The npc in group fights is pure AI, and often pretty annoying but better than if they ignored the fight and walked through a swordfight.

:hehe:


Yes, for Oblivion, they did bite more than they could chew: RAI, Havok, NPC schedules, big quest lines, better graphics, textures and models, and my pet gripe, fully voice acted dialogs, which greatly handicaps detailed development of AI and quest lines.

As for better AI, and protecting quest lines from misbehaving NPCs.

One solution can be replaceable NPC roles in quests, so if an NPC was killed or otherwise unavailable, (cruising around the world, or in a prison cell), the intelligent event/quest managers, could fill their role with another available NPCs.

For this option, we should revert to Morrowind style dialogs, i.e. without voices or adapt computer generated voices, so that the new NPCs could say the lines that the old NPC would have said.

Another safe guard, would be changing the AI, so when somebody tries to steal an item and get caught red handed, the owner should call in the guards and they should arrest the thief, instead of killing him, and the arresting action should be automated, so if they could catch up with the thief character, the arresting action/animation should happen without any interruption, and the wannabe thief should be sent to prison with a guard.

Another method to help NPC AI is to place hidden local guide objects in specific places and script them to help NPCs in local situations.

These guide objects know about each other and make a guidance network around the world, so for instance some of them help NPCs recover their health points, so when an NPC needs to recover it's health point, it looks for the nearest guide object, and tries to reach it.

The local guide object might not be scripted to help NPCs with health recovery, so it searches the network for another guide object that is flagges as such, and sends the NPC to the nearest one.

The nearest Health recovery guide object, can check the NPC for his health condition and other characteristics, and depending on the conditions order the NPC to take an action that results in his health recovery, for instance, enter the chapel, and kneel before the altar and pray, and so on...

Or sends him to the local healer to get help and so on...

There can be other specialized guide object to help NPC AI in different situations, and some guides can be scripted for more than one purpose, like health recovery, taking refuge/cover, navigation, and so on...

As for navigation, there can be situations that mere path finding would not solve a navigation problem, so for instance an NPC could climb a ladder, and jump to take a hanging rope to swing to the other side of a gap, and jump to catch the other ledge, and slide down over the passing coach and so on...

this all can be scripted over some local navigation guide objects, that with the help of each other guide any NPC who wants to pass the gap of a specific place, but those guide objects could see if the NPC has good acrobatics, so for other NPCs, they could solve the problem in another way.

Conditions like having two functional hands, adequate intelligence, skilled in speechcraft, specific races and so on can be of importance in those guidance scripts.

OK, I wanted to go on, but this was unprepared blurting of some ideas, on the fly, so I have to integrate those ideas into a whole system and offer them in a better way.

I think the concept of having a general AI rule that deals with NPC having needs is awesome, the tricky part is making them acquire what they need realistically. The rAI in OB wasn't bad, it was just very simple, in contrast of what was promised, but one could still see that the potential was still there.

In essence, in OB you could see that what was delivered wasn't what was promised, but also that in what was delivered, was the potential for that which was promised.

If the AI can be as good as STALKER then I am happy.
I am still impressed by some things that happens in The Zone from time to time. The other day I was clearing a building full of bandits, I returned the next day and saw some Stalkers setting camp there, they were disposing the bodies of the bandits to a far location and some were guarding the entrances, windows, etc. While 3 of them were by the campfire, one was playing the guitar while 2 were chatting.
I mean, if you can get TESV to be like that, it will be one of the most immersive games ever just like STALKER.

I could think of a new AI system, based on different sliders for moods etc. Kinda like The Sims, when a NPC hunger slider is low he searchs for food, based on it's skills he will try different things, I believe it would be easy to program. Bethesda during TESIV development mentioned something like that, if an NPC has good marksman skill he would hunt with his bow out in the wilderness, if they are good with pick-pocketing they would pick-pocket food.
Balancing these attributes, skills and implementing it on a non-scripted AI system would be a nice thing to do. Someone mentioned that the AI in Oblivion was dumbed down 'cus NPCs ended up attacking the others and they all died after some time. If you manage levels of agression and different ways of response to an NPC action this wouldn't happen. For instance a guard could see a pick-pocketer and instead of just attacking, he would warn him, in the same time the pick-pocketer NPC would "learn" from that experience in different random ways, he could try to be more sneaky, or do it less often, or just don't do it at all and find other means, which would lead him to learn another skill and become someone else.

A branching AI system with these sliders, levels and all the attributes and skills implemented into making it work would really be the best AI system ever!
You could script the AI, but instead of being 100% scripted, make the scripts happen randomly, each one is chosen differently each time the NPC does an action.

Get it?

>Your face: :wacko:

I don't really think it's fair to say that the radiant AI in Oblivion failed. It's certainly outdated now, but it was pretty impressive for its time. It never was perfect or anything, but it overall was pretty well done and we can expect to see improvements in TES V. No matter how good they make it, people will eventually be able look at it and see all of its flaws. It'll never be perfect.

certainly couldve been better. if youve used the PiiiP (?) mod in OB you get a glimpse of how it couldve been imporoved. i made a mod for my own use that made NPC scheds a bit more unpredictable and people's activities and how long they would do them depended on their stats (physical characters would tend to train, spar, adventure, etc, mental ones would read, practice spells, etc), social status, occupation, etc. i never did finish it and it could caused ctds, but i would still like to see something like it in tesv

I was not impressed at the time.

Well, actually the "Radiant AI" in Oblivion was just scripted routines, they advertised it as being the only game to have this but actually Gothic 1 (released in 2001) was the first game ever to have this immersive feature.
So no, it wasn't impressive at all for 2006.

Personally I liked the AI in Oblivion. It was a huge step up from Morrowind and I enjoyed the ocasional random encounter that I found (2 legion archers fighting to the death outside Burma, guards chasing CitySwimmer around until they killed her in the chapel) These Kinds of things gave me hope for the future of the AI system.
A Few things that could improve the NPC's interaction would be good, Most have been said, Less insane guards that will kill you for taking a spoon would be good but it was a huge improvement over Morrowind and I know Beth will improve it even more in TESV

Those imperial archers were scripted, and mods like MMM made those random fights a bit better, so I too have hope for the future AI.

I do not say starting scripted fight is a bad thing, but I say, they should add random element in those scripted events, so that they do not seem repeated.

Like choosing the sides of a fight randomly in an area or faction or inside a bar, and so on... and most of those fight should be with non-lethal weapons and end in merely injured/unconscious opponents.

Yes that would be great. having many random events that happen would add life to the world.
I would love to see a NPC walking through a bar and gets knocked into a table. that causes a drink to be spilt leading to a fight beginning between the 2 NPC's. the player has the option to sit back and watch or join one side to gain some standing with that side (naturally the other person would hate you)
Just an example but would make it fun to just watch crouds and see what could happen

Aye, IIRC this was in one fo the Baldur's Gates and was fun. But I think there's just too many blades all flying around and wild combat to keep everyone from killing everyone else. If there was a way to keep the NPC's from killing anyone who touched them, then great.

Gromnir says: HA! Good Fun!

The radiant AI was definitely flawed, but I've certainly seen worse than oblivion's... That said an improvement would be welcome... Oblivion's seemed a bit stale, too.