We all know that the radiant AI concept in Oblivion failed... BUT, what do you think about it?

Some questions from me:

A. Why exactly did it fail? And can someone give me some youtube links where they market their radiant AI
B. Do you think bethseda will try again with a radiant AI in TES:V? Would it be worth it?

It didn't fail. In oblivion they used RAI. It was toned down severely because at some point the npcs started murdering each other. It likely will be improved for TES5. I brought it up in the speculation thread.

They also stole/bought up shop stock. It was just a headache for players really. I don't think they had time to keep the RAI at the level it was and code in parameters that would make NPCs act more reasonably, so their only option was to tone it down.

Shame really.

Why do people think it's just a matter of laziness that game companies like Bethesda have trouble making intelligent NPCs? AI isn't like graphics, science hasn't scratched the surface on what makes intelligent creatures behave as they do, how the hell can they simulate it yet?

If Bethesda came up with the AI that people seem to want, it'd be worth more to business than gaming.

I can picture the old RAI looking like something the mad God would greatly enjoy. "I'm a thief and I'm hungry so I'm going to grab that loaf of bread right there.." Shopkeeper, "He stole my loaf of bred -chases and kills" Towns people "HE COMITTED MURDER KILL HIM" "You accidentally hit me" "You accidentally hit me too die!" -player walks in to find a bunch of corpses strewn about with a bunch of quest updates signaling failure because such and such npc died.- Sheogorath in the meantime is found giggling in glee over the event from his throne in the Shivering Isles.

In this context, game AI and research/applications AI are two very different things. We're not asking NPCs to think dynamically, we are simply asking them to be more reactive and maybe even spontaneous, which is mostly a matter of setting parameters and comparing values. For Bethesda to have perfected or at least tweaked their Radiant AI to near-preview levels, all it would have taken is more development time. Instead of working on algorithms to generate realistic looking land or to optimize graphics performance, they could have conceivably spent more resources 'buffing' their AI. They simply chose not to, and that's where many people are critical of Bethesda.

For today's RPG standards, Oblivion's AI still provides much to observe and appreciate, but it lacks the pure levels of awesome that were promised to us during development, and that is why many people who are enthusiastic about game AI, including myself, are disappointed.

Yup, I can't stand playing games like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, The Witcher and a bunch of other RPGs that has NPCs that stand in the same place 24/7. Oblivion really did it well when it comes to AI for it's time and RPG capabilities.

They're (sort of) bringing it back! Todd Howard, Bethesda's... lead producer I guess you'd call him, has stated before in an interview that he always wants a new Elderscrolls game to have at least one really cool new and unique feature in it. Something that definitively sets it apart from all the previous games. At the end of another, recent interview he stated [We've got characters moving realistically, the next challenge will be getting them to act real.]

Thus, it's possible that they're going to go back to something like their ambitions for "Radiant AI" and see what they can do now that they know more. Combined with generally improved open world Ai in game like GTA4, Fable 2, and etc. I'd think they'd have a better chance of succeeding this time.

Which interview was that?

Yes, please.

Ooooh how wonderful will be a TES game with great animations and even more awesome AI.

I never have believed that it is laziness that keeps developers from creating intelligent NPCs, but some developers have been able to create NPCs that SIMULATE true intelligence better than Oblivion does. Of course, the games I've played which I'd honestly say have good AI were not sandbox games, and thus there were fewer variables the AI had to account for, not to mention that in a linear game, with scripting you can often make NPCs SEEM pretty intelligent by giving them scripts that tell them to go here or do this. In games, you really don't need NPCs to actually be able to think for themselves and have real emotions. It's enough if you can create a decently convincing simulation.

But I wouldn't say Radiant AI failed, I mean, it's already a big step up from Morrowind's AI, where NPCs would simply stand around in place and do nothing, if you were lucky, they might even WALK AROUND! Amazing! Yes... Radiant AI may not have been the huge breakthrough that would forever revolutionize AI in video games some hoped it would be, but it certainly seems like a step forward compared to what Morrowind had. The main reason some people were dissappointed with Radiant AI, I think, is that people expected more from it. And this was partially due to hype and partially because, as I understand it, Bethesda actually DID tone it down somewhat to keep it from messing up the game. But now, Bethesda has had some experience with this sort of AI, so I hope this means they can do better in future games.

Though honestly, I could live with NPC schedules as they were in Oblivion, and I really don't need my NPCs killing each other while I'm not around, that could just end up messing up my game due to things outside of my control. Now if I go killing random people and break quests because of it, I'm fine with that, because I brought it upon myself, but I don't want the NPCs doing that for me. What really bothered me about Oblivion's AI though was that the AI still didn't seem to really have been improved that much in regards to basic gameplay, I'm talking about things like the combat AI, the path finding, how NPCs react to players using stealth, and such, the sort of things you're bound to notice, I hope Bethesda tries to improve these things in future games. People often complain about how easy Bethesda's games can be, and maybe they'd be a little more challenging if your behaved a little more intelligently.

Yes, for npc everyday life it works well enough, they have schedules, stop and talk, sleep and eats. Only real missing feature is that the guards take criminal npc to jail, same way as happened to the female informer in the thief guild quest, guard walks to jail and she follows. prisoner is release on cell reset.

Would prefer a better combat AI, for npc you would expect shopkeepers to run away from a fight if hurt, guards and bandits would be braver, however if a npc heals himself he might rejoin the fight.
Combat AI for enemies and guards, better path finding, redraw if unable to hurt a ranged attacker efficiently. Better group behaviour, far better to stand together if fighting a strong enemy.

how about this: They can't kill each other, they can just beat each other down. after a person gets beaten down, his bounty is released?

Nice idea. Instead of attacking each other they could just start hitting each other, fighting untill the guards arrest them both. It would be amazing though to just go to an inn when suddenly a riot breaks out among drunks (except if it became cliche and happened too often).

Yes, I hated finding people dead or missing later in the game. I lost the ams dealer in Bravil, City Swimmer and some Khajiit female [name?] in that cave by the falls south of Pell's Gate and that's just off the top of my head.


I don't think NPCs should have a life off screen. Having a basic routine is a good idea, but that script doesn't actually need to run if you're elsewhere in the game.

There were far too many instances where one guard would accidentally hit another, and they'd fight to the death while ignoring the original attacker.

I just had to laugh at one mounted guard along the road past Kvatch whose horse got killed, and he proceeded to sit sideways on the dead horse for the next three days. Obviously, with the horse being dead, he never made it to the end of his patrol route, but he kept trying.

The idea behind Radiant AI was good, it just wasn't developed and polished enough in time to be fully effective in OB. Actually, the same can be said about several other aspects of the game: Havok physics were also a huge potential step forward, but poorly implemented in a number of respects. I would tend to suspect that making one or two major advances between games is about all that can be expected of a developer, otherwise you've got too many things being redesigned at once with no guarantee that they'll work as intended. Problems with any one of those aspects can impact other features and scripted funtions as well as quest design, which then need to be scrapped and redesigned around the reduced capabilities. If the problems are apparent early enough, you can fall back on existing technologies and still finish the game properly without the shiny new features, but if it happens later (as apparently was the case with OB), there isn't enough time to either fully solve the problem or to properly redesign everything which relies on it. You get something that sort-of works, and sort-of doesn't, so it's not "better" than the previous game, just "different".

Yeah, I feel Oblivion's Ai was a failure, considering what it was supposed to be. It was a nice improvement on Morrowind, though, but it could have been a lot better. Personally, I'm hoping for a seperate CD for AI. It would make the game a whole new experience. Wishing thinking, perhaps. But where's the fun in pessimism?

Ultima 7 didn't even have AI, but the NPC's had just as convincing schedules. Radiant AI was a flop because it didn't effectively change what has already been done since 1992. If you want to impress me with AI it better actually mean I don't have to remove every single scrap of food from the Dark Brotherhood guild before my target finally eats the damn poison apple.

If it was an MMO, maybe we could have the NPC AI outsourced to India. For a few dollars a day each, we could have thousands of indians moving NPCs around in shifts.

Edit: And my original point about AI is that it's always going to be scripted behaviour, i got the impression that people wanted NPCs to use their own initiative instead, which might be centuries away.

Perhaps the target did not like apples More seriously, quite possible food in inventory has lower priority than food on tables, as you would expect people to eat it but fall back to inventory if you have taken everything.

Stranger that Shameer who work on a vineyard with lots of graqes and has lots of food in his house steals food from the stable workers.
However I know beggars takes food from containers in the marked district and that was a nice touch. But I agree most behaviour would work just as well with simple scripts on top of a modified combat AI.

For stupid combat behaviour, npc should be more tolerant to friendly fire in combat, but not tolerate a second hits then they are just walking around, game already have a way to detect combat as npc joins. More important being more tolerant to friendly fire from other npc.
And as I said, non combat NPC should be more cowardly; run away if hurt and not even join or only do ranged attack if the enemy is much stronger like guards or high level monsters.

Personally, I think they did well with the AI, considering everything they had on their plate for this installment (too much, if you ask me). I enjoyed the fact that NPCs walked around from place to place, ate meals, had conversations, and would even get into fights from time to time. Even more fun was the fact that the system was manipulable: I could cause things like fights and stuff to happen by manipulating the conditions. Probably the most hilarious thing I ever saw was the time I managed to kill two Dark Brotherhood members with one poison apple. It upped the verisimilitude sufficiently from prior games and had enough unexpected events that I can consider it a success, all things considered. I expect them to improve it considerably for TESV. Seriously, were there any other sandbox games produced before or within a year of Oblivion that did it better?

I think the next step is to allow these dynamic elements to break the game as PART of the game. They could've done it in Oblivion if they had put the Daedric invasion on a schedule rather than making it player driven. They could have just started throwing Daedra into the mix, with a sparse, weak group to start... a group the guards could have handled as a matter of course. As time went by, they could have upped the quantity and strength of daedra entering the world, gradually threating the very game balance with the possibility that the player will show up in town to find important NPCs killed in a daedra attack. Various actions the player could take could have the effect of strengthening the townies against daedra attack, postponing the inevitable collapse of the game's systems. In short, rather than just going through a script as is the usual practice, the player would actually be set the task of saving the world... the game world, that is.

Another possibility is that TESV could take advantage of the political chaos created by the events in TESIV, by having factional ambitions gradually reduce the attitudes of NPCs toward one another to the point that, if the player takes too long dealing with the problem, there is literally game-breaking levels of blood in the streets.

Of course, to avoid annoying players who either don't want time to pass in this manner at all on the one hand, and those who think the game is moving to slow on the other, the game could have difficulty levels ranging from "Let me play it my own way (Traditional ES style)" to "Impossibly fast".

If they really want to do something revolutionary, they could throw RTS elements into the game allowing the player to literally command armies, as was originally speculated would be possible by the time Oblivion came out (way back in the days of Daggerfall when the devs were less closemouthed about what they wanted to accomplish). Double Fine did an AWESOME job melding RPG (actually adventure game, but it was very Oblivion-like) elements with RTS elements in Brutal Legend, so we know it's technically feasible.

The AI system -could- be really good, if they just improved on a few things. For example, it would be awsome if NPCs could recognise who they're talking to, and change the way that they talk accordingly. I would love to see NPCs aknowledge the fact that the people they're talking to have names, the world would feel a lot more natural if NPCs would say "Greetings, City-swimmer", rather than "Greetings, Argonian". I'd also be impressed if Beth could work out a way to add 3 or even 4 way conversations between NPCs, and have it so that they could move, eat, sit, read and do various other activities while conversing whith each other.

Exactly! I look forward to seeing where they go with it in TES V.

I liked Oblivion's RAI. It was one improvement over Morrowind's (and any game before then, for that matter) AI that never got tired of standing in one spot.

The biggest disappointment with Oblivion's Radiant AI simply stemmed from how high everybody's expectations were after the super awesome (but probably scripted) demonstrations they presented at the E3 demo. I can't blame them really - even though basic schedules are an improvement over Morrowind, there is really nothing you can do about improving AI with the current system. You want characters to sleep later sometimes, or eat different meals, or celebrate certain days? Bethesda would have to add those additional rules and schedules to the NPCs themselves - "realistic" behavior is one of those things that can only be expanded upon manually and, consequently it's really hard for developers to gauge when they're getting too meticulous about depth and when there's just enough believability to flow with the rest of the game.

One suggestion I have to improve AI, and this could be used to do away with essential NPCs too: make it so that, unless the player is in the same cell or otherwise nearby, NPCs cannot kill one another. No more mudcrabs waylaying travelling merchants or thieves getting killed on day 2 of the game.