This is behaviour trees. What youâre describing is behaviour trees.
Edit: I see later you say it isnât a behaviour tree but this is how a lot of BTs are implemented. They donât always loop from the root. A lot of the time according to state the root is redefined off of a branch and that sub tree is looped until going further down the tree or even into a different tree. Much like the stack you are describing.
Perhaps this explains why Fromsoft npc quests are easily the most inscrutable in all of gaming. Like, okay Hyetta, have another âgrapeâ, aka eyeball, oh now youâve moved to the bridge in Liurnia, cool. Iâve exhausted your dialogue but youâre stuck. Oh I have to reload the area and exhaust it again to advance your quest. Okay, cool. Now youâre in a random church and you want a âfingerprint grapeâ. What?
Itâs all part of the Fromsoft experience but man, who writes these things?
RE who writes these things: I know you're probably referring to code here but on the actual dialogue side, there was a charming interview recently with the person responsible for translating Miyazaki's vision into English. He apparently did all of the writing (dialogue, item descriptions, UI text) for Dark Souls, and split the work with just one other person for all the later games including Elden Ring.
This post seems to be mostly (although not entirely) concerned with the combat AI. The plot based NPC interactions donât seem to be very dynamic at all, mostly just a graph with a lot of dead-ends, haha.
thats game design not something engine related. its been like this since before demons souls, i think it started out way back with the first kings field. its just the way fromsoft do things. everyone knows what to expect from them.
Just to underline your point, Sekiro's NPCs behave in a much more obvious and linear way relative to From's other games, so it's clearly a game design decision and not a technical one.
I know very little about AI and game mechanics, but knowing how early Fromsoft games were (e.g., Kingsfield), a basic AI in Elden Ring is very unsurprising. That's not necessarily a bad thing!
My vote for "high tech game AI" would probably be this old mod for Fallout 4:
>PANPC (Pack Attack NPC Edition) is a unique scripted AI management system for Fallout 4. Rather than treating each enemy as an individual proximity-based reaction agent (basically, a mine with a gun), this system generates social feedback between NPCs belonging to the same or allied factions.
>Enemies factor the overhaul health and success of their âteamâ into their tactical decisions, adjusting their strategies based on their social and threat awareness. As a result, they will switch between ranged, melee, defensive, and offensive tactics based on their perceptions of team advantage and individual risk.
F.E.A.R 2 was released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, both of which have laughably low specs by modern standards. When you have to create dynamic experiences out of a potato you are forced to get creative and that involves squeezing a lot of juice out of basic techniques.
Transformer based AI had to wait until the world's compute capacity reached a certain level to become feasible.
My favorite high tech AI was Crysis. Might have been an update after it was originally released. The enemies will aggressively attack but then get quiet after you've taken cover. Eventually you'll realize some of them are flanking you while others keep suppressing fire on you to stop you from moving. You can hear them yelling to one another. Very cool touches.
That reminds me of First Encounter Assault Recon, where the AI had fairly simple rules, which worked well with the level design to make the enemies seem intelligent, especially as Monolith added chatter to make them seem even smarter. And then one of the expansions had a bunch of open areas and the AI didn't handle those well so the trick didn't work.
This is behaviour trees. What youâre describing is behaviour trees. Edit: I see later you say it isnât a behaviour tree but this is how a lot of BTs are implemented. They donât always loop from the root. A lot of the time according to state the root is redefined off of a branch and that sub tree is looped until going further down the tree or even into a different tree. Much like the stack you are describing.
The article has been updated in response to this post.
(See the end)
Perhaps this explains why Fromsoft npc quests are easily the most inscrutable in all of gaming. Like, okay Hyetta, have another âgrapeâ, aka eyeball, oh now youâve moved to the bridge in Liurnia, cool. Iâve exhausted your dialogue but youâre stuck. Oh I have to reload the area and exhaust it again to advance your quest. Okay, cool. Now youâre in a random church and you want a âfingerprint grapeâ. What?
Itâs all part of the Fromsoft experience but man, who writes these things?
RE who writes these things: I know you're probably referring to code here but on the actual dialogue side, there was a charming interview recently with the person responsible for translating Miyazaki's vision into English. He apparently did all of the writing (dialogue, item descriptions, UI text) for Dark Souls, and split the work with just one other person for all the later games including Elden Ring.
https://youtu.be/vIbKALhzHVc?si=WRAQs77WG2QwVkt5
This post seems to be mostly (although not entirely) concerned with the combat AI. The plot based NPC interactions donât seem to be very dynamic at all, mostly just a graph with a lot of dead-ends, haha.
thats game design not something engine related. its been like this since before demons souls, i think it started out way back with the first kings field. its just the way fromsoft do things. everyone knows what to expect from them.
Just to underline your point, Sekiro's NPCs behave in a much more obvious and linear way relative to From's other games, so it's clearly a game design decision and not a technical one.
As a game dev, the fact "AI" as a keyword became totally unusable is quite annoying.
Low tech AI? Its sounds like standard game AI. I would really like to hear what the author would deem high tech game AI.
I know very little about AI and game mechanics, but knowing how early Fromsoft games were (e.g., Kingsfield), a basic AI in Elden Ring is very unsurprising. That's not necessarily a bad thing!
My vote for "high tech game AI" would probably be this old mod for Fallout 4:
>PANPC (Pack Attack NPC Edition) is a unique scripted AI management system for Fallout 4. Rather than treating each enemy as an individual proximity-based reaction agent (basically, a mine with a gun), this system generates social feedback between NPCs belonging to the same or allied factions.
>Enemies factor the overhaul health and success of their âteamâ into their tactical decisions, adjusting their strategies based on their social and threat awareness. As a result, they will switch between ranged, melee, defensive, and offensive tactics based on their perceptions of team advantage and individual risk.
https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Mod:PANPC_(Pack_Attack:_NPC_Editio...
F.E.A.R. 2 has the best AI that I can think of. Wonder if it counts as high tech or they just squeezed a lot of juice out of basic techniques
F.E.A.R 2 was released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, both of which have laughably low specs by modern standards. When you have to create dynamic experiences out of a potato you are forced to get creative and that involves squeezing a lot of juice out of basic techniques.
Transformer based AI had to wait until the world's compute capacity reached a certain level to become feasible.
Youâre in luck, they made a great paper on this!
https://www.gamedevs.org/uploads/three-states-plan-ai-of-fea...
My favorite high tech AI was Crysis. Might have been an update after it was originally released. The enemies will aggressively attack but then get quiet after you've taken cover. Eventually you'll realize some of them are flanking you while others keep suppressing fire on you to stop you from moving. You can hear them yelling to one another. Very cool touches.
That reminds me of First Encounter Assault Recon, where the AI had fairly simple rules, which worked well with the level design to make the enemies seem intelligent, especially as Monolith added chatter to make them seem even smarter. And then one of the expansions had a bunch of open areas and the AI didn't handle those well so the trick didn't work.