AI - Artificial intelligence - But why isn't it?

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Flagmo-T

Flagmo-T

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Team_moFF-No2
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Team_MoFF-DK
Hi Guys. Sorry for the many words :) but I'm just a Human with a thought :P

đź’ˇ

I often wonder, why a SO called AI racing system doesn't do what we as Humans would do in the Racing fight, for the Top of the podium. ?

EX:
When you as a person, is driving on-line against other real driver, you would recognize the Names of the drivers, and remember what they did last time you raced against them, how they pushed, or had a bad attitude, or even great skills, and then you would probably try not to do the same error twice, and therefore you have read your opponent and therefore you have a better chance of beating him..

It could be a choice of game-play style when racing against AI, because It's real boring that you can't feel the spirit in the AI droved Car, you will not respect them, and you really don't count them for something, unless you actually are trying to train your self with gentleman racing rules, that is suited for many Race games Now a days :) (NFS-Shift has a so called payback AI, which is quite interesting)

I haven't really experienced any Racing Game, that was taking that thought to mind, and I really can't understand why not, because that's exactly what you would expect from your contesters in a Real Virtual Race, and in many other Action Sports, AI as it is today is just a FUN Factor, not a Orsm Training tool ..

Let the intelligence be a bigger Part of the AI, otherwise It's pretty boring Dear Race Game creators.

You could even use a feature like: Download a famous Race driver's AI Driving File ( Loeb Rally/jimmie Nascar and so own) it will be a big hit ( just like we do already with a Ghost-replay on Timetrails, but this time it's the Solid Cars around you on the track, That you race against, and they will be with a tough attitude and Skilled Mind's..

I think that we thought that GT5 would have things kind of feature, in one of the Half kind of news on the front last year, I can't remember what it was exactly, but I think it was in the GPS News topic, that a bunch of us, had the question on, if this was the meaning of some of the half/weak news ?

Read this :)
This is not a Dishing on Jordans News section on the Front page, regarding my Half/weak News talk, because that was just a small something, like a lot of the news was from PD at that time around :)

Anyways I hope you get my point on the missing intelligence in the AI ..

I just think in these Robotic space travel times, there most be some skilled coders that can write that kind of complicated code, because We should as The GT-Fans/Buyers expect that kind of Passion from our Great Creator Kazunori Yamauchi at least for GT6 :)

Dream Extreme
Flagmo-T aka Team_MoFF-No2(DK)

ps. Sorry for mentioning NFS_S but i needed it for my documentation Hehe and further more, we haven't got GT5 yet, so we still need to be patience regarding how the game will turn out :) I'm exited
 
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"Fighting AI"? How much would they be fighting for the lead? I don't want to race 15 robots who seem to have as much respect for the rules as the French soccer team. (Yes, I'm still bitter about all that.)
 
Try playing supercar challenge. GT's AI is like Kasparov compared to that crock.
 
Spagetti69
Try playing supercar challenge. GT's AI is like Kasparov compared to that crock.
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Dear Jesus, if we got driving AI that are as good at driving as Kasparov is at chess, we would race nothing but a bunch of Andretti bots.
 
The best single player racing AI that I have played was in GT Legends. They got it really good in that game.
 
AI is complicated, very complicated and one of the toughest things to get right in a game, when you get it right in a game applaud the devs, because they've put a hell of a lot effort in to it, particularly in racing games, which are probably the hardest genre to get right.
 
I quite enjoy racing with M Rossi on Forza 3, I seem to have a lot of close but tough races with him. The real enemy is his rear gunner Muller as although the game doesn't perceive him to be as aggressive as Rossi I've had far more incidents with him mainly because he just turns in on me...
 
crooky369
I quite enjoy racing with M Rossi on Forza 3, I seem to have a lot of close but tough races with him. The real enemy is his rear gunner Muller as although the game doesn't perceive him to be as aggressive as Rossi I've had far more incidents with him mainly because he just turns in on me...
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Rossi is the aggressive, knock-you-off-the-road-kind of driver, at least at times, but Muller is just downright stupid. And that makes him dangerous...

Aanyways, so far, I haven't played a single game with an AI that really did impress me...

I just hope they get it right with GT5. I want the AI to be an actual challenge without tieing an arm to my back :grumpy:
 
Nice read Flagmo, AI is a tuff one aint it, some games are over the top like Ferrari challenge and other have been on rails, and some games have nailed it but not to the extent of fully learning you tricks.
I always think this part of a game grows with technology, the more the system can give out the more they can pump into this area of the game, it has evolved just slower than what things like graphics have, but the future is going to be great.
 
I like this topic but I cant for the life of me not understand why AI cant be created to detect how quick as players we drive and adjust accordingly.

Why can AI not do the following:

1) Detect when a player brakes entering a corner and by how much
2) Detect when a player accelerates out of a corner and by how much
3) Determine the point of entry and exit
4) Utilise speed traps over sector points to give average speeds per sector and per lap
5) Create in realtime AI that monitors the above and improves as a player improves

What Id love is a feature that allows a player to convert a "Ghost Car Lap" into a working AI apponent. However AI can still implement its own awareness during a race and have varying aggressivness.
Then to be able to download yours/mine average laps in whatever car for whatever track and have a CLONED AI of real players with similar abilities.
 
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If that happens we have Skynet - self aware

As it is now, all game AI is nothing more than some well disguised scripts
 
CoolColJ
If that happens we have Skynet - self aware

As it is now, all game AI is nothing more than some well disguised scripts
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:lol: Hope that they don't make the scripting based on hall 9000 therefore will be too reasonable that it will kill the driver(be aware premium car driver!!!)

633716522386007510-hal9000.jpg
 
You can´t make it intelligent, only better.

No robot in the world is intelligent really, or like Michio Kaku said, The smartest robot of today is about as intelligent as a cockroach. A retarded cockroach...
 
I'm willing to bet that the AI is one of the most difficult aspects to program - because if it wasn't, don't you think PD would have nailed it by now?
 
Is this thread for real? :rolleyes:

By definition, a computer game can only ever have artificial intelligence, only better or worse to varying degrees.

As for "going for the top podium", that is so narrow minded. Not all top racing drivers are gunning for the top podium every single time. Sure, they may all WANT to, but numerous factors dictate how they need to execute the actual race, but it just preserving position or preserving tyres, whatever.

If you want to feel like you are racing other people, race on-line, simple as that.
 
The main difficulty in trying to make something where the AI "just copies the player" (other than literally, as with a ghost lap) is that the player's input is only meaningful if it's intepreted by the player's physics code at the player's physics sample rate.

So to go over the list:

1) Detect when a player brakes entering a corner and by how much
2) Detect when a player accelerates out of a corner and by how much
3) Determine the point of entry and exit
4) Utilise speed traps over sector points to give average speeds per sector and per lap
5) Create in realtime AI that monitors the above and improves as a player improves
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Most games already do 3, 4 and 5 to an extent. But making an "interactive ghost lap" style AI means you're going to end up with something that either cheats a hell of a lot more, to get away with player behaviour without running the player's physics simulation, or has a very sharp performance penalty.

And yep, the AI code for Shift is an extremely large and complicated thing. 20 parameters per driver 'brain', 186 different parameters governing behaviour at different stages of the race, interpreted differently depending on the brain, about 90 different data types for navigating around a track, and up to about 1.5mb of track navigation waypoint data to get around a track. They filled it up with a lot of stuff to make it "exciting" (eg faster cars starting at the rear of the grid, several "smash 'em up" AI personalities, etc) but I don't think there's any racing game using something as sophisticated. In some aspects it resembles the Finite State Machine AI stuff you see in Bohemia's Arma series of games on the PC.
 
Mr Latte
I like this topic but I cant for the life of me not understand why AI cant be created to detect how quick as players we drive and adjust accordingly.

Why can AI not do the following:

1) Detect when a player brakes entering a corner and by how much
2) Detect when a player accelerates out of a corner and by how much
3) Determine the point of entry and exit
4) Utilise speed traps over sector points to give average speeds per sector and per lap
5) Create in realtime AI that monitors the above and improves as a player improves

What Id love is a feature that allows a player to convert a "Ghost Car Lap" into a working AI apponent. However AI can still implement its own awareness during a race and have varying aggressivness.
Then to be able to download yours/mine average laps in whatever car for whatever track and have a CLONED AI of real players with similar abilities.
Click to expand...

Are you really asking why they cannot program such complicated AI? Pretty much - AI is never simple. Sure, the basic objective is simple, how to get to that objective is not.
To give a relevant example - different circuits have different racing lines. All racing lines are affected by several other factors such as car performance, environmental conditions, racing conditions, etc. You would have to program AI code to handle all these different conditions and know how to react. You can see how it starts to multiply in complexity?
Also, the "replay then add AI to it" idea kind of breaks down - how exactly is the AI going know when it should overtake and block and when it shouldn't? Its all very well saying it can then just stick to the replay lines and inputs but thats pretty much what the AI already does anyway - the complication comes from giving the AI driver knowledge of what is "aggressive" and what is "defensive" driving and so on. Again, what sounds simple really isn't when you break it down.

Probably if a developer spent the amount of time PD does on graphics, maybe you would get close to what you are suggesting. You would ideally want a knowledge-based system or some kind of neural net but these are terribly complicated to create and they are never perfect.

Personally I think you can never beat the real thing, against real players. AI will never be accurate enough to race anything like a human driver. You can certainly never expect a games developer to spend that amount of time on AI as its just not appreciated enough to justify the timescales and money.

As for the OP's idea, sounds interesting, I agree that the AI as it is currently is rather dull and lifeless as just "Red Ferrari #1" etc. Many racing games in the past have named drivers which instantly added a level of personality even when there was none in the actual AI code (i.e. the AI didn't actually react differently, its just the player can remember a name and build a relationship to it far easier).
I don't think its realistic to build AI that can run from replays though and basing it on real-life drivers starts to allow bias. (after all, they wouldnt want offend people, and who wants to known as the crazy driver who runs people off the road?). But certainly bringing in different AI personalities would be nice.
 
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crooky369
I quite enjoy racing with M Rossi on Forza 3, I seem to have a lot of close but tough races with him. The real enemy is his rear gunner Muller as although the game doesn't perceive him to be as aggressive as Rossi I've had far more incidents with him mainly because he just turns in on me...
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Forza 2 had the most intelligent AI that I have played against in a racing game. Forza 3 seems much more aggressive and not quite as intelligent as F2 AI. I have had some really really good battles with the AI in Forza 3 but they are much more aggressive especially on the hardest difficulty. The higher the difficulty the more they will stick to the racing line. I actually call the highest difficulty the Gran Tursismo difficulty because if you get in the way, you will probably get rammed. :lol:

I havent played GT5P in a very long time but what I played of it, the AI was still only about as intelligent as the GT4 AI. But I am sure it will be much better in GT5. Or at least I hope so with 16 cars on the track at the same time.
 
CAMAROBOY69
I havent played GT5P in a very long time but what I played of it, the AI was still only about as intelligent as the GT4 AI. But I am sure it will be much better in GT5. Or at least I hope so with 16 cars on the track at the same time.
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Having played GT4 for a few weeks solid before moving onto Prologue again yesterday, I can tell you the AI is vastly improved from GT4. For example, if you take position on the outside of the braking zone, the AI won't move over and knock you off the track (aka Sebastian Vettel AI), they seem more 'aware'. They also won't ram you if you go in the apex a little too slowly (Depends on the situation, but they do brake to prevent hitting you most of the time).

They are more aggressive and will overtake on the inside if you go wide, but they will give you space on the corner exit if you come back at them, which they certainly didn't do in GT4. I was doing a GT4 race, an Audi R8 on Tokyo R246 in the Formula (One) Championship, and the AI there ram you constantly as they carry more speed through the corners and have later braking zones. The GT4 AI seemed to have been programmed just to fight the other AI and to replicate realistic lap times for certain circuits; They don't seem aware of the human car at all (Though you do get instances where they do move to avoid or brake to prevent collision, these instances are rare).

But there was still much room for improvement over GT5P. And we can see, from this video, that it has clearly been improved:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVlcSyLFFEU#t=2m51s

That build is at least 2 months old now, but I think it's safe to say it's what we should expect for GT5.
 
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I need to rent GT5P again to get my GT fix. Plus I can see how much the game has changed since the last time I played.

I remember back in GT4, you could park anywhere on the middle of the track and even an entire lap later the AI would come around and blast you like you were not there. Maybe I can find it somewhere cheap to buy. Otherwise a rental will be good enough again. I do remember it was nice to finally play GT on the inside view. But from what I remember playing GT5P, the physics were still way off. Hopefully that has also been updated.
 
Mr Latte
What Id love is a feature that allows a player to convert a "Ghost Car Lap" into a working AI apponent. However AI can still implement its own awareness during a race and have varying aggressivness.
Then to be able to download yours/mine average laps in whatever car for whatever track and have a CLONED AI of real players with similar abilities.
Click to expand...

I kind of like this idea if it were possible. More often than not, AI is either to easy, to hard, or to dumb. Sometimes its all 3 in one. One car is super fast, the others are super slow. This would be a great way to have close racing with all AI drivers on the grid offline that suits your driving abilities.
 
shawtyoner
I kind of like this idea if it were possible. More often than not, AI is either to easy, to hard, or to dumb. Sometimes its all 3 in one. One car is super fast, the others are super slow. This would be a great way to have close racing with all AI drivers on the grid offline that suits your driving abilities.
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After all, you would only have to do this on every track/variation with every individual car for this to work properly. 1000*70=70,000 ghost laps that you would have to do (And they all have to be clean).

Fun.
 
Yeah, it's easier just to lay down the line (as a geometry / vector type thing) and then scale the AI's "abilities" (viz. braking, corner entry / exit, line adherence, throttle control etc. - as well as specific "personality" traits). Hopefully these sorts of abilities can be approximated with whatever system PD are using. The line adherence part was already covered in GT4 (the early championships were terrible, and B-Spec Bob couldn't follow a line for toffee in his infancy - in fact, I gave up with him.)

But you're right, GT5:P is a huge leap in that the AI is actually aware of the player!

I don't remember Shift's AI being anything special. Maybe that's the point - and the Wii version is fresher in my mind than the PC version (I know, I know). I could try the PC demo again (I HATE the way it nannies you though - and shut that faux-Scot up, too; it's not TOCA Race Driver...)
 
Seismica
After all, you would only have to do this on every track/variation with every individual car for this to work properly. 1000*70=70,000 ghost laps that you would have to do (And they all have to be clean).

Fun.
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"I kind of like this idea if it were possible". :)
 
The problem with AI is really w/the gamer - you cannot please all the people all the time.

There are varying skill levels within the gaming community and splitting the AI difficulty into Easy - Medium - Hard (or thereabouts) doesn't really cover all the bases. Too hard, and casual gamers play something else. Too easy, and hardcore gamers become bored.

Think about the demographics of games these days; I remember taking my first hit of the proverbial crack pipe that was GT1 in college. At that time, I would race against other college buds and my 11yrs younger sibling when I'd come home. That was when GT1 was new BTW.

So you're going to have 10y/o and possibly AARP members members playing this game. You're going to have people use everything from controllers to full-on race cockpits. Sure, we're all nerds...some just embrace it more than others.

Think of the millions of nerds, present company included, that will be playing this game. You don't have to be a Nobel-laureate in sociology to realize that people have varying intelligence and temperaments. Any waiter or retail clerk can tell you that.

So how do you please MOST of the people most of the time; online play and user generated content.

AI cannot evolve or learn new tricks. The code is either written or it isn't. However, communities can evolve. So the player who is so-so at racing can meet up with other so-so drivers and the hardcore folks can meet up with their own. Depending on the track editor and possible livery editor - people can find some other ways to use their talents.

In short; don't expect much from the AI. You'll win credits and will either be chewing on Advil b/c they're frustrating you -or- you'll be chugging coffee trying to stay awake while you dodge the rolling chicanes.

There will be plenty to do. Hell, win some credits and join a race team; I'm sure they'll be popping up everywhere in the beginning of November.
 
Now that I have finally escaped the gaming dark ages and grabbed a PS3, I can agree with the fact Prologue's AI is far improved from GT4's (and PSP). You get the feeling that there are actually people driving; they follow slightly different lines each lap, it's no longer the parade you get in the other games. They make mistakes occasionally. They acknowledge your existence!

It's made me think that PSP really is still very much based on all of the GT4 engines, but with the physics tweaked to feel a bit more like the more recent builds of GT5 (well, recent until PSP was released).
 
BrutherSuperior
The problem with AI is really w/the gamer - you cannot please all the people all the time.
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Now thats simply not true for AI. Its true for other aspects of games but AI can clearly be better, after all the whole point of AI is to give the impression of intelligence. Now, intelligence is of course a hotly debated subject but are you really going to say that GT AI is really the best it can be?
Sure it has improved, AI for games has improved a bit over the years. But not much, it hasn't really needed to though.

Its not a question of appreciating what AI there is, its just that programming complicated AI is extremely time-consuming and gets difficult to really fine-tune.
Game AI has never really been "true AI" anyway, just literal trickery. Very rarely does a game actually employ any knowledge based systems for its AI.

I think more could be done on the AI, but its not a simple thing and its something I'd gladly trade for better physics, graphics, sound and networking. The time spent on AI gets 10x the amount of work done on the other 4 things, its not worth the time. What they already give us is good enough for a decent game, its not perfect, but its playable, has a range of difficulties and doesn't annoy too much like game AI on certain other games.
 
As long as they don't ram you off if you drive defensively every time like in GT4, i'm fine with the AI.
 
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