9 replies to this topic

[LarkinVB]

Hi Thudo,

already working at the soulstorm demo AI ?

[thudo]

Its long since done and MUCH more.

I will confer with both you and Arkhan about what has happened.

[troubadour]

@Thudo - Any chance you answer to this one :
Did Ironlore improved the pathfinding and AI API ?

[thudo]

I cannot comment on this.

[Zenoth]

@Thudo - Any chance you answer to this one :
Did Ironlore improved the pathfinding and AI API ?

I too would like to see improvements for the pathfinding, but I always thought that for Dark Crusade (or even DoW and WA) a cheaper solution would be to allow all units to clip into each others when they belong to the same team. I believe that such a clipping system was used (maybe it wasn't intended though, I'm not sure, but if it wasn't, then it wasn't a "system" per se, but more like a nice bug in my book) for Company of Heroes. I remember that the Tanks were literally clipping inside other Tanks of the same team, which allowed a better movement cohesion when many units were present in small environments.

In DoW, if two Predators for example go on opposite directions via the same "corridor" and if they don't have enough space to just veer a little to avoid slowing down to let the other pass then what happens is exactly that, they literally stop for two or three seconds, they decide a new path to take to reach point B, then they start moving again, if they can. If they can't adjust their angles due to a lack of space to manoeuver in, then one of them stops entirely, makes a 180º turn and back tracks its way to a location where he'll be able to let the other Tank reach its own destination to finally be able to go back to that corridor and resume his original pathing decision or just take a whole different route. Such situations in a crowded 4 Vs 4 map can drastically slow down the pace of battle and dangerously hinder the efficiency of the A.I team who's affected by that. But using the exact same example with Tanks that could clip inside each others just enough so they can resume their pathing decision without changing it at all would just "fix" it without touching the actual pathing code at all, or to a negligible extent.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

In DoW, if two Predators for example go on opposite directions via the same "corridor" and if they don't have enough space to just veer a little to avoid slowing down to let the other pass then what happens is exactly that, they literally stop for two or three seconds, they decide a new path to take to reach point B, then they start moving again, if they can. If they can't adjust their angles due to a lack of space to manoeuver in, then one of them stops entirely, makes a 180º turn and back tracks its way to a location where he'll be able to let the other Tank reach its own destination to finally be able to go back to that corridor and resume his original pathing decision or just take a whole different route. Such situations in a crowded 4 Vs 4 map can drastically slow down the pace of battle and dangerously hinder the efficiency of the A.I team who's affected by that. But using the exact same example with Tanks that could clip inside each others just enough so they can resume their pathing decision without changing it at all would just "fix" it without touching the actual pathing code at all, or to a negligible extent.

I played with the bounding boxes of the tank LUA files a long time ago, but for some reason, it didn't work out as suspected.

But speaking of COH..., I got opposing fronts with my new graphic card and as I saw COH for 10€ I thought I give it a try and bought it as well. Actually I didn't expected too much since I'm not really a big fan of WW2 games. But surprisingly the game turned out to be very, very good, both by gameplay and campaign atmosphere. Those Relic guys really know how to design games. The amount of improvements compared to DOW is amazing. I probably would have bought it before if I had known about its qualities. But well, at least I've now the pleasure to play an almost bug free game since they had enough time to release lots of patches.
I'm curious if they release a second expansion...

[Zenoth]

I own Company of Heroes but I don't have Opposing Fronts yet, is the campaign good? And how do you think the British faction play compared to the Nazi and the U.S.A forces? I might give it a chance, since I've built a new computer (graphics card is the same, but I changed other parts), with a new 45nm Intel C2D, the E8400 model (now running at 3.6Ghz with the stock HSF, very impressive to me at least), a Gigabyte X38-DQ6 motherboard and a kit of 2GB of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 memory.

With the new system I've noticed a huge performance improvement in DoW Skirmishes, since I certainly think that the A.I loves the new CPU architecture and the 6MB of L2 Cache, and then of course the actual frequency itself (I mean my previous AMD X2 4400+ ran at 2.4Ghz, that's a 1.0Ghz+ difference with my new CPU). I really like it so far. But I do believe that the Real-Time-Strategy games will take the most advantage of the new CPU, because other game genres I've tried (Crysis and Medieval II Total War) did receive a performance boost, but it wasn't anything particularly awesome (maybe that's because those game types need a good graphics card rather than a good CPU, especially for Crysis).

I've been playing Star Wars: Forces of Corruption and Team Fortress 2 lately though, and of course a Dark Crusade A.I Skirmish each time before going to bed. I also play Command & Conquer 3, but the A.I for that one isn't very good, and the Skirmishes abruptly end and don't last long because there's always a lack of resources (finite resources, compared to the infinite resources of DoW), which means that eventually all A.I team without access to Tiberium fields will cease producing units and the match suddenly stops and there's nothing going on, even though all the teams have huge bases, and perhaps only one or two teams out of the total seven (in a 4 Vs 4 match for example) will have enough remaining units to actually attack their enemies and maybe... only maybe win the match if they can take down the defenses without being able to train new units to replace those who're going to die in the process.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

I own Company of Heroes but I don't have Opposing Fronts yet, is the campaign good? And how do you think the British faction play compared to the Nazi and the U.S.A forces? I might give it a chance, since I've built a new computer (graphics card is the same, but I changed other parts), with a new 45nm Intel C2D, the E8400 model (now running at 3.6Ghz with the stock HSF, very impressive to me at least), a Gigabyte X38-DQ6 motherboard and a kit of 2GB of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 memory.

I'm still playing the vanilla campaign so I can't really comment on the quality of the OF campaign. The biggest advantage of OF so far was for me the fact that I didn't have to download the 1,5 GB patch for COH. According to the download rate, the patch would have taken about of ~15h to download. Obviously Relic can only afford a game boy as a file server...

I didn't try C&C3 and Supreme Commander yet, but according to the forum comments the skirmish AI for COH isn't that great either. Since I've only played the campaign yet, I don't know how good or bad it is.

[Zenoth]

I see, that's cool.

But, you know, to be honest, the C&C 3's A.I isn't "bad" at all, I've seen it use strategies, and the A.I does analyze the base's defenses so that it will usually attack where they should, and where they can, with proper countering units, which in itself is a good sign that the coders knew that they were coding for a RTS game... and considering that it was made at EA, that's something to say.

Technically speaking, the only annoying point for me in C&C 3 is as I mentioned in my previous post, the fact that the resources are finite, just like many other RTS'es around (WarCraft, StarCraft, and others). The regrowth rate of the Tiberium fields is waaaaaaay too slow to compensate for the need of the A.I players. A human player can work around that by controlling the production and actually think like a human with a brain. The human players know when the Tiberium fields are depleting, and they know that they have to adjust their strategies accordingly, or else they will end up with tons of defenses, a huge expended base, but no actual units, or not enough of them to do anything offensive. But the A.I doesn't analyze the Tiberium fields, and the A.I does not know when the fields are growing back, and when it does grow back they don't know where it's happening. And when the fields of Tiberium are almost all gone, the A.I won't think "ok, I got less resources, let's try not to queue up twenty Mammoth Tanks...", no, they will actually queue up two or three Mammoths, they will try to build another building and then they will be stuck with unfinished buildings in their queuing, and what happens next? Nothing, absolutely nothing, silence, static bases, no units anymore anywhere on the map.

A very easy "fix" for that would be to release an editor that allows the players to edit the off-line, single-player maps. And so far only the multi-player mode can be customized and only multi-player maps can be made using a very limited editor.

At least with WarCraft III I could edit any maps I wanted, and what I did was simple: I made it so all Gold Mines had 100,000 Gold for gathering. It is still technically a finite amount of resources, but before any A.I manages to use even half of that Gold amount the game would be lasting for at least 6+ hours on the hardest difficulty, which in turn makes it virtually infinite, since no one that I know of including myself has ever played a WCIII Skirmish that lasted for more than two or three hours (and even then it's very rare). That means that the A.I can fully exploit its coding because it will never lack any resources. It will constantly build structures and train units up to the limits given by the actual coding (or hard-coding from the developers, for example the number limits for specific units and buildings). And that means that the game will be filled with action, and no A.I will ever idle doing nothing. If C&C 3 had that (an off-line editor) then I would gladly play it every single day I could play it, because I do like the actual game.

In DoW, no editors are needed because the resources system made by Relic is unique and it gives infinite amounts of resources as long as you 1) Keep CP's/Relics/LP's alive and 2) Keep your Power Generators alive, that's it. Simply said, in DoW you basically fight for the resources, and in C&C 3 you fight with the resources.

Edited by Zenoth, 05 February 2008 - 12:57 AM.

[Quitch]

I own Company of Heroes but I don't have Opposing Fronts yet, is the campaign good? And how do you think the British faction play compared to the Nazi and the U.S.A forces? I might give it a chance, since I've built a new computer (graphics card is the same, but I changed other parts), with a new 45nm Intel C2D, the E8400 model (now running at 3.6Ghz with the stock HSF, very impressive to me at least), a Gigabyte X38-DQ6 motherboard and a kit of 2GB of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 memory.

I'm still playing the vanilla campaign so I can't really comment on the quality of the OF campaign. The biggest advantage of OF so far was for me the fact that I didn't have to download the 1,5 GB patch for COH. According to the download rate, the patch would have taken about of ~15h to download. Obviously Relic can only afford a game boy as a file server...

I didn't try C&C3 and Supreme Commander yet, but according to the forum comments the skirmish AI for COH isn't that great either. Since I've only played the campaign yet, I don't know how good or bad it is.

The AI is OK, better than Dark Crusades's AI, but possibly not as good as the AI which shipped with the original Dawn of War. But there is an AI project for CoH and OF

http://www.r-force.o...o...wforum&f=21

It's not as good as Dawn of Skirmish at this current time.

Edited by Quitch, 01 March 2008 - 12:52 PM.