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RA3 AI DEV Team Testimony!


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#1 Spikey00

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Posted 14 October 2008 - 12:20 AM

Well, it has been quite a long time since I've visited this site, and my, have things gotten a bit quiet. Well, anyways, as I've still been awaiting news from the development upon the AI in RA3, I have been extremely pleased by this testimony:

"Hi, my name is Ian. After many years of being the Audio Programmer in the RTS group, for the last year and a half, I've been one of the AI programmers on Red Alert 3. The AI pod is responsible for the AI Player - the 'player' that you play against in Skirmish and play with in offline co-op missions. (Not to be confused with the unit AI, which is what individual units use to carry out your orders.)

The co-op campaign in Red Alert 3 means that we really needed to focus on the AI Players on this project. It would really frustrate you if you were playing along in the campaign, doing pretty well, and then - game over, your AI ally couldn't manage themselves well enough to survive, and lost you the game. But we didn't want to go down the "your AI ally mysteriously never takes any damage" route that you see in some other RTS games - you still have to help them out sometimes, and fight enough to take some pressure off them, just like you would with a 2 human co-op game. So that meant making an AI that can play pretty well; even better than in any previous SAGE game. Fortunately, we already had a pretty good basis from those earlier SAGE games - there'd been a pretty complete rewrite of the AI system in BFMEII and C&C3, and now we had a strong C++ code base to work from.

We worked on many aspects - obeying our human-ally's commands, adjusting to the new refinery / ore-node system, working with the new Japanese Build System (the AI engineers are about the only people on team who didn't like the Japanese build system because it meant MORE WORK for us! J/K). But our big focus this project was on micromanaging our units in combat. In C&C3, the AI had a pretty basic micromanager; it mostly just focus fired. But this time, ah, this time the micromanager will retreat if it gets in too deep. It will reverse-move to kite enemy units. It will repair damaged units. It will focus-fire more intelligently. It will avoid incoming damage. But most importantly, it will use all sorts of unit special abilities.

As you know, all the units in RA3 have a secondary ability, and using them is critical to winning battles. We had no choice - we HAD to make the AI use those secondary abilities, and use them well. For instance, imagine the Japanese AI if it never transformed any of its units - my nine-year-old could beat that AI! (Alan, my nine-year-old, is pretty cute, but he plays too many video games. HEY, ALAN, FINISH YOUR MATH HOMEWORK BEFORE YOU TOUCH THAT COMPUTER!) So many months were spent on coding heuristics to control those many different powers and making sure the AI could use each of them properly. My favorite? Seeing a big group of infantry get near some Sickles controlled by a Hard Soviet AI, and watching the Sickles carpet-bomb the infantry with jumps that knocked every infantry in the group to the ground! Brutal! But that's what we want - if you play the AI on hard, it's going to feel HARD.

Don't ask me for help - I can't beat it on hard either. ;-)"

Source: http://www.ea.com/re...IanBarkleyYeung

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That sounds brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, and I really mean it. Seems like RA3 is going the right path with the AI from what I've heard from this little story. I bet Thudo is going to go nuts over the "complete rewrite of the AI system in BFMEII and C&C3, and now we had a strong C++ code base".

I'm sure to purchase RA3 for this developer; previously, I was tilting towards the opposite direction.


With good news there comes bad... It appears to be that CNC Tiberium has been officially 'killed' by EA, for not meeting the standards of release. How truly disappointing.

#2 Soul

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Posted 14 October 2008 - 02:40 AM

Excellent news about the AI.
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#3 Banshee

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Posted 14 October 2008 - 07:21 AM

That still isn't very clear for us, mortals.
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#4 some_weirdGuy

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Posted 14 October 2008 - 08:05 AM

cool :rolleyes:

oh, and shouldn't this be in the RA3 section?

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#5 Hogo

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Posted 14 October 2008 - 04:00 PM

Hell Yeah, If Thudo gets Ra3 Then we can try our hands at coding the RA3 AI :rolleyes:

#6 Spikey00

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Posted 15 October 2008 - 02:59 AM

Well specifically, this is just for the people here who were dealing with the AI for TW. =/

I'm sure it would be better than the AI currently in TW, due to the experience with the complaints EA has received for TW. Probably due to the co-op mode as well.

Anyways, this is still really fascinating. It also means we will receive an actual system for making recommendations to the AI for attack/defense/etc. coordinates, compared to all the games without any options, to the weak and sorry beacon for TW.

Well, we'll see when it releases later next week, or second week. Hope to see some actual modding of the AI by the community to happen once again.

#7 stewox

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Posted 10 January 2009 - 03:04 PM

It's fun to mod the AI , and also for me coding is fun and see AI do surprising stuff, but in the end who will play it? I don't play RA3 anymore cause C&C is simply dead. The old fans are mostly gone , and the new fans don't have an idea , this means many of great mods aren't played so much , or else the old fans come back just to play that mod.

I as an long C&C fan can freely say AI in RA3 is total stupidity, and not just AI or the game it's self , the bugs that make game unplayable are also present all the time, like no mouse control for 10 sec ever 3 min , and stupid game engine moving every mobile unit to the center of the map when multi tasking with mouse.

Everybody may bless EA when they make SDK out , but just remind your self, what will you do with that crap SDK?, make a mod for a crap game nobody will play and then stumble upon a same AI game engine stupidity crap AGAIN.

I have modded C&C3 AI myself , and let me tell you , when I got that stupid missing subfaction select button in the skirmish people were talking about , I scraped everything and I will not care about it ever again.

EA's C&C is at least for me officially D E A D. over and out.

Back to ZH :) The last Westwood game, if nobody knew:

Edited by stewox, 10 January 2009 - 03:10 PM.


#8 Nighthawk

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Posted 10 January 2009 - 06:02 PM

Psst... Renegade was the last game to have Westwood within... they were consolidated into EA Los Angeles before Generals.
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