Bay 12 Games Forum

Here's some 3D models I made, in the order I've made them.

-snip-

Any feedback is nice.

Not much of a 3D guy, but the texturing sticks out to me more than anything else, at least in the second one. A bit of darker colouring between the rocks in the steps and the shingles on the roof would make them look a lot better, I think. I like them, though!

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Mostly shape practice on this one.


Sketchy painting of a friend's GW2 character.


I've done one of these every year for the last five years as a progression metre thing. Can't let it lapse now!

I'm more impressed that they managed to manufacture chocolate without Conservatives.


...does it have any preservatives?

Staff of Magic Missile, untextured.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I cast Magic Missile into the darkness!

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It annoys my inner roleplayer when AI players work differently for the sole reason of not being the player. Strategy games are more interesting to me as simulations than as challenges. And if the player and their opponant are the same except the opposition gets an arbitrary boost, it feels as if the simulation's integrity is compromised.
Then, I say this as someone who has never really gotten into strategy games.

I'm a hardcore competitive RTS player (am I good? Questionable), and have friends who are the opposite - completely casual. In the former case, either the AI has to be good enough to compete with you (hella difficult for the average game studio to pull off without cheats), or single player is only good for practicing build orders (basically true of all current competitive RTS). In the latter case, the game is more about having some fun without having to go full tryhard, and the computer playing like a human isn't that important 'cause it's just about having fun.

The real issue is that the player and their opponent are fundamentally not the same. Sadly, the game is rigged from the start, and we can't have nice things.

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You guys are missing my real point--

The AI for a strategy game, should permit the player to use--- Strategy.

Strategy is more than just "Oh, I will abuse this set of mechanics to zerg rush and shit."  It is "Surprise fucker, i'm not where you thought I was" too.

Omniscient AI completely torpedoes this latter kind of play.  AI that spontaneously generates units just outside the FoW likewise is bogus.  Similar story for AI that does not obey resource rules or cooldowns, because cutting supply access is a valid strategy for defeating an otherwise superior enemy through attrition.


See where i am getting here?  When your ai cheats like a mofo, you lose the right to call it at STRATEGY game. 

"If the AI is blatantly unrealistic, if feels blatantly unrealistic to play against."

Yep, I never contested that. It's pretty obvious. That's why my comment was the AI must be fun, and cheating does not preclude fun. It can ruin it, but its mere presence isn't enough to do so.

Ride my bicycle on the pavement!

Just don't fucking cheat, and dont pretend that the game is even remotely about skill if you do.

The purpose of game AI is not to be good at the game (although it can do that). The purpose of game AI is not to push new limits in AI research (although it can do that).

The purpose of game AI is to be fun to play against.

That's the fundamental precept you should have in mind when building a game AI. If it requires it cheat, make it cheat. If it requires you lobotomise it, you lobotomise it. If it needs maphacks, you give it maphacks. There's no "purity"; there's only "fun" and "not fun".

A good friend of mine wrote a popular AI for an RTS. It cheats a ton, and can't beat many of the popular "good AIs". But it's a lot of fun to play against, and adapts itself to the skill level of its opponent. That is the only metric by which game AI must be measured. Anything else is nice, but ultimately secondary.

It's like if you buy a toaster that can load itself from a loaf, auto-butter, and send you a text when its done... but it barely actually toasts the bread. Or you buy a toaster that takes practically no space and works super fast, but also always chars your bread a bit. These are not good toasters.

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Sure.  But that is a different discussion.

The initial topic is about why the hell one would call that function/process an AI when it is clearly not ever intended to be one.

It's machine learning, which is sort of an intelligent behaviour. The other thing is that neural networks are, at least in origin, based on mimicking the human brain - and what else do you call an artificial brain? Also people like calling it AI. I don't know anyone in the field who actually calls it anything other than machine learning, though.

More specifically, the Starliner lost track of time and some piece of control software thought it was somewhere it wasn't. As a result, it had to burn more fuel than planned (not sure if that's because the bug burned fuel, more fuel had to be burned to correct the issue, or both) and couldn't get into a stable orbit to rendezvous with the ISS.