Halo 2 Artificial Intelligence Explained

An anonymous reader writes "Stuffo has an interesting interview with Bungie's lead AI developer, Chris Butcher. Butcher explains in detail how the enemies in Halo 2 think and exactly why they do the things they do."

Comments

Sounds like a good approach

[ex_ottoyuhr]

I've long suspected that the proper way to handle game AI, and game development in general, is to model things in a manner as similar to the real world as possible... It's also nice to finally have a self-preservation instinct in game enemies...

Does anyone know if Far Cry used a similar approach? Its AI struck me as very close to Halo's in a lot of ways. (Then again, the whole game was like that...)

And is the server messed up, or is this a first post? :)

AI

[MyLongNickName]

It is interesting to see how much work is required to get something that simulates 'common sense'. Note how much 'tagging' was required to get a character in a controled environment from point A to point B in a logical manner.

Now take your average FPS player. He is able to look at the terrain without these tags and make a coherent game plan. Leave one tag off of an object, and that AI player is suddenly trying to do something impossible and not able to make a decision to try a different tact.

AI has certainly improved. I can't even begin to guess how many single player games have been destroyed simply because I found an explotable AI weakness. What will make AI really good is when it can adapt strategies when it has consistently lost.