Away From Keyboard
CanadianWolverine
Join Date: 2003-02-07 Member: 13249Members
Join Date: 2003-02-07 Member: 13249Members
<div class="IPBDescription">It affects team play when someone has to go for a bit</div>I saw this recently - <a href="http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Vx82auvsQ" target="_blank">http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Vx82auvsQ</a> - and Adam Sessler makes a really good point at 0:47.
I really hope Unknown Worlds gets a chance to reconsider working some AI in, especially if it was used for AFK players who just need to kick off and do something in real life. Its not much fun when suddenly someone has to stand still in the game, putting you down a team player and before they get back they get kicked to free up that spot/activate the auto-balance, now their game experience is gone. Wouldn't it be nice if in cooperative games like Natural Selection, if you needed the game to turn your character's AI on for a bit when you need to AFK?
Sure AI is also a nice crutch when you need to get a game started from scratch (no other players in the server) but this is such a good idea, I really wish it had been in games sooner. Not saying the AI should be good or anything, just something nice to help folks relax a bit when playing, so that games can be longer then the 5-15 minute mark for casual matches, we could have those epic length matches but not feel guilty or angry at others if we need to go for a bit to handle something in the meat space.
As a gaming dad taking care of my lil'daughter, I can't tell you enough how much I would love a feature like this in a game I can't pause and other team mates are relying on the support of my character.
I really hope Unknown Worlds gets a chance to reconsider working some AI in, especially if it was used for AFK players who just need to kick off and do something in real life. Its not much fun when suddenly someone has to stand still in the game, putting you down a team player and before they get back they get kicked to free up that spot/activate the auto-balance, now their game experience is gone. Wouldn't it be nice if in cooperative games like Natural Selection, if you needed the game to turn your character's AI on for a bit when you need to AFK?
Sure AI is also a nice crutch when you need to get a game started from scratch (no other players in the server) but this is such a good idea, I really wish it had been in games sooner. Not saying the AI should be good or anything, just something nice to help folks relax a bit when playing, so that games can be longer then the 5-15 minute mark for casual matches, we could have those epic length matches but not feel guilty or angry at others if we need to go for a bit to handle something in the meat space.
As a gaming dad taking care of my lil'daughter, I can't tell you enough how much I would love a feature like this in a game I can't pause and other team mates are relying on the support of my character.
Comments
--Scythe--
--Scythe--<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Is it possible it could just like, follow the squad around and sporadically weld teammates and shoot in the general direction (see: not as accurate as a player) of the enemy? And if its Kharaa, follow the pack and stick to support moves? Is it possible such an idea could be better in NS2 than it worked out in NS1 or is it a pipe dream?
Thanks for the reply <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
A base or hive is never truly <i>safe</i>, but the point of the AI is to make up for the afk player while they are afk, so that the balance isn't screwed. ( At least thats how I understand it )
Exactly. Just because I need to go answer the door, answer the phone, go to the washroom, etc. I don't want to screw up the rest of the other team mates' match. It also takes some of the pressure off a gamer that is not necessarily able to set aside a continuous 15 or more minutes to make sure that doesn't happen by seeing it through to the end of a match before ducking out - I would want to put the game on a hold (sort of, given it is multiplayer and "real time"), not demand that of the world my physical self resides in.
(Sorry, couldn't resist <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />)
The whole make them stand as sentry would be acceptable in my mind. Suddenly being better than the original player would be poor, and unless you're going to try and imprint your playstyle into the AI you're going to have trouble with the complexities of skill, movement, strategic/tactical decisions, etc. that NS has.
Making them essentially into a turret would make them not completely useless, but at the same time is definitely weaker than a real player.
How Aliens would be done is very tough to decide. You don't want them to be useless, but you can't have a team of AFK bots going around pwning the real players either.
I personally doubt the devs will do this, although they have stated that bots will be part of the game. If they don't, feel free to code it up.
I guess it could surrender its res so it doesn't eat into the res pool and just go around eating rts?
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Some AI controlled support role for an afk player would be nice, but imho it's also important to stop res flow for the afk player to avoid players exploiting this by letting the ai play the crappy teammate until you can hop in and immediatly evolve to/buy some fancy stuff.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is the way I'd pick unless Max thinks he can code some awesome humanlike AI, better than any present game I can think of. So far I've got only bad memories from AI sidekicks and such in games. You'll get stupid frags on them and then again you'll get beaten in situations where you definitely deserve to frag.
Encourage? I am pretty sure players will go AFK if they need to, regardless of any feature that helps it have less of a detrimental effect on the team play. Sure, I love the epic long back and forth matches as much as the next player, but you can be sure, if I have drop a game to go take care of some IRL stuff, then the game is just going to have to suffer or have a method in place that helps all those involved in the play.
There was some talk of a weld bot, yes? You probably have following another player, path finding so it doesn't get stuck while following, and an emphasis on the support role right there - sorta like the MASC, even that taking its orders from the Commander is going to need a bit of something to make sure it doesn't get stuck easily. Are these ideas from the Devs toast? If not, then there is some precedent right there for something that would be just like this, thus easing some of burden off of gamers and their team mates.
It would certainly be easier to code and balance.
It would certainly be easier to code and balance.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
would be very frustrating for the person who gets kicked.
imagine you want to connect to your favorite server, but its full. you wait for 20 minutes until
a slot is finally free, then you get kicked again after few minutes...
You can already get that experience in NS1: some servers grant you access to priviledges when
you make donations to the server admins, granting you access to a server slot by kicking one (maybe last connected)
player...
it is frustrating <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
coding some "underpowered" bot ai would be worth the affort I thing. Following way points, staying in squads, building
chambers / buildings and tweak fire accuracy and maybe fire-power.
if the bot is too long active you still can kick that player.
Basically if you _really_ need to go afk, just go ahead and idle for a few mins. Unless its competetive, it shouldn't be a game decider in most cases. Now, if you add a bot replacement, its like "I'll just join the server, cook some food and eat while the bot fills me in whenever necessary".
coding some "underpowered" bot ai would be worth the affort I thing. Following way points, staying in squads, building
chambers / buildings and tweak fire accuracy and maybe fire-power.
if the bot is too long active you still can kick that player.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed.
Maybe you can kick 2 afk players, when there is one in each team.
There should be something for short term afk dealing. Marines, it's easy. Turn them into a turret. Granted, make their aim kinda lame, but they still add to the mix. However, all RFK/individual res goes to the main pool. Don't want that afk player suddenly coming back after farming individual res for a while. For aliens, that's tricky.
In the end, there should be the ability to see how long someone has been afk and the ability to kick afk players. If some jerks want to get around this using simple movement macros, let the admins kick them.
I vote that there be something so they're not useless, but definitely make them much, much less effective. As noted, most of the time an idle player a for few minutes isn't so bad, and I strongly doubt you can't just pop into a new server if you're booted. This isn't DotA where if a player leaves, they can't be replaced, and not L4D where every single player is a huge component of the team.
chambers / buildings and tweak fire accuracy and maybe fire-power.
if the bot is too long active you still can kick that player.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo(post=1686368:date=Aug 21 2008, 08:34 AM:name=pSyk0mAn)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(pSyk0mAn @ Aug 21 2008, 08:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1686368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Maybe you can kick 2 afk players, when there is one in each team.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How these two posters describe this, that is how I envision it as well. If both teams lose an inactive player at the same time, that doesn't seem so bad. And if a player's character is AFK for too long, they are going to be kicked anyways as it is now, but with a bit of non-fancy AI, they won't just stand there doing nothing except providing a waste of a slot, any equipment they have, and not backing up their team mates as they move about the map.
Say, you know how a turret goes full auto, uses a quick auto aim, and never runs out of ammo? I would think that a player that is AFK AI would use burst fire, have a slow tracking auto aim, and runs out of ammo/has to reload. I would think that unless a Kharaa runs straight at a AFK player, they would easily dodge AFK AI support fire, and if at all possible the AFK AI could possibly be a better use as a weld bot to stand behind the still active players supporting them. When it comes to Kharaa, perhaps a AFK player would have to be switched to a support life form and leave the attacking life forms to the active players. The main idea behind this being that AFK AI is only there so that a player slot at least stays semi-useful so other players playing with a AFK don't necessarily say "Crap. [Insert Name] is AFK, GG. Might as well F4" as I have seen in NS1 from time to time because being down a player does hurt a team's chances of defending, let alone attacking.
Or you could have them parasite and then search the areas of the map that are plotted to have less parasited marines.
An idea like this has to have support in the engine in multiple low-level sections of the coding (netcode, player roster, aimbot input data-relay, etc.), or it's not going to work (or be horrifically buggy).
With that said, if UWE wants this put into the game... then by all means, please do! This would be a great addition, and possible additional use for the NPC AI system they are already talking about.
<b>vote <!--coloro:#00DD00--><span style="color:#00DD00"><!--/coloro-->yes<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc--></b>, <i>unless</i> it is not built into the foundation of the engine (i.e.: vote no if it's just a after-market, buggy pluggin)
Good luck finding bots that'll play that well.
The bots for natural selection now are a little buggy. You have to throw in about twice the amount of bots before it will begin to present a challenge to the opposing team as it stands now. They're slow, tend to ignore you unless fired upon, and are quite susceptable to simple tricks like spore.
If it gets implemented, it'd have to be a toggled feature. I don't want to be gorge waiting for 15 res only to have 'afk' mode kick in after 2 minutes and start building offensive chambers.
Furthermore, it'd have to have decent ai. Not so much that it'd replace an average player, but it'd have to help build and give attack support. I also think that it shouldn't wander off and do its own thing. It should stick with other team members if they're around. If not, it should stay put and crouch in a corner.
As it stands, the biggest challenge to NS bots is the dynamic nature of the maps. I know we complain they're not dynamic enough, but looking at the map progression you see buildings placed, battle lines moving, and strategy with clumps of units moving together. It's hard to try and take all that in and play accordingly. For example, try coding a logical system to spend res. Maybe you need someone designated for Fade, one for Hive, one for Lerk, and some gorges and skulks. But, when do you switch? What about scaling team sizes? What if we lost the 2nd Hive and we want more Fades to get it back? Onos save?
You see what I'm getting at? A finite state machine AI, which is what most people are still using, would be extraordinarily complex to figure out what to do. Add onto that finding ambush spots, realistic hearing/sight (giving bots maphacks = unfair), and movement based on the surrounding area and you're toast.
Whichbot tries to fake this out by a set number of states, weights on what they desire to do then randomizing the choice, and some tricks like waypointing the maps and showing where the ambush points are. RCBot simply gives you an empty neural net and runs a genetic algorithm. More robust, but really hard and takes a while to train. Not to mention the bots tend to learn bad habits early on, and the neural files can get huge by the time they are even competent to a basic newb.
So, good luck making a realistic bot. =]
Which is why IMHO it would be unreasonable to expect such a thing, though I do pause to wonder why the bots of Unreal Tournament seemed reasonable to me and with a few sliders I could create all different kinds of play styles. Still, for NS1's bots and our experiences with them, your point very much still stands if that is anything to go by. This is why when I first presented the notion of having our characters do more than just stand still and make like nice free targets, that the type of bot the AFK player becomes would be designated for support roles only, hopefully narrowing and borrowing heavily from such ideas already floating about such as the weld bot.
{
RunWeldBot();
}
else if (this.GetHP() > 50)
{
RunSupportFire();
}
else
{
AlienStructure structure = GetClosest(this.Location, alienStructures);
if(structure != null && GetDistance(structure.Location, this.Location) < 100)
{
if(structure is AlienResourceNode)
{
SetWayPoint(structure);
}
else if (structure is AlienOffenseChamber)
{
SetWayPoint(this.Location + CreateVector(structure, this.Location) * 2);
}
}
else
{
AlienPlayer player = GetClosest(this.Location, alienPlayers);
if(GetDistance(this.Location, player.Location) > 200)
{
WaitForBackup();
}
else
{
OnKeyDown(Keys.F4);
OnKeyDown(Keys.F4);
OnKeyDown(Keys.F4);
OnKeyDown(Keys.F4);
OnKeyDown(Keys.F4);
Console.Print("OMG HAX!!!!?!!111");
Console.Print("OMG HAX!!!!?!!111");
Console.Print("OMG HAX!!!!?!!111");
Console.Print("OMG HAX!!!!?!!111");
Console.Print("OMG HAX!!!!?!!111");
}
}
}<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
/me equips a jetpack on myself and a welder on the bots
/me flies into a pit with a trigger_hurt below me and watches the bots all jump off into the abyss like lemmings
*chortle*
No of course there's no such thing as a realistic bot, but it could substitute for a few seconds before the player slot is vacated. I see this idea as more of a gradual version of the AFK time-out auto-kick followed by the empty slot (or in the case of TF2, empty slot that is then filled by a team-switched player).
Time-out auto-kick and team-switching in my opinion would still be needed in NS2, but it would help if there was a temporary auto-pilot mode where a player needs to take brief break in the game to take care of something and they can lock onto following the nearest player.
Also worth noting would be some kind of limit of how many times you could do this in a game. Otherwise people could just be abusing the aimbot-like feature like it's a toggle. So I'd support a limit like, only once per game can you do an AFK time-out.
The fastest way to solve the problem would be to boot the individual after a given amount of time set by a server administrator. Until the player gets booted, the team will have to "suck it up" and deal without.
I think people understand there are much, much bigger fish to fry... or at least you and I do. (I suppose I shouldn't assume) <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />