There's other issues with the AI in Crysis. My favorite is the one where you pick a guy off from long range and then sit still and go into cloak. I've done this a few times now and everytime a group of enemy soldiers gathers around me and pretty much stares at me until I uncloak. They just don't shoot. The helicopters in the game behave in the exact same way. They hover above you in circles until you uncloak, even if you haven't been visible to them in whole minutes of gameplay.

For the most part I think the game works really really well, but if you approach certain situations in certain ways the flaws are exposed in pretty irritating ways.

I'm going to stick my neck out and chime in, despite not having played Crysis -- since neither I, nor my computer, live in the future.

But, having played Bioshock, and based on the issues people are describing, I think Yellow5 brings up an interesting point about the illusion of convincing behavior -- but is that the sole province of AI, or AI in the context of the game itself?

The Bioshock AI, as you describe it, does sound relatively simple in programming terms, but in story terms, it functions in all the ways that you need for it to function to make the experience convincing. With Crysis, the issues that people are describing sound like their expectations of how the context of the AI behavior is overselling what the programming is actually capable of -- a case of reach exceeding grasp, I guess.

So, is it really an AI problem, or is it an integration problem? That the context for Crysis is overselling what the actual programming is capable of?

I couldn't say without playing the game, but the AI going to the location you were last seen and then waiting there until something else happens is a reasonable behavior, if a tad boring.

If the simpler solution is to constrain the environment in a game designed to be wide open, it's not a viable solution.

If you refrain from going cloak the AI in crysis is pretty fun. They send guys around chuck grenades at you. Run after you and try to flank.

But as soon as you cloak they go into retard mode.

Try playing Crysis without Cloak on Delta, its almost impossible unless you go really slow and are prepared to run the hell away when they creep up on you.

Although I'm sure that this is true, it's like saying that a major portion of the game works just fine, but only when you purposefully don't use this other major portion of the game. That's broken to me. AI that doesn't psychically know where you are has been done, and it has been done in very large environments.

Oh, that's a good point about the geometry. I'm not sure what the state of the art is now, but in the few Unreal levels I created way back when, a large number of AI points needed to be dropped into the level to get the bots to act appropriately. Changing geometry would complicate things.

I think we're starting to see an uncanny valley as far as A.I. goes similar to graphics, as in the more freedom you're given as a player, the more complex the A.I. has to be, and therefore the easier the non-realistic actions stick out, and the more likely you're able to perform an action the developers didn't anticipate.

All AI in games pretty much sucks. Human AI is just still so far ahead it ain't funny. For this reason I prefer mp fps games over the sp campaigns.

It would be sweet to play a mode in Crysis or another fps game where human players control the enemies and try to defeat the player controlling the hero. I think it's doable. The enemy players would have to be weaker of course.

But actually that leads to another observation that players don't really want a realistic AI because that would mean they'd get their ass handed to them as much as they are dishing it out. That's not going to work well in a sp campaign where you're supposed to make progress. It would mean you can't take on 50 enemies at once with an assault rifle. So people don't want realistic AI do they?

Or do they want realistic AI where everyone is carrying bb guns which is sort of how a sp fps game would be if you had humans controlling waves of enemies.

I agree with kuddles. There are some pretty easy ways to exploit the AI in Crysis, but more often than not the AI was doing cool things like spraying bullets wildly when I shot at them while cloaked, swerving to avoid crap I threw at them while they were driving, or flushing me out of cover with coordinated troop movements.

I think the AI in Crysis goes for more interesting gameplay situations over realism, though, whereas in Bioshock they did a lot of work to make the AI characters interesting just to watch even when you aren't fighting them.

I think I know what game you're referring to, and I'd like to go on record as saying I still think you're nuts. It (Halo, right?) does pretty well for what it sets out to do, but we've got a ways to go.

I'm sure it would be really easy to create an AI that strafes and jumps constantly and calls me derogatory names the whole time.

I think this is partly why my FPS experiences seem to differ from other gamers'. Why did I think Halo 2 was so easy? Probably because it seemed to make more sense to sneak past most of the Arbiter set-pieces. Why was Bioshock's combat interesting? Partly because I was worried about turning myself into a monster in order to fight monsters.

Strafing and jumping is more a failure of the game (or lack of desire or need or want) to simulate the physics of a real world. If you don't want that behavior in the game then model it out. That's actually easy enough to do unlike AI.

If the AI in CRysis behaved like a human that wants to get out alive you'd have the whole base after you within seconds after they detect you. They'd also camp out in a tree somewhere and wait for you to pass by and shoot you in the back. etc. I mean do you really want an AI as smart as a human? I don't think anyone does.

I still think fps games are basically 3d Space Invaders. And have morphed into 3d Galaxians and 3d Galagas. I just don't think the AI has evolved much over the AI in Pacman either.

One reason is that I don't think it's a priority for most of these games either. Look at games like Halo or Half-life that have better AI than many of today's games whereas areas like graphics in today's games are definite improvements over games from 5 or 10 years ago.

I mean if there was a focus on AI then maybe some standard AI routines would be programmed into hardware just like with graphics cards. And programmers could call those up. But the truth seems to be that AI isn't a big priority for most of these games.

And if you look at the bigger picture then you see that if you could make the enemy as smart as yourself then you couldn't take on 50 enemies in a base and act like Rambo. So the 'goal' that people seem to want to get to is a mirage ain't it?

This is indeed true. If A.I. worked just as well as humans than you would be forced to nerf them in some other way, because how frustrating would it be if you were playing a level of a game where it was like a multiplayer match except you were the only one on your team?

Strategy game developers have been pretty open in how their A.I. programming is incredibly difficult to work on because they're trying to intentionally make it more stupid. Programming the computer A.I. to make the right choice for optimum efficiency every time in a game like Civ IV or Command & Conquer is relatively easy compared to making it so that it occasionally makes the wrong choice in a way that seems believeable and not the result of a numeric calculation.

I'm sure the same is involved in FPS's. Hell, F.E.A.R. seemed to recognize this, with A.I. that fought you tactically they knew they had to include slo-mo and the squad constantly saying out loud what they were planning.