Complex artificial intelligence
5. Do you have any interesting tactical skills to illustrate the enemy AI?
There are several interesting skills among maneuvers, which the enemy AI can apply against the player. For example if the player attacks the enemy, and it de-feats, enemy soldiers can hide somewhere instead of running away. They will hide behind structures, in covers or in other places, the main idea to disappear out of sight. If an AI soldier is seriously injured, first of all he will stay in cover, second he will bandage himself. Sometimes it comes to some kind of an ambush in this way. If the player lost the trace of the enemy, he can order his squad to start searching for it. It can happen that the enemy has partially healed his injuries and took rather nice covers in some house ruins. In this case the player can get under a cross-fire from different points at the same time.
In the opposite, if the player has entrenched himself somewhere and is facing the AI of enemies, they will not attack the defense line plainly, loosing manpower in useless manner. They will attack from flanks of throw grenades from safe points. They will start attacking gradually, carefully, changing covers and giving fire sup-port in turns. Both AIs, the one of the enemy and of the player, are equal in strength. In addition there are some actions, which enemy soldiers fulfill auto-matically. For example they repair their vehicles themselves. It looks as follows, for example a member of a tank crew takes a repair kit (if it is available) and starts repairing. After it he puts the repair kit back, climbs back to the tank and it moves further.
6. The player in ‘Faces of War’ will command a squad of six soldiers, which is a complicated task in itself, especially if the whole army depends on you. What does AI allow for the squad in the game?
In ‘Faces of War’ we developed a sort of a unique control system, which is based on three fundamentals. First one is the Direct Control, which is well-known to the players of ‘Soldiers: Heroes of WWII’. This is the lowest, mostly concretized con-trol mode. The next level is the common tactical control, it is familiar from the majority of strategy/tactical games and even from MMORPG, the so-called “point-and-click system”. This system is well-known and doesn’t deliver any problems. The last one is high-level control system, which is directly related to the control and coordination of the squad. This system allows the player give his squad wider tasks. The uniqueness of this three-level system is in its combination opportuni-ties. Having sent the squad to fight the enemy, you can take a sniper and send him to the flank to support the advancing troops with accurate fire from the cover. As it was said, the squad will act as a whole squad and will not disband while your sniper is going to the specified point. There is another variant: to keep the squad commander in Direct Control mode. Other squad soldiers would automatically comprehend what target their com-mander is firing at and would support his fire with theirs. They will follow other actions of their commander exactly like in the common control mode.
It will be possible to apply various control combinations, it gives the player more freedom and the variety of choice. Each player will find the methods, which are mostly convenient and nice for him, we can not advise a universal solution for all players.
Click for larger image7. How did you manage to balance the actions of AI with the player’s instruc-tions? Can soldiers disobey the player’s orders for example?
This is a very good question. It was difficult to establish a balance between player’s orders and AI thinking. Initially we thought that individual decisions and AI actions are nice. With the course of time and in process of testing it turned out that excessive independence of soldiers, staying under player’s control, irritates and doesn’t let play to full extent. Everything had influence on it, soldiers made decisions to attack on their own, when the player didn’t want it or gave them-selves out with shots during secret missions. In general they acted as they liked. So, we understood that only the method of development, which we applied earlier, could help us. This was the “cut and try method” of iterative research and devel-opment. We started reducing the initiative of the units controlled by the player. It was important not to deprive them of their senses and not to prohibit them to act at all. It was required to find a nice balance between the player desires and AI plans.
Now the soldiers controlled by the player don’t obey player’s orders, only if something threatens their life. For example they will not go to a burning house, they run away from flying grenades and from moving vehicles. A squad can de-fend some time, fight and hide without player’s attention, however if enemy forces are surpassing only the player can help soldiers.
8. Are there any emotional aspects the player has to confront with, besides strategic AI? Do the soldiers have senses like fear?
Yes, we needed emotional aspects for soldiers conducted by the complicated AI system, which we developed for ‘Faces of War’. This all is transparent for the player, he doesn’t see the figures, but he can estimate the morale of soldiers from their behavior. All soldiers have the above-mentioned morale (both enemy AI and player’s sol-diers). It can change in process of a battle depending on the events happening around the soldier, and opposite, soldiers calm down in quite situations and their morale “gets balanced” so to say. The following influences the morale of soldiers: physical state, health. Additional influence is executed by current injuries, they lower the morale. However soldiers are worried not only by their state, but also by the state of their brothers-in-arms. If a soldier sees that his comrades are dead all around him, it influences his morale as well. The opposite option is fair, keen shots and deaths of enemies boost the morale of soldiers. Effective attacks can encourage soldiers, they would decide then to at-tack the enemy further. If they encounter their brothers-in-arms, they exchange front news. In this case soldiers with high morale can encourage the tired ones, who lost their hope.
The morale of soldiers influences their behavior. In particular the level of activity, they can want to attack the enemy or on the contrary to retreat. The amount of soldiers, allies and their class (heavy armament, AFV, tanks etc) influences the morale of soldiers as well. In this way this complicated system is purposed for one thing – to create a realistic picture of soldier behavior in the battle conditions. We don’t operate any figures, percents. Emotions of soldiers are expressed in their behavior and each player would feel it playing in ‘Faces of War’.
9. Would you like to say something for the community?
We received a lot of feedbacks and suggestions after the release of ‘Soldiers: He-roes of WWII’ concerning the system of AI and tried to implement all of them or almost all of them in ‘Faces of War’. Therefore the opinion of the community is important for us and we always listen to it.
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