half-life

[drummand]

Apologies in advance for further derailing this thread, but ...

I actually read a thing by the guy who did Halo's AI where he explained (among other things) that originally, the "Leader dead! Run away!" line was played much less; but people didn't realize that the grunts were running away until they made the line play every time it happened. So your comment about visible AI is very true.

Made me think of this 2002 GDC presentation on the Illusion of Intelligence by a couple of the Bungie guys. Its focus is on Halo, natch; pretty non-technical (but technical enough to be interesting), mostly about the techniques they employed to make their AI *seem* smart.

[MrChlorophyll]

I only really noticed HL2's AI when I played it on hard. I was surprised when I fled to a tunnel away from a particular combat scene and the guys actually kept chasing me through them.

When that happens, it is quite surprising. It almost makes me mad sometimes too. I'm so used to being able to run away and not be followed that when I am chased I find myself thinking "Dammit, I'm running for a reason! Stop chasing me!" A very strange game mechanic to become totally and blindly accustomed to: If I just run away I'll be safe back there because I killed all the bad guys, so I'll just rearm and have at thee!

[Nick Breckon]

You can just get HL: Source. It's exactly the same game except slightly nicer looking.

Or you can wait for Black Mesa Source, which looks to be a higher quality remake of HL1 than HL: Source turned out to be.

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

The funny thing about HL's AI is I can only remember being surprised by it one or two times. There were only a few major encounters with the soldiers that showed it off. It was the quality of the scripted sequences that really impressed me. The same held true with HL2, for the most part. Which is fine, I think. It hurts the replay factor to a degree, but FEAR went entirely in the other direction (less focused on an experience as a whole, more on random encounters within stock environments) and I don't replay that every day either.

[Thrik]

Yeah, Black Mesa Source looks pretty cool. I remain slightly cautious, however, as there is a lot to Half-Life 1 — it's going to take a hell of a lot of effort to maintain the high level of quality throughout the entire thing, considering the sheer amount of level design and such that'll be necessary.

Although I guess a lot of Black Mesa is quite similar, so at least they can reuse props and techniques quite frequently. I guess we'll see! Particular shots that I like include:

http://www.blackmesasource.com/flash/images/mr7_am1.html

http://www.blackmesasource.com/flash/images/mr6_inbound2.html

http://www.blackmesasource.com/flash/images/mr4_st1.html

[Thrik]

Yeah, Black Mesa Source looks pretty cool. I remain slightly cautious however, as there is a lot to Half-Life 1 — it's going to take a hell of a lot of effort to maintain the high level of quality throughout the entire thing, considering the sheer amount of level design and such that'll be necessary.

Although, I guess a lot of Black Mesa is quite similar, so at least they can reuse props and techniques quite frequently. I guess we'll see! Particular shots that I like include:

http://www.blackmesasource.com/flash/images/mr7_am1.html

http://www.blackmesasource.com/flash/images/mr6_inbound2.html

http://www.blackmesasource.com/flash/images/mr4_st1.html

[SpiderMonkey]

Or you can wait for Black Mesa Source, which looks to be a higher quality remake of HL1 than HL: Source turned out to be.

http://www.blackmesasource.com/

Technically HL: Source never labelled itself as a remake, so to say "higher quality remake" is a rather pointless statement. I have a lot of admiration for the scope of Black Mesa's ambition and the quality of the content they have created so far, but at the moment my expectations are broken into 3 parts: 40% failure to finish (a team of almost 40 people working successfully over the internet for the 3 years required is unprecedented, afaik), 40% failure to capture a lot of the nuance present in Valve's version (everything from pacing to more subtle things like colour theory - why are the rocks in one of Thrik's screenshots orange when the originals were purple?), 20% success.

Suspending my pessimism, I'm sure what they end up releasing will be cool, but I doubt it will be Half-Life and I think it'll be a long wait yet.

[Nick Breckon]

Technically HL: Source never labelled itself as a remake, so to say "higher quality remake" is a rather pointless statement.

Well, okay. Higher quality remastering? Sure they're in different classes as far as their goals, but they're still similar projects in that they're both transferring the original game to the Source engine and improving certain aspects of it. I think a lot of people would agree that HL: Source didn't really do as much as they had hoped, but I suppose it's going to remain the most faithful "new" version of the game, considering the BM team has stated that they're going to change some fundamental things.

And yeah, I'd agree there are a lot of "ifs" surrounding the project. What has been shown has been pretty encouraging though, and I'm looking forward to it in the back of my mind. For someone who has never played the original, HL: Source is definitely the way to go for the pure experience. Still, I haven't replayed the original yet, so I'm planning on holding off until Black Mesa, provided they do eventually pull it off.

[Ben X]

I didn't realise for ages that the AI in Hal-Life only becomes impressive on the highest difficulty setting. I was really annoyed about that, as I'm not that good a games-player, and I would have struggled to get through on that setting, without using the quick-save key to the point of breaking the game (I only allowed myself to use it when Valve forced me to smash crates for minutes at a time).

Couldn't they have kept the AI high on all difficulty levels, and just adjust the AI health levels or whatever? I'd rather be impressed and scared by the AI whilst thanking my lucky stars I can dispatch them with a single shotgun blast to the face, rather than never get to experience it.

Perhaps Black Mesa can fix this for me!

[DanMarshall]

I'm not that good a games-player

As your Gibbage score will attest, my good friend. What's your ranking, now? 27%? Bwah-hah-haaaah...!

I'm surprised you made it past the crates without getting a nasty splinter and dying from infection. Bwah-hah-haaaah...!

[SpiderMonkey]

I'd rather be impressed and scared by the AI whilst thanking my lucky stars I can dispatch them with a single shotgun blast to the face, rather than never get to experience it.

You (accidentally?) point out (what I consider) one of the great tensions of AI. It takes time to act intelligently, so for AI to seem intelligent you want them to be alive for a fair while. But the longer an AI lives for, the slower the pace of the experience. How long is long enough to be intelligent but yet also keep the pace of the game high?

Different games successfully find different balance points - Timesplitters does very well with simple enemies that die incredibly quickly; FarCry's enemies are tough buggers and that gives them the longetivity to do some intelligent things.

[miffy495]

Yet also makes Far Cry infuriatingly hard in some areas. Not that I didn't struggle through them, but the struggle part is the key here. Sure, it felt great when I won, but the process wasn't really all that fun.

[brkl]

Far Cry was crap after the monsies appeared. Mercenaries were fun.

[miffy495]

Agreed. As soon as the monsters showed up, I really stopped caring.

[Moosferatu]

I ended up deciding to get the complete collection. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that they changed it recently. I did the math and if I progressively got the Half-Life 1 anthology, then HL2, and finally Episode 1 it would have cost me around $65. There's currently a discount on the complete collection (which includes Episode 1), so it's down to $71. Considering I'd get several other games for just $6 more, I figured it was worth it. I'm not going to actually start playing it though till after my exams next week, and then I might play Psychonauts again first. I think those yo-yos rekindled my desire for some more Psychonautsy goodness.

[Moosferatu]

Against my better judgement I just went through the training. The game seems to be running really fast. That is, it feels like I'm moving too fast. Is this normal? Is there something I can do about it?

[MrChlorophyll]

Whenever I replay Half-Life, it always seems like I'm the Flash in an ice rink. I generally get used to it by about the time I beat it again. Then I feel like a turtle crawling through tar when I play anything else.

So short answer: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's normal.

[MrHoatzin]

Were you talking about Half-Life or Psychonauts?

[Moosferatu]

Half-Life

Thanks for the info, Snubs. That's exactly what it feels like. Weird. I guess I'll get used to it then.

[DanJW]

There is a "walk" button. Gordon runs by defualt, because he was top of his MIT class athletics team or something. You might be able to find a tab that turns default run off, then you can have a "sprint" button instead. The running can be especially annoying during the patforming moments.

[Anonononomous]

It could also be a CPU thing. I have an Athlon 64 3500+ with Cool 'n' Quiet enabled and some games (Starship Troopers demo and Beyond Good and Evil) don't realize this. They set themselves to the slowed down CPU and then the game plays about 2.2 times as fast as it should once the CPU speeds up.

If you have Intel SpeedStep or AMD Cool 'n' Quiet enabled you should turn them off to make some old games run at the right speeds.

________

vaporizers

Edited January 18, 2011 by Anonononomous

[Moosferatu]

ha! I just played the first couple of minutes of HL2 (I haven't finished the first yet). Has anyone here ever seen Manos: The Hands of Fate? It used to be the lost rated movie on IMDB, but apparently a lot more crap movies have come out recently and now it's only the 30th. Anyway, to the point. Gman sounds exactly like Torgo, which is hilarious. There's no way I can take him seriously now.

[Redwall]

I think the G-Man was always on the edge between seriousness and cheesiness anyway.