So, AI can still see through completely obscuring grass and shoot at the player.

Can't really argue with that point.. I wish they would devote more time to the AI as well.

I'm almost of the opinion there are things they CANNOT fix with the AI... either by technical limitation or perhaps lack of knowledge due to the fact the AI stuff was written years ago and not properly documented.

Can't really argue with that point.. I wish they would devote more time to the AI as well.

I'm almost of the opinion there are things they CANNOT fix with the AI... either by technical limitation or perhaps lack of knowledge due to the fact the AI stuff was written years ago and not properly documented.

The documentation thing...I refuse to believe that. But my refusal is diminishing every day.

Jeez so many pages for the fact that the Ai have no grass blocking their view in the radius around them, the same way that humans do. It would be great if the Ai went up on one knee if their view was (should be) obstructed by grass, that how a human has to deal with those situations. I also agree being told to change tactics to work around AI bugs is rather a silly statement to make.

perhaps lack of knowledge due to the fact the AI stuff was written years ago and not properly documented.

Well, for things like spotting AI this shouldn't be a problem, since IMHO, to make it more human-like, they need to write whole thing from the scratch anyway. :P

Yes that is true... and who am I to say what things can or can't be fixed? I'm just guessing like the rest of us :p

Now this is one of my bigger gripes -AI calling out "Infantry 1 click" when we are in a highly vegetated valley or the like.

"Wat!?!"

Part of the problem is that the AI is reporting guesses as actual locations. I remember this was explored a lot in Arma2 where AI would call out vehicles and infantry far away and often it was based on sound alone. Also the reported location on the map wasn't really the location of the enemy, adding to the confusion.

It would make a lot more sense and reduce frustration if the AI reported sound and movement. ie instead of "Infantry 1 click", instead say 'thought I saw movement ahead', or I hear something east. This would separate it's guessing from actual reports, which doesn't happen right now.

In case you're interested in AI's spotting abilities, you can download my simple test mission: bit.ly/10mAk5a

Usage:

- Download and extract the AI-detection.Altis folder to your editor missions folder. (the default location \Documents\Arma 3\<name>\missions\ or \Documents\Arma 3 - Other Profiles\<name>\missions\)

- Open the editor. Load the mission. Hit preview. Lie down in the bush and get shot at.

- You can move the soldiers around Altis, but don't delete them; they're named.

Features:

- 3 enemy soldiers. Their current distance and knowsabout value (from 0 to 4) shown.

- 3 arrows showing where they think you are.

- Hypnomatic's tracers, so you see where they're shooting at.

- Virtual arsenal.

- Teleport by clicking on the map or with user action "Go there".

Part of the problem is that the AI is reporting guesses as actual locations. I remember this was explored a lot in Arma2 where AI would call out vehicles and infantry far away and often it was based on sound alone. Also the reported location on the map wasn't really the location of the enemy, adding to the confusion.

It would make a lot more sense and reduce frustration if the AI reported sound and movement. ie instead of "Infantry 1 click", instead say 'thought I saw movement ahead', or I hear something east. This would separate it's guessing from actual reports, which doesn't happen right now.

Yeah, but it also spots as "contact, X, Y hundreds of meters etc." when he shouldn't have seen it or at least not under the conditions he (the AI) was in.

In case you're interested in AI's spotting abilities, you can download my simple test mission: bit.ly/10mAk5a

Usage:

- Download and extract the AI-detection.Altis folder to your editor missions folder. (the default location \Documents\Arma 3\<name>\missions\ or \Documents\Arma 3 - Other Profiles\<name>\missions\)

- Open the editor. Load the mission. Hit preview. Lie down in the bush and get shot at.

- You can move the soldiers around Altis, but don't delete them; they're named.

Features:

- 3 enemy soldiers. Their current distance and knowsabout value (from 0 to 4) shown.

- 3 arrows showing where they think you are.

- Hypnomatic's tracers, so you see where they're shooting at.

- Virtual arsenal.

- Teleport by clicking on the map or with user action "Go there".

Thanks Green fist. .. I'm interested in trying that...

yes that was very good vid. can you do that again and this time shoot your weapon when concealed to see how that affects them? i bet they home in on you pretty quickly...

They surely do home in on you like terminators no matter how concealed you are, ghillie or no ghille. Maybe the issue is more that they have instant triangulating abilites as soon they hear you fire or a combination of both (I remember there was such an issue way back in A1 but they fixed it then)?

/KC

well there are various workarounds, worrying about the AI super-powers is not going to fix anything.

you can:

1. make a custom island with better sight blocking veg (the A3 islands are particularly nasty terrain to fight in, as they offer very little real cover out of urban areas) - like we did in unsung mod - there you can get up to 1m away and knife the enemies

2. adapt your mission to make use of squad tactics and vehicles to reduce medium range rifle-to-rifle encounters with uber AI, as discussed

3. turn down their accuracy, as discussed, so that you at least have a chance to fight back - this also deals with the immersion-breaking aimbotting.

4. never run across an open field - basic fieldcraft - and if you do... never fire your weapon or engage unless you have no other choice. but if you do that, expect to die if you don't get reinforced pronto

5. design your missions to be fighting in towns in altis/stratis, or with vehicle support in the open

6. add an init eventhandler to the troops you spawn into missions to remove their NVG 80% of the time, to enable better night fighting

7. etc etc plenty of creative solutions to this

like much of the game content, I tend to see the AI provided in the game as a basis we can work with, rather than an end product

I tend to see the AI provided in the game as a basis we can work with, rather than an end product

This is the bad customer approach that contributed to keeping the AI in its horrendous state.

This is the bad customer approach that contributed to keeping the AI in its horrendous state.

This.

really? can you evidence that with examples? it's an intriguing idea.

Well, the evidence is a decade old AI bugs. That can happen only with a community that is tolerable to the problem.

and the fact that being very vocal about certain issues can actually get them fixed. as has been shown with turret-like insta turning of AI towards you in alpha. it might be a bit much to say that offering solutions is bad but taking the AI not as an end product will certainly get you exactly that. not an end product. bugs need to be reported and poked at to get them fixed. common knowledge

so BIS saw that people were NOT vocal about AI behaviour and decided not to fix them? I seriously doubt it. we've all been very vocal about it for the past decade. AI crossing bridges anyone?

given that this issue is not fixable without AI becoming blind in grassland, and perhaps exhibiting weird behaviours, perhaps tactics and other changes, like setting, and operational planning is the ONLY solution currently available.

you can't just apply this to the whole of AI. i just gave you an example and i'm sure there are others. if it would be as simple as saying please make them exactly like we want them, we wouldn't talk about this here. my point is that it's important to try. many issues aren't fixed because they are at the core or otherwise technically difficult to fix. and many issues the devs are simply not aware of because they obviously work more on the game than they play it. this is why each AI feedback ticket is requested to have a repro mission and a comparison of current and desired behaviour.

it's pointless to speculate about what makes them fix stuff and what doesn't.

it's very simple. you want stuff to be fixed? bring it up. i don't see how that is an outlandish idea tbh. why do you think there is a feedback tracker? taking what you said it would sound like it's all a scam just because arma's AI is still flawed.

i know it's frustrating to see these old ass issues persist, but i have to agree with Variable that just giving up and focusing on workarounds is not very smart. the whole CQB reflex thing was brought up over and over. and now we have AI that is actually dangerous in close quarters compared to arma 2's road proning retards. ofc this is a communication thing between devs and players. thinking otherwise is just a very pessimist/resignated point of view.

think of it like this, since you are a modder too. as a creator you are often happy with a first result. but then when you expose your creation to the "customer" you will get all the little issues get pointed out. it's a totally normal process that helps make things better.

so BIS saw that people were NOT vocal about AI behaviour and decided not to fix them? I seriously doubt it. we've all been very vocal about it for the past decade. AI crossing bridges anyone?

given that this issue is not fixable without AI becoming blind in grassland, and perhaps exhibiting weird behaviours, perhaps tactics and other changes, like setting, and operational planning is the ONLY solution currently available.

The thing is, some mods actually make the game more enjoyable and I'll bet that if they wanted, they could have integrated some of their characteristics in the vanilla game. Besides, no degree of tactics would save you when the AI refuses to move, engage or even take proper cover. :)

But do people actually want even more advanced AI? From experience, better AI will impact performance even more, not improve it. :p

Looking how the AI is the absolute framerate killer in ArmA, better multi core CPU utilization would not magically improve performance tenfold. imo the franchise would need more scripted AI. Not everything needs to be processed in real-time and in some situations scripting could solve a lot of issues (such as the admittedly terrible AI driving and occasional path finding).

But do people actually want even more advanced AI? From experience, better AI will impact performance even more, not improve it. :p

Looking how the AI is the absolute framerate killer in ArmA, better multi core CPU utilization would not magically improve performance tenfold. imo the franchise would need more scripted AI. Not everything needs to be processed in real-time and in some situations scripting could solve a lot of issues (such as the admittedly terrible AI driving and occasional path finding).

More advanced AI and fixing problems that exist with the current AI are two different things. We are discussing the latter.

But do people actually want even more advanced AI? From experience, better AI will impact performance even more, not improve it. :p

Looking how the AI is the absolute framerate killer in ArmA, better multi core CPU utilization would not magically improve performance tenfold. imo the franchise would need more scripted AI. Not everything needs to be processed in real-time and in some situations scripting could solve a lot of issues (such as the admittedly terrible AI driving and occasional path finding).

i would rather have better AI imo lol

i would rather have better AI imo lol

And that's fine. However, my 30 frames are very precious to me, and I would like for BI to actually improve utilization of multi-core CPU's before improving AI. Regardless, adding an "obscurance level" config to grass types would help this, so that even if the grass isn't rendered, the fact that it's there would have an impact if AI were to go prone.

Long story short, there is a technology that works for AI as obscuring soldiers in grass :icon_twisted:

To elaborate more, AI isn't affected directly by grass clutter, but each clutter type appears according to surface under it and that surface affects "size" of anyone on that surface (with some additional influences like stance, uniform and so on). Shooting the weapon affects this a lot (lets say 10 times), which means that AI sees soldier in grass being two meters tall instead for some short time. Just to note, bushes work in some other way :icon_twisted:

Long story short, there is a technology that works for AI as obscuring soldiers in grass :icon_twisted:

To elaborate more, AI isn't affected directly by grass clutter, but each clutter type appears according to surface under it and that surface affects "size" of anyone on that surface (with some additional influences like stance, uniform and so on). Shooting the weapon affects this a lot (lets say 10 times), which means that AI sees soldier in grass being two meters tall instead for some short time. Just to note, bushes work in some other way :icon_twisted:

...and this is the mistake.

I've been playing since Ofp in this game series. And when I'm prone in the grass and start hearing shots and bullets flying everywhere, I don't have any fucking idea of where is the enemy. And I have a surround system!

The soundscape is too chaotic to detect the enemy position with it, and even with less chaos and only a few enemies, you just can guess the general direction (N,E,S,W). If the enemy is at a decent distance, it's even harder to know where he is. The AI in comparison have a sonar for ears, they gain too much knowledge about player position only through sound. There should be a cap.