Enemy AI in Ghost Recon

[Rocky]

There's a fair bit of chat in other areas of the forum here about enemy AI in other, upcoming games. When you guys think of Ghost Recons 7 year old enemy AI though, what do you think of?

I really like them.

Under Fire they ...

• Split off in different directions
  
• Head for cover
  
• Use Cover really well
  
• Change stances
  
• Attempt to flank
  

And they do all that is really pretty neat character animation

On Patrol they

• Look realistic
  
• Have a large range of movements to avoid player complacency
  
• Have that jerky "stop and look around" movement that always makes me think they might just have seen me
  

What I really like is if they return fire and you manage to duck out of harms way, and relocate, when you look back towards the incident area, the AI can be seen closing in on it, oblivious to your relocation (I don't think we even see that in GRAW, GRAW has that annoying magic eye where they can track you even out of LOS). For some reason that kind of realism impresses me and I really can't think of seeing it in more modern games.

Complaints? One shot crack accuracy, yeh maybe.

Overall I think the Ghost Recon enemy AI are pretty impressive and regardless of the grandiose claims of more recent games, Ghost Recon still holds its own in this area.

Agree, disagree?

[migryder]

agree, and I too like how well they will hunt you when they become aware of your presence...not with uber knowledge of your position but they do a decent job of covering the flanks of an area where you should be...this can become really obvious on maps like refinery, caves, rrbridge, mountain, depot, ravine, sierra..etc...how many times have you been popped by a chr you did not expect to show up on a flank?

mig

[MarkAm_i]

Agreed. I often sit back in awe at the excellence of this 8 year old game and have a hell of a time fighting toward mission completions.

Great job to the old RSE! Or should we say ORSE?

[Tinker]

Under Fire they ...

* Split off in different directions

* Head for cover

* Use Cover really well

* Change stances

* Attempt to flank

1 guy usually hits the dirt and plasters the area with suppressive fire while the rest find cover.

Overall I think the Ghost Recon enemy AI are pretty impressive and regardless of the grandiose claims of more recent games, Ghost Recon still holds its own in this area.

Agree, disagree?

Fully agree.

[krise madsen]

Agree, disagree?

Agree. Whatever they did with the AI back then, they did it right. Especially on the larger maps with lots of foliage, I still to this day find myself diving behind the nearest cover, wondering where the heck the bad guys are hiding.

[wombat50]

Agreed.

They are vicious ######.

[2nd Ranger]

Their cover-seeking ability is cool. Not alot of games have AI that find cover and concealment so well, but this is probably due to the small maps. The fact that they try to suppress you is great, and they will sometimes advance on your position while firing on full-auto to keep your head down.

They do soon become predictable though. You know that when you open fire on a three-man patrol, one of them will immediately turn and start spraying rounds in your direction while the other two break for cover. You know that if you fire or throw a grenade from a certain location, all of the nearby enemies will home in on that position (if you do a firefight on Farm Day and just launch a few grenades over the hill, most of the AI on the map come running).

I found that after I had been playing the game long enough, my gameplay decisions were based on knowing how the AI would react to a situation. I don't recall ever being flanked by the AI. If you're in the middle of a fight and you stop shooting for a second, they tend to just slowly walk towards you.

They still look cool though. I think alot of that is down to the animations. They make them seem more human.

Edited August 12, 2009 by 2nd Ranger

[MarkAm_i]

I found that after I had been playing the game long enough, my gameplay decisions were based on knowing how the AI would react to a situation. I don't recall ever being flanked by the AI. If you're in the middle of a fight and you stop shooting for a second, they tend to just slowly walk towards you.

They still look cool though. I think alot of that is down to the animations. They make them seem more human.

Yes, the firefight AI are not the best in GR. However the AI in Mission HX are some of the toughest and most realistic I've seen of any of the mods. Fragging, flanking, attacking, suppressing more.

Not only will they suppress you while their comrades flank you. Once you duck for cover, it's often a matter of time until they start tossing frags to dislodge and kill you.

Also, I've experienced simultaneous flanking attacks by the enemy. You really got to pick your positions carefully on recon or the superior force of the enemy will end your mission early in disaster.

I remember being pinned down on top of a hill behind a boulder 15 ft in diameter. It was down to me, my last team member had just been killed. I even had a sensor down on the hilltop and was able to see them approaching, flanking me from both sides of the rock. They moved close into position and I couldn't decide which way to turn because the moment was so intense and their agression had me on my heels. Then they rushed me from both sides at once leaving me no time to react. One of many brutal endings.

[Rocky]

Ah good point, I forgot to mention their clever use of grenades. How many times have I been hunkered down in a bush or behind a rock only to hear a grenade plop down beside me. Awesome.

[krise madsen]

I may have told this story before, but I still recall the time we were playing co-op defend on the Cuban beach resort map; the one with the beach and the sea wall. I had run up to the wall and aimed my machinegun at the stairs in the seawall opening, gunning down AI as they appeared.

"Heh heh, stupid AI" I chuckled, expecting to spend the rest of the mission mowing down bots as they stupidly ran in front of my muzzle like lambs to the slaughter.

At which point the AI, who can't see me. Start lobbing grenades over the seawall. That stuff is still totally awesome by todays standards.

[Rocky]

I know the map you mean and experienced the same thing, awesome.

[migryder]

today I watched the cinematic to the opening mission of P2 and one of the AI tossed a frag at the camera position...too funny. I also like how they will use rpgs when given one for a team...even though its the primary in the kit they often wait until a good time to unleash it on ya...then again they don't recognize topo changes so well and may kill themselves then...still, nothing quiet like having one of those come sailing out of the mist at your position...

mig

[Orbarth]

The enemy AI in Ghost Recon had always impressed me, and continue to do so in regards to some other more modern games in which they do not really make you believe they behave tactically like in GR.

Though sometime the "i stay there for the whole firefight duration and only act as a turret rotating once a while" from some of them (i guess because they were not given any kind of waypoints or patrol zone) was not really that bright. But when you have some enemy AI moving around, they become really brillant piece of coding.

Edited August 14, 2009 by Orbarth

[WhiteKnight77]

Many of you are relating something I have known for quite some time (since the game first came out mind you). I am still amazed at how well the AI act and this dates back even further to Rogue Spear (after all, GR used a tweaked version the RS engine which was a tweaked version of the original R6 engine that RSE built themselves). Enemy AI do figure out your location and hunt you down. We all have been amazed at how we got 6ed and wondered who got us.

Sure, there were some dumb things they did, but all AI no matter what game apparently share similar traits and do something stupid every once in a while. I would like to see more AI like what GR has offered for the last 7.75 years, but I doubt that we will ever see something like them again.

[NoQuarter]

Agree.

AI-packing/using grenades, able to low crawl on command, or able to complete a mission requirement on order...that was pretty Advanced, wasn't it.

[KRP 56]

As I play through some newer games it only reinforces my thought that the enemy in GR are still as good and in most cases better than anything else out there. Newer games need to spend time on A.I. development instead of just of bunch of eye candy.

[ApexMods]

Absolutely love Ghost Recon's AI! Looooovvve it! I probably played every shooter out there - nothing else even comes close. Except maybe GR's sibling Rainbow Six up to Raven Shield/Athena Sword - everything after that suffered the fate of GR's 'sequels' AW/AW2: The same dumb ###### wrapped in eye candy they feed the two-thumbs-controller-console kids in all the other 'modern' shooters nowadays.

For me, a constant reminder of Ghost Recon's superior AI is the way it keeps surprising me in missions I scripted myself. You would think that if you know the innards of the mission script - heck, if you created it - you should be able to predict what those enemies are up to, but... no - they keep doing unexpected things and before you know it, you have those guys on your six again and bite the dust. Amazing stuff!

So whoever created those AI routines for Ghost Recon, hats off to you! When you consider that this AI was created almost ten years ago to run on technology of that time - just imagine what would be possible today if someone actually wanted to improve this! With the computing power of todays hardware you could make those NPCs freakishly smart and completely unpredictable, but then again maybe the developers fear their current clientele would fall into a shock-induced coma when faced with game AI smarter then themselves a slice of bread.

[Lightspeed]

It is good AI but I think Arma 2 AI is pretty damn clever now - beautiful flanking manouevres.

They still fall down in CQB but for medium range firefights they are a joy and the fact the vcl can/will drive/fly around and search for you is amazing.

Yes I do like my Arma2.

[ApexMods]

Yes I do like my Arma2.

So I - and I think everyone else - noticed.

I gave ArmA2 another spin - wrote about it in this thread (so many of your ArmA2 plugs to choose from), forgotten to get into the whole AI thing though, and I don't want to analyze it in too much detail here, but in my limited experience ArmA2's AI has not really surprised me in a positive way.

Enemies would actually (quite calmly) walk up to me under fire (btw - they wouldn't drop from repeatedly being hit by machine gun fire) and do all other kinds of funny things, like running away from me in a straight line while being in full view, basically laying down at my feet on an open road etc. - not to mention the friendly AI that simply insisted to run into my fire again and again (although I'll admit that GR's original AI does that sometimes, too).

[zeroalpha]

There's a fair bit of chat in other areas of the forum here about enemy AI in other, upcoming games. When you guys think of Ghost Recons 7 year old enemy AI though, what do you think of?

Funny that mate, am at work tonight and popped in to search for a long forgoten titbit, anyway, spent this afternoon in IGOR scripting a mission to teach my girlfriend how the AI react to contacts under different conditions (if the AI know where your fire came from the nearest surviving AI will engage as the others seek cover)

i still love the way the AI works, it keeps me coming back for more!

[Rocky]

spent this afternoon in IGOR scripting a mission to teach my girlfriend how the AI react to contacts under different conditions

I'm sure you won't mind if I tell you this makes me LOL.

[zeroalpha]

you can laugh now mate, she will be up for some coop soon so we had better play nice, remember what happened to storm when he shot the teddy bear and my daughter was watching?

[Pfarrer]

I agree about GR's AI and about Mission HX in particular. I've been playing GR since it came out, and I've completed every mission in every original campaign and most of the community add-ons and campaigns as well. And yet when playing the Caves map on elite and using Mission HX, I think I've made it through without losing any guys only once.

[Parabellum]

Yes I do like my Arma2.

So I - and I think everyone else - noticed.

I gave ArmA2 another spin - wrote about it in this thread (so many of your ArmA2 plugs to choose from), forgotten to get into the whole AI thing though, and I don't want to analyze it in too much detail here, but in my limited experience ArmA2's AI has not really surprised me in a positive way.

Enemies would actually (quite calmly) walk up to me under fire (btw - they wouldn't drop from repeatedly being hit by machine gun fire) and do all other kinds of funny things, like running away from me in a straight line while being in full view, basically laying down at my feet on an open road etc. - not to mention the friendly AI that simply insisted to run into my fire again and again (although I'll admit that GR's original AI does that sometimes, too).

I think you should get your hands no VBS2 (ArmA2's big brother) and play co-op. Then post your impressions. I guarantee you that you will never have had a more intense or 'realistic' gaming experience. Ghost Recon completely and utterly failed in so many areas. CQB? Fail. Long-range combat? Fail. Massive combat? Fail. ArmA and all of its relatives shine in the latter two.

As for Ghost Recon's AI, I think that sometimes it's tempting to view our beloved game through rose-colored glasses. Sure the AI did some neat things, but they were also completely utterly predictable and annoying. How about all those times when you were playing on a Desert Siege map, crawling toward your objective, only to have some enemy soldier 150 yards away turn and shoot you in the face from the hip? How about how they'd all wander on up to the scene of a firefight, so that you could conveniently hose them down? If someone didn't turn around and shoot you from the hip without having a bead on you first. Sure, the way that AI patrols would suppress and then flank is cool, but I've read somewhere that this was more or less just a hard-coded script. There's no 'intelligence' about it. That's what the AI are scripted to do.

[mark2000]

In all honesty, the one thing I like about the enemy AI in GR is that they don't have Quickdraw McGraw shooting reflexes that has plagued Rainbow Six since conception as well as most standard shooters these days (note: Modern Warfare 2 is titanically notorious for this). Even on Elite difficulty, I can still have a decent (and survivable) CQB scenario with or without the grenade launcher if only because the AI doesn't pop my head less than a split second after they spot me.