Realistic AI in Stealth Games

Is there a single (Stealth) game where enemies are actually not blind and can see like a normal human being? In every game, no matter how good it is, enemies always become blind after a certain distance and they never notice if you're hiding behind something and for example your head pops out. There are a few games that make a good job when it comes to enemies hearing you (Thief, Metal Gear Solid 3) but even modern games still struggle when it comes to enemy sight lines.

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Realistic AI is not fun, go fuck yourself and stop playing on babby difficulty.

How about a stealth game where once you're detected enemies don't automatically have x-ray vision, and go straight to you. How about that? Is that so hard to ask for?

Farcry 3 actually had that. If you shoot enemies, they will advance on the position they last saw you at, and will assume you're there until they get right up on where you were, or see you spotted somewhere else.

The Assassins Creed games and I believe Mark of the Ninja had this feature.

Stealth games only work because its no realistic. They would be impossible otherwise.

which is it then?

OP is complaining about deaf and blind enemies, if he didn't play on baby difficult they would have decent sight and hearing range. Truly realistic AI with call ins and checkups, who always go in pairs, always have flashlights or equivalent, etc. is not fun. OP does not know what realistic is.

sage

Holy fucking shit will you turboautists ever give up?
>>>Holla Forums

As for OP, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has great A.I
Unironically.
They will detect you from far away and will hear footsteps. They will shoot bushes in hopes of hitting you and throw grenades to pull you out of cover. They will also flank your position while their buddies are covering them.

Only way I can see realistic AI be done in a fun way, is to basically make the player character into the Predator. Camouflage would let you sneak around when far away and in the shadows, but AI would be able to spot you if you got close enough or moved around too much.

I suppose one of the closest things I've seen to good AI in a stealth game in recent years is MGSV, as it had outposts or command posts that would ask for reinforcements, utilize flares at night, post people on watchtowers or snipers on roofs for better surveillance coverage, turning personnel on shifts, among other minor details.

Now, that isn't to say that it doesn't feature flaws, sometimes there's the odd bunch of guys wandering around alone, never notice when a bunch of guys go missing when you knock/kill/fulton their teammates, only get suspicious under specific circumstances, and some of the AI behavior can easily be exploited, but at least it feels like there was an attempt at an engagin AI in a stealth environment.

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Fuck off Holla Forums, quit bringing your pathetic shitflinging to Holla Forums.

Crysis is still more of an FPS rather than a pure stealth game. Having a Thief-like game with better AI and camouflage to excuse the AI perception would be ideal.

Is there any stealth game with a significant difference between knocking a guy out and killing him?

You mean all three AVP games?

Dishonored?

the metal gear games? At least they will wake up after a while.


Other than the rats and end, not really. Knocked out guards never wake up and are functionally dead. I don't know if AIs can even wake them up.

MGSV's AI is shit. That's just some simple "if else" functions and switch cases.

The real intricate AI is the one used in FEAR, STALKER, and Oblivion. That kind of AI interprets a condition into numeric value and chooses a function that's most suitable to handle that condition. This makes the AI far more expandable.

No, because that would make it unplayable.

Splinter Cell has it. The bigger question is, why am I not allowed to break a knocked out guy's neck in stealth games.

user, you're trying to sound like you know more than you actually do.

Cause you could just cap them and they don't want to program that in?

I understand finite state programming, but yeah, GOAP is pretty alien to me. This woman knows more than I do though.


But guns make a lot of noise.

But you can put a suppressor on one.

Suppressor doesn't make a gun completely silent. Neck breaking however does.

From the things you're saying, I'm pretty confident you know jack shit about any programming. Maybe enough for a hello world program.

I think that shooting a suppressed gun and breaking a neck make similar amounts of noise. And it's a video game it doesn't matter

public static void main string[] args
print hello world

If you're talking about de lisle carbine, maybe. If so, then I should be allowed to tenderly slit enemy's throat.

If a game has an unnecessary illogical handicap, that really matters.

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What is going on with Thief's UI there? Is that from an alpha/beta?

A suppressed 5.56 gun is about as loud as a jackhammer.

Just use a suppressed revolver. only half joking

I played dishonored on highest difficulty and it still felt lame how I could clearly stand in enemies' field of vision, even right beside them and not be noticed.
Breaks immersion like hell, because I still tried to avoid their actual field of vision. It felt really cheesy to just march in front of their faces because I'm supposedly to far away to be seen by the game's standards, or if i kazachok in the hallway for only 0.3 seconds then it must have been rats.


The key mistake you're making is describing the AI by explaining how it was made instead of how it behaves.
It doesn't matter if you use recursive neural networks, self-modifying code and black magic. If you do a shit job, your characters can still turn out dumber than a simple state machine.

Rats and cockroaches live a more efficient life than humans, but it doesn't mean that they're more intelligent. That, and a complex AI is inherently a lot more buggy.

It can. Same for DXHR, I believe.

Doable with a Nagant revolver, but regardless, unless you're using a tiny round that's also subsonic, you're still making a significant amount of noise. You can get a bolt-action .22 with a can and good subsonic ammo very quiet, but it's also very useless unless you want to kill squirrels without bothering the neighbors.

Well we are killing a man who is unconscious, I think it'll do.

Although The Dark Mod has some pretty bad parts like sound design and no base campaign, it has nice AI. You can tweak it if you think it's not sensitive enough or too sensitive, and the guards notice things like important doors opened (but if the door is ajar they won't notice), important loot taken, dropped weapons, will re-light important torches, be alerted if they notice too many torches extinguished, and notice they've lost their pickpocketed item if they heard weird noises beforehand. When they reach a certain alert level, they'll become more sensitive for the rest of the mission. Certain character models also can hinder their sight, such as one eyed guards and hoods. There might be some other stuff I forgot, but overall it feels like what Thief 3/4 should have been.

Kojima tried this with the prototype for MGS on PS1 and then on 2. It would even go so far as to have NPCs on alert and search for you for permanently if you alerted the base. It was supposedly not very fun. Video games have to be structured, rules must be followed and have the allowance for players to make mistakes.


MGSV.

what do you mean by saying dark mod has bad sound design

That's the reason, it'd be an unfun, unplayable mess

Why is no AI reacting to their collegues missing?

Exactly. A realistic stealth game would be really difficult. Sam Fisher's OPSAT and tri-goggles would always give him away, Garrett would never get into a building because the guards would see some dark dressed weirdo skulking about.

Then don't get caught and learn to sneak.


The only games that did that were Desperados/Robin Hood and Commandos IIRC. That's one of the things that irks me. Why aren't guards calling in regularly, and if they don't the enemy heightens the alert and actively start looking for the missing guy, and if more go missing go on full alert and call in reinforcements from outside?

Instead of putting artificial restrictions like Thief on not killing people just make it clear to the player he's there to infiltrate, not kill people.

I don't know user, even with a disguise the enemies see me from miles away and start charging at me.

Have you ever tried to sneak irl?

Another thing about "realistic" guards would be that their patterns and behaviors would be random. Sure a guard would follow the same patrol, mostly, but maybe sometimes he suddenly stops to tie his shoes, when otherwise he wouldn't, maybe he starts looking in another direction, because he is bored, maybe if he decides to change his route a bit to ask another guard for a smoke, maybe he needs to go to the bathroom which could mean turning 180 degrees to go there, possibly spotting, you, the player who was sneaking behind him. All these unpredictable behaviors would make the game unplayable, but hey it's more realistic.

I don't quite get the "because that would be unfun"-argument, I mean the whole point of stealth games is to not be seen, unless you want (((Stealth))) like in the AssCreed games where you just run around stabbing people, real stealth is not about sneakily killing everyone but carefully avoiding the enemy. If you get caught you clearly fucked up and you deserve punishment. You can implement this without making the game frustrating, for example by giving the player a quicksave function but only a limited number of saves per level or by giving the player a wide variety of tools that the A.I doesn't have.

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Stealth games don't need a definite pattern, they just have to give the player a firepower that is about equal to the enemies. Like stealth in STALKER, you do stealth to minimize the chances of dying.

What I'm saying is "to be not seen" shouldn't be a necessary goal in a stealth game.

Why don't we make takedowns with a random chance of failing, or drop the magazine when reloading? Why don't we make the player character have a chance of slipping on the floor while running, or miss a grab when trying to jump over a big gap? Why not have him sneeze at random moments and give himself away? Why not do the same with farts?

Do I need more examples to illustrate your idiocy?

But then you would get "stealth" games like asscreed or far cary 4.

Then it's not a stealth game, but something else with secondary stealth elements attached.

"We" don't do that because it's not fun, which is why I criticize the importance of realism in stealth games. I'm not saying that everything should be unrealistic and become 100% pure randomness, but too much realism is not only unplayable but not fun as well.

what a good modern stealth game should have:

There's a difference between "not fun" and "realistic". Plenty of good games walk a fine balance between realism and engaging gameplay.

And I wasn't arguing for full realism, just gameplay that clearly reflects the focus of the game on the stealth part. Just gate that shit for higher difficulties so scrubs don't bitch and moan they have to ghost levels not to get swarmed with enemies when they decided to go Jack the Ripper on people.

The focus of a stealth game should be the stealth, and the pinnacle of stealth gameplay is ghosting.

Not a slightly better STALKER?


Castle Wolfenstein games are some of the first stealth games ever made, and they actually make the stealth optional. Although the stealth is optional, it's still the most viable option since your character dies in only 3 shots and only carries 10 bullets and a grenade. That's how stealth games should be like.

Yes and yes.

Yes.

Pointless busywork that just becomes a hassle.

I agree, there should be more pronounced differences between the various positions on you can assume, without one being the definitive best for sneaking in every situation.

I'd just take the MGS4 camo mechanic and go with it. It was very elegant, intuitive and simple, yet allowed for a lot of experimentation and clever uses.

Then kill them. If they don't wake up then why not just use non-lethal all the time? The blackjack made far too many levels in Thief 1 and 2 trivial because you could just knock everyone unconscious and have the run of the map.

Just copy the lockpicking from Thief. Simple and effective, and incredibly tense when you know a guard is coming.

Those are some really good suggestions, I think the Thief games have a lot of these things.

While ghosting is important and probably the main objective a player should strive for, there should also be a balance between what the player character can do and what the enemies can do. To compare thief to Dishonored, in Thief you had some arrows to put out light, make a noise to distract guards, put some moss on the floor to reduce sound and so on. These were the main tools in order to avoid detection. In Dishonored, you can see the enemies through walls, teleport short distances and posses people. You also had other powers and gadgets, but they were designed for killing, not infiltrating, sure Garret also had a sword and normal arrows to kill people, but most of his gadgets were for stealth or non-lethal takedowns(the blackjack). You could also say that in Dishonored you didn't have to uy all those power-ups, but then you had even less tools than Garret had, you didn't have arrows to put out lights, or to distract guards, just bombs and explosive arrows.
Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say that Dishonored is a shit game, or a shit stealth game(it's decent), but that there should be a fine balance between what the player characters can do, and what the enemy can do. If in Dishonored, the guards were all super-natural beings with super-natural abilities, then it would have made sense to use super-natural abilities to balance things out.

ghosting is controversial.
on one side you have missions that were not made with ghosting in mind, but ARE possible to ghost or almost, but its very hard.
then there are missions that were designed around ghosting, biggest difference is in map design and npcs placement/behaviour. If you plan to design whole game on ghosting, sure. Its difficult but possible. but thinking that u can make levels like regular thief had, and just take away player blackjack, expecting people to have fun is delusional, they're gonna bitch all over steam community for being too hard, especially if you add all these realistic things people talked about earlier. Game must be challenging, but must be fair. knockout imho should be used as a limited tool. for example blow dart with 4 darts containing some kinda instant muscle relaxant/sleeping concoction. Which player can use in critical situation, or use tactically. Forcing people to DONT TOUCH ANYTHING ANYONE, can be a turn off. people like messing with npcs.

Dishonored 1 and 2 are Dark Messiah successors, not stealth.

The games are made by the same studio that made Dark Messaih, and you can see it's influence, but it was also heavily influenced by Thief as well, and at time was seen as a spiritual successor to it, partly because there hadn't been a new first person stealth game in years. Ironically, nu-Thief feels more like a Dishonored clone than a Thief clone.

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Some of the sounds don't sound right or don't sound like they're loud or quiet enough. Walking in water is the most notable, it sounds like someone splashing around in a sink. Tile sounds more quiet than stone, and stone sometimes sounds like two bricks rubbing together. It feels like you need to have played Thief beforehand to know the noise levels instead of being able to tell from hearing.
I love The Dark Mod despite this problem, though. The real big problem with The Dark Mod is the lack of base campaign because FMs vary in quality a bit too much. Some missions are pretty great, like the first William Steele mission, but some others are too linear The Rift, the goal item is hidden too well with no hint The Bakery Job, or the creator doesn't set his gamma correctly causing everything to be pitch dark The Ravine. Thief FMs have this problem, too, but at least there's a campaign with a standard of quality.

Sez who?

Speaking of Stealth-games, i wish more games had you play as a character who's physically similar to Styx as in smaller stature.
It was really neat in Styx to be actually able to sneak around under dining tables and such and even the obligatory air-duct/vents didnt rustle my autism that bad as you were playing as a below 6'0 manlet.

Call ins and check ups were fucking shit in goyday 2
then again, entire game is

MgsV have that same thing going on…was a good feature

I think even recent asscreed and hitman absolution have that feature as well.

you can mod MGS V on PC. Infinite Heaven lets you adjust enemies' sight and hearing up to 400%. If you adjust the parameters going for a realistic feel, you'll understand why stealth games are the way they are.
Protip: it's not fun.

Also, one man sneaking missions aren't a thing in real life for a reason.

These two anons are correct.


What you're describing is an action game with optional sneaking–not a stealth game.


Dishonored does that. Chaos Theory does, too, but only if you knock someone out in mid-conversation, I think.


YAME!


Just do what Splinter Cell and Human Revolution do, and make them wake up if another guard finds them. That way you're encouraged to hide bodies, and not punished for going non-lethal. It also gives you a legit reason to kill someone, if there's no good place to hide their body.
Chaos Theory does that.
Sound and vibration, if you're playing with a gamepad, is the best lockpicking feedback. Thi4f wasn't very good, but it had a great lockpicking mini-game.

what a shit video, read the article from the guy that made the fear AI instead. much better than this garbage.

And not be heard or your activities detected. For example, in real life if a guard is in a lying down position (ie. knocked down, dead or injured) their pager broadcasts a signal to notify people of it happening, which exists to warn of potential injuries and doubles as an intruder detector. This means that 90% of stealth situations wouldn't be possible because knocking out/killing a guard would immediately alert everyone. Then there's the fact that movement generally tends to be easy to hear, fabric rubbing against itself while trying to go slowly can be heard and thus would be very unfair in terms of detection. There's also the fact that in real life people can see pretty damn far and that people aren't retarded enough to think that the safe being open at 3AM is a normal ocurrance. Oh yeah and employees/guards will often know each other so very rarely will you ever actually have a disguise people wouldn't be able to tell apart instantly. And when it comes to realism, you wouldn't have advantages like a third-person camera either, meaning that in order to see a guard you would have to be visible yourself.


Realism isn't fun, you can have immersive aspects that SIMULATE a realistic scenario but actually realistic stealth is incredibly shit.

ez

See the post above yours as to why you are wrong.

i agree, when i worked night shifts as a guard in warehouse we had to press buttons in specific locations at specific time. i had to walk around the complex every hour. But that is the design of someone who does nto want at any rate to have burglars. When you design video game tho, a stealth video game, you want this burglar in, there must be some compromise. Im more into technical realism (sound, time it takes for certain actions, problems that player can solve using fuckin brain, not skyrim arrow. fir example a simple alarm securing priceless artefact in a museum has a visible wire that goes through th floors and can lead player to the basement main control room, where it can be disabled) + something that player can get excited to try, variety of tools, hacking devices, clothes etc.

Your points are why i dislike most "stealth"-games that try to go for more modern setting as it just becomes flat-out unbelievable especially when it's just your typical knock everyone out from the shadows to proceed the game.

The whole being able to knock guards uncoscious sucks too, atleast fucking make it so that there's some sort of a hidden timer or something which starts the moment you knock down/kill a guard that once has run out makes the remaining guards more aggressive as in better vision and faster patrollan speed with the occasional stop and frantically looking around as they are getting agitated and worried that one of them has vanished without a trace.

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A genuinely intelligent AI would do what a human would do, which means it's going to do things that would make all but the most perfect stealth run impossible. Nevermind simple things you could emulate without intelligence that is extremely frustrating like turning around to check behind you, or god forbid casually look up sometimes when your eyes wonder. There is also a subtle pattern where people will follow another person's eyes when they even so much as glance away a second or two. That makes the whole experience really fucking unpredictable and that's not putting in a smart AI into the mix either.

Alone the points aren't that bad, even if slightly irritating at times, but when combined it makes it a pain in the ass.
So what you are left with is no stealth without disguises at all, no stealth in any area that has security, no stealth WITH disguises in any area where employees would know each other and no stealth outside of regular working hours. As I stated previously, making it realistic would eliminate almost every single scenario imaginable. Death to Spies is fairly neat in that it doesn't have most of the issues you described but even that is unrealistic.

Is there even any games that have you use things similar to pic related to peek around corners?
I can understand guards seeing you if you pop your head out but periscope-thingie-wingie doesnt need to be big object at all.

Splinter cell used to have the snake cam to peek under doors, not sure if it worked around corners. some game had you use a bit of mirror, can't remember what it was though.

It didn't. It's first-person anyway, so there would be no point.

you mean third, but yeah. 3pp stealth games are kinda a joke. i would suggest a small piece of mirror to peek around corners, but modern engines seems like cant make mirrors working, so i dont know

Fug. I need to stop posting at work.

You can use a mirror, or you can use reflections that are already present although those same reflections will give you away too under the right angle. It's why I like well lit streets with lots of reflective surfaces, you can see behind and beside you without having to turn your head all the time.

Guards in Dishonored 2 will say "Hey, someone's supposed to be on patrol here!" if they realize someone's missing.

Dont they just go straight back to original patrol duty after that though or at best search for a half a minute and the usual:
?

I think they change their patrol route to cover the area where the other guard should have been, but I'm not sure.

I never even knew this because the game is far too lenient on giving you tools to just dispatch the guards either lethally or non lethally that it's very hard to restrain from doing so.
Even thief's had that problem though it was mostly the nonlethal blackjack but still…

Depends on difficulty. There's actually a good bit of difficulty options in the game that are actually explained well. It feels like a really underrated game, honestly.

Oh right Dishonored _"2"_, despite Denuvo and what seems to be like muh strong womyn plot&protag is it actually okay as a game?
(and how muchof a muh strong womyn is it even? I dont mind Female power-fantasies if they arent tumblr-tier trash)

The devs also proudly talked about inserting a trans character so you can probably guess what to expect.

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So it seems like it'l stay on my wishlist for quite a while as in until 4,99yoropooridoos~ at most with all dlc included.

there's a crack, you can pirate

The writing is kinda shit, and seeing female officers is pretty weird, but I thought the gameplay was definitely an improvement from 1. Much more fluid movement system, nice level design with stuff like the clockwork mansion, and good combat despite being a 'stealth' game. Emily's version of blink is also a lot more fun since you can catapult yourself across huge distances if you know how to use it right.


What said. I didn't even realize it had Denuvo despite playing a cracked copy.

It's the original Dishonored but with bigger levels.
I don't remember too much, though it's definitely there.


There weren't any trans characters in Dishonored 2.

Wrong, I hope someone has that webm of a guy talking with the devs where one goes about how great it is that they added a trans character to the game and then some other guy goes "why are there so many gross things in the game"

That's just a hag, not a tranny. R-right?

Well they were virtue signalling pretty hard about it and since its a game and not real life they probably gave the NPC a female model and voice actor anyway.

I never considered her to be a tranny, where the fuck does it say that she is?

www.twitch.tv/videos/102694748?t=44m54s but really, its totally made so they could virtue signal. I dont think its referenced anywhere in the game.

He got so close to getting turbo triggered. Disgusting.

Well holy hell. I'm sorry I doubted you. I never got any indication from her "notes" or "comments" like he talks about.

Oh dishonored 2 has a crack already? Been wanting to play it since the first game was fun.


TC R6 vegas has that snake cam to go under doors. I remember one of the old TC games had that one cam gun that attaches to a pistol to peek around corners.

Made stealth more fun since at times you could get caught by a 4th guard unexpectedly and had to deal with the roamer as punishment. Sounds fair since that meant you fucked up.

I think that was Ghost Recon 2, in the solo missions where you had the OICW.

GRAW 1 and 2 had that gun. It was cool.

Yes there is a Tranny.

i dont have the latest version of mgsv, where can i download older IH versions?

Talking about Dishonored 2, is there a way to make the MC mute? It shouldn't be too hard

There's no need to spread lies, user.

Everything about stealth games rubbed me up the wrong way with how they're always so unimaginative and lazy.
Especially the way a 'non lethal' run in a stealth game always means using a tazer/stungun/magicsleepgun that is literally just a gun the developers say you're allowed to use for non lethal play throughs.

I saved it as is, I never watched the stream personally.

The Alien in Alien: Isolation has pretty good AI.

It rubber bands constantly.

You should play the Styx games. They're the only sneakan games I've played where sneaking without takedowns is not reserved for turbo autists who memorize every detail about the level, instead it's actually the most fun way to play all around.

I honestly don't mean this in a mean way, but maybe you're just bad at stealth games. I didn't feel that way playing most stealth games for the first time.

y not?

Because the truth says enough on its own. Go to the Twitch link posted earlier in the thread and watch Harvey Smith go right to the edge of being triggered.