Anyone else think Demogorgon was much too easy?

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Basically you're saying to do all this to make them seem more "human" ar at least give them the apperance of having half a brain, but how would the enemies communicating with each other work?

 

I don't think he meant communicate as in "we have a problem in our relationship. I just don't feel that you're communicating with me effectivly." (Just think of an orc saying that.)

I think he meant that you can't use the 'draw out' technique because when you bring one into view and attacks you, the others will come because he attacked something.

I think that BioWare should've included more multi-badass fights. I mean, I love it when big bad monsters summon buddies to help them, but I think they should summon their demon bros or something. It makes you really consider taking more tanks along. A sorceress vs a raging demon won't always end up good.

 

I do know what he meant and the attack one and the rest come already happens for some fights at least but the idea of making them communicate and and act and respond to certain situations in a effective way could not be as simple as creating some quake 3 style team and cooperation system since there are so many more possibilitys and strategic outcomes and whatnot in SoA and i frankly don't see how it's possible to cover everyone of them effectivly without a lot of people, a lot of througherness and a heck of a lot of time.

 

OK...Enemy Communications:-

There are infinite possibilities with communication, however only the most basic actions need to be communicated, although the basic actions themselves could mount up, a script writer would start with a few basic ones and work up.

At the moment the scripting language allows for custom 'shouts', this means an enemy can shout 'heal me' and his comrades in the area can 'hear' him, understand him, and hence take the necessary action.

All enemies could use basic 'shouts' like...
I need healing,
The enemy is here,
Attack a certain party member,
Defend me,
I'm about to cast an area effect spell,

and also more advanced 'shout' scripts, whereby an ally hears a shout, and responds with a shout of their own depending on their situation.

It doesn't take many 'shouts' and 'hears' to get effective communication in battle.

As an example of effective communication...I write all my own scripts for my party members, because I don't like healing party members manually when out of battle. The scripts basically tell the Clerics amongst the party to heal the party members that need healing, they also use a graded healing system which prevents them casting high level healing spells when only a Cure Light Wounds is needed.

However I don't want the clerics to do this in the middle of a battle (potions should be used in battle). So when the Clerics can see the battle raging they don't heal, however sometimes my clerics are well away from my fighters who are battling, in this case the Clerics believe there is no battle going on, and proceed to attempt to heal and hence are drawn into the conflict. Here's where communication comes in. With communication the Cleric 'shouts' that he is going to heal someone, the fighter 'hears' the cleric and knows that he is in battle, and 'shouts' back to the cleric that he shouldn't come into the battle. The cleric 'hears' the fighter and cancels the heal attempt.

Another example is...A mage announces to the party that he is about to cast Pro Evil 10'. The party hear his announcement and automatically converge on him, so to be within the 10' when he casts it.

[ December 09, 2003, 23:49: Message edited by: Symm ]

 

Adding the shout and the hear commands to scripts is simple, granted, but weighting them so they happen properly *in battle* is another degree of difficulty. Shouts are also a bit tricky because other creatures may not react until the following round due to the processing order of the scripts.

Many enemies have existing shout scripts that include 'heal me,' 'defend me,' 'attack enemy x' shouts but they never get executed because they prioritize other actions.

 

This is because of poor scripting IMHO.

A set of actions can be easily weighted and prioritized. For instance all actions that don't need to be done straight away, or are low priority should be set as such...in IE scripting when their action list is empty.

Also the make-up of the script is important, the game parses the script from top to bottom, and high priority actions should be nearer the top, when an action (or scriptlet) is 'true' the game processes the action and returns to the top of the script (as long as the script isn't told to do otherwise).

Shouts and hears that are acted upon straight away i.e. do it now, not when your action list is empty, take little time and can happen almost instantly. This allows the script to recover very quickly and a fighter for instance would hardly lose a swing.

Some of my clerical scripts are quite long, but they can react to a shout within 1/6th of a round...If I told them to react when their Action List is not empty, they would not react until the next round, in which case they would have performed the action which I didn't want them to do. EDIT: (I've just noticed that this whole paragraph sounds like something Donald Rumsfeld might or might not say depending on whether he wants to say it or not, given the importance or non-importance of what he does or doesn't want to say).

 

Agreed, but think about the tradeoffs involved during development. Given the choice between spending more time on better AI scripting or plot development and writing, the latter is definitely what keeps people interested--still--in BG2. The balance between Tactics-style mods and story or role-playing enhancing mods suggests that's an opnion that many people share. ToB is a huge disappointment for a lot of people in that the plot is a flimsy excuse for a series of battles.

 

Spot on post, you've hit the nail on the head there CamDawg.

It's a shame that games these days are rushed out the door, when the developers would like to see the full potential of their work realised.

Back in the good 'ole days, game developers were usually a lone writer working for himself, or maybe a couple of people working as partners. This meant that the project/game was their baby and they put as much effort into it as they wanted, until they deemed that they had got it absolutely right. The old Spectrum and C64 games were immensely playable despite the machines limitations.

I spoke to Jon Ritman (of 'Head over Heels' fame) fairly recently who spoke of the pressures not to mention deadlines of working for a game developer these days.

 

I recently discovered just how hard it is to write a good AI script when I tried to write one for my mod. And I couldn't agree more. It's a shame, too. This time of year is a time to especially avoid new games since so many devs get pushed to finish games before Christmas.

Ah well, I better wrap it up before the mods wander by and wrap my knuckles for being off-topic again.

 

To back that up, just look at the difference between BG1 and BG2. I mean BG1 had this amazing storyline and the battles didn't feel like they tagged along behind you (meaning it wasn't obvious that the battles were getting harder as you got more powerful).

BG2's battles definetly felt like they stayed exactly the same potency (as you got tougher the baddies got tougher).

The reason everyone like BG2 better is because you get really powerful. You can get 9th level spells! Also, it's got better graphics (blue water!) and a snappy look to it, not to mention better resolution.

It's also got soooo many mods that it would be impossible to play them all. Why hardly any mods for BG1?

Hmmm... this is getting really off topic. Uhh, yeah! Demogorgon was too easy!