Quote:Original post by Eelco

Quote:Original post by Michalson

Quote:Original post by Eelco
anyway, you mentioned AI, but i have yet to see any of that.

most likely it will be the same shitty piece of rts AI code gameprogrammers seem to have been passing around since the invention of the RTS. give the computer double the amount of resources, let it try a couple of lame rushes, then when all scripted actions are exhausted... well nothing really. just some gay nonfocussed attacks, aka certain victory for you.

i dont know a single RTS that doesnt fit this pattern. now that im thinking of it, civilization is probably the only strategy game with what id call AI.

Funny you should talk like that, considering Age of Empires (1) was the first game to break the "AI has special advantages" mode. Unlike other RTS games AOE had an AI that actually had to intelligently explore the map (others just give the AI full view). The AI also had to build and research just like the player (big offenders would be C&C, where on some missions you could actually see the computer putting a vehicle out of two factories at once [in C&C you could only build one unit at a time]). The *only* advantage the AI was given over the player was that if you turned the difficulty up to the maximum setting, the AI would get some extra resources at the start.

yeah aoe is not very evil in the extra resources department.

but overall i think the AI is still rather lame. if they outdo you and you dont suck, its purely because it relies on being able to do all the mircoscale things much better than you. saying there is any higher level strategy going on would be bullshit.

if youre able to get close to the AI in mircomanagement, outstrategizing them is a joke.

While AoE and even AoM AI wasn't amazing (although it definitely didn't cheat except on Hardest), I noticed a big difference in the AoM: Titans expansion. When I just got the game a 2v3 against the AI was very challenging for me and my brother, although I was pretty experienced in multiplayer and could blow away the standard AoM AI. We learned some weaknesses of the new AI afterwards, but it was definitely an improvement.

The one game that really impressed me in terms of AI was Microsoft's Rise of Nations however. The AI there would expand, attack from two places at once, flank you, counter you, etc while outbooming you, without cheating. RoN seems to have a very simple game world model (strict rules about how forests, mines etc can be placed, simple method of gathering resources, few chokepoints) but it was a lot of fun to play vs the AI and very hard at first; I kind of dropped that game but I think I still haven't beaten the highest non-cheating AI level.

AI micro in warcraft3 really annoys me, becuase it will retreat individual units in a battle a lot more efficiently than any human could. Although its still not very hard to beat. I really dont see the point in making them smarter. People will always find ways to be better. Not to mention once you find a way to beat the comp you can just do it every time and be assured victory. Even lousy human players will eventually learn to counter it, making it a lot more satisfying to beat people than comps. With online there is never a shortage of people to play against, and you don't even need a fast modem for RTS.

The water is pretty but it seems anyone can do water like that using shaders etc these days, though the whitecaps are nice.
I'm still not too impressed with the terrain - it's mostly just(!) great artwork.

Quote:Original post by Stru
AI micro in warcraft3 really annoys me, becuase it will retreat individual units in a battle a lot more efficiently than any human could.

me and my mates can do 3 human vs 6 insane quite easily (double resources harvested for computer). so they have four times asmuch resources total, and they still dont cut it.

indeed there is also the micromanagement advantage. consequently, i only build autocasting units, even though theyre not always the most powerfull. atleast they do something.

that goes to show just how gay AI really is. if only they would simply implement something like a half decently working 'stick together' rule, theyd become ten times harder to beat.

Water isn't so much special, just reflection and its displacement by normalmap imo.
High-tesselated geometry allows them to do such cliffs and rivers(and riverbanks), but limits their view to be relatively close.
The view from the city, where we actually see the horizon is fixed and is full of billboards.
Physics is cool, its Havok if I remember corectly. Destroying is realtime too, as far as I can tell from the demo on E3. Rag-dolls, etc. - but it was a bit boring, seeing those soldiers fly like dolls in the air after a cannon-ball blew them off a cliff.
Overall - the art rules. Trees, leafs on the water and such just create that incredible colorful picture.

Quote:Original post by DrGUI
EDIT: grr don't have ps 3 - they can't expect everyone to have it by 2006 can they?

They can, but then they're going to be sorely disappointed...

I'd figure there *is* some possibly simplified version rendered on cards without it though, there's just little reason to show *that* off. -.^