AI stupideness

Black Mesa Archive In-game Issues (Mod)
#1

Hi. I now almost finished the game (through I was forced to switch from Hard to Normal somewhere at Surface Tension) and i’m a little disappointed because of the AI behavior when you are shooting them in such a way that they can’t see you.

For example, there’s a HECU soldier around the corner and he didn’t yet see you. Now move slightly so all thet you can see is the part of his body, possible an arm or leg. Shoot now and… nothing happens. The soldier stays at his place and screams “My arm! My leg” but doesn’t try to avoid the fire or to find who’s shooting. No other soldiers will react too as long as they don’t see you. After the first soldier dies, you can repeat more and more with all the remaining soldiers as long as you stay invisible.

Even more, you can do anything just behind the corner of the batch of enemies. Shoot, jump, throw objects, explode grenades/satchels/tripmines/barrels/etc, become berserk and try to break a wall with your crowbar — noone will go to check what’s happening. That really sucks and is very un-realistic.

Anyway, thanks for the game and hope that at least some of this will be fixed with future updates.

#2

Saw your reply and subscribed to the thread) Up)

#3

Funny enough IIRC exactly the same behavior was in original (GldSrc based Half-Life) game. At least I could remember shooting at HECU soldiers from the distance/cover (i.e. staying out of their LoS) and having them scream/die without trying to go find the cause of the damage they get :-).

#4

Everybody wishing to see the AI fix in the update, up this topic, please)

#5

I don’t know about “GldSrc” but that’s not the case in the wayback original Half-Life. There, soldiers will hear you around corners if you make noise. If you run, jump or break crates, they WILL hear you and aggro. If you damage a soldier, even if he can’t see you, he will aggro. You can actually trigger scripted sequences you can’t see if you damage people from around a corner.

So I guess part of the problem with the Marine AI that people have criticised so much is that the game ignores almost all other detection cues than pure line of sight. It ignores movement noise, meaning crouch-stealth is completely taken out of the game (disappointing), it ignores damage, and it ignores field of view, meaning soldiers can see in 360 degrees, and as far as I’m aware, the AI also ignores view distance, meaning they can spot you at any range within the same map.

Yes, I’d like to see AI tweaks. I want to see the soldiers made smarter in how they become aware of Freeman, rather than relying on cheating mechanics.

#6

Well in original HL AI also ignores you when you shoot them if they don’t see you… at least with crossbow. And they also see you no matter how far you are from them. It works like that in every HL, not just in Black Mesa. But yes, they could hear you in original if you were running behind them

#7

GldSrc is the name of the engine which the original HL had been using. It’s de-facto a somewhat modified version of idTech1 - one that had been used in Quake.

Yep, that’s exactly how I remember it. Hand’t had a chance to find enough free time and replay original HL since… er… around winter 2002 :-(.

#8

GldSrc is the mother of Source Since source was build up INSIDE GldSrc replacing piece by piece! Anyways HL was never much of a sneaking game and to me these Hgrunts heard me most of the time before i shot…

#9

OK, now I can confirm that in original HL AI ignores you even if you shoot them with loud weapons. I’ve just started Xen chapter in HLS and killed three alien grunts in a row just by shooting them in their arms with glock. They were just standing still waiting till I kill them :slight_smile:

But I’m not saying that it should work like that in Black Mesa (I will test it when I’ll finish HLS), I’m just saying that original HL AI wasn’t as perfect as you are describing it.

#10

I second that. Original HL AI wasn’t the best AI ever (though it was way better than what was implemented in Quake) and I remember that Unreal Saarge AI was way interesting to fight against compared to HL enemies. But it doesn’t mean that things should be like that in BM. Personally I’m not fond of the way enemies work now in BM - they are not that smart but “compensate” it by having reaction time of a Formula 1 driver and accuracy of the olympic champion in shooting. On the other hand the game is still pretty fun to play.

#11

Doesn’t matter anymore, since I found something on VALVe’s dev wiki, so I’ll go from there.

[COLOR=’#808080’]Anyone got an idea where BM gets its AI instructions from?

The files, I mean…

AI for the Houndeyes, specifically.

Thanks in advance.

Just want to look at the files and maybe learn something from them, so don’t get me wrong on this one.[/SIZE]

#12

[COLOR=’#808080’]If I understand the engine architecture correctly AI is “hardcoded” into server.dll, i.e. it is implemented in C/C++ and the implementation is only available to BM devteam having all the source code files for the game. I could be wrong though but I’m pretty sure that’s how Source engine is supposed to work.[/SIZE]

#13

Hmm, thanks for the reply - I expected something along those lines, to be honest.

What I wanted to accomplish, was to add a simple way to draw an NPCs attention: Noise.

If an NPC is just around the corner, you’d swing the crowbar against a metal wall or something that makes enough noise, to draw their attention.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel right, having a hostile NPC standing in the hallway, about 7 meters away, with you swinging the crowbar against a pipe and them not realising that you are there… :S

Even if they can’t react to noise directly, you would think they have a similiar way of detecting possible prey or enemies in general. Such as… - vibrations?

Yes yes, I said I wanted to learn something from the files, but you have to do something with what you’ve learned, I guess.

In other words, there was a goal I wanted to reach, at some point.

EDIT (03 : 31 PM): I did not have any intentions in derailing this thread, if I have, I am truly sorry.

#14

Please see here to continue the discussion on this bug.

#15

I noticed that as well. And in a couple instances where they see you and you can’t see them, lol

#16

this

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