Especially the Cigar grunt.
I’ve lost count of all the times I’ve LOL’d at him miscalculating the arc of his SMG Grenade and blowing himself up. 
How can you have an AI be challenging and have consistency without complex behaviors?
Complex behaviors to me is the ability to avoid grenades, find cover in an environment, move to a position to get in Line of Sight of the target without getting in the way of obstacles or other AI, follow players or other AI in complicated geometry, decided how/when to flank the player, etc…
The AI can do a number of different things but being able to choose which behavior(s) to use at the given time is also important. Hence why conditions are checked before a behavior is to be used if at all.
The Combine are based off the HL1 grunts with added AI for specific mapping related goals. The combine where cannon feed in HL2 with low health and very open maps compared to HL1.
Our grunts are based off the combine with great modifications to simplify the code. Sure we did add a few new behaviors, but overall the AI is similar. The only difference is that we have placed our grunts in well designed areas of maps so they can show off their AI a bit more than in HL2 (HL style). Many of our testers believed we did something amazing to the grunts in the code, but in reality it was what we did in the maps/environment which made our grunts appear smarter.
AI is not just about code, but rather a combination of code, environment, scripts, animations, and tricks.
If you had the choice to fight a midget or a super sized buffed mutant what which would you choose?
In less than a milli-second you just made thousands of decision which you used to to pick the midget by looking at its height, physical fitness, and so on.
…BM’s AI use things called Conditions which the AI use to decide what behavior it should impose…and it does this faster than you can imagine…
…of course it is not Smart, but it is programmed to LOOK smart.
You think you have an idea on the subject, but you have no idea what your talking about. Your like at elementary school student trying to explain something you understand little about.
Very interesting news JamesK !
But I got one question : Since it’s the environment that play a huge role in the behavior of grunts/combine, how would you describe the differents between BM and HL2 maps to obtain such a good result ?
For example in WGH the grunts are placed in areas above the player and at the same level of the player amongst large pillars, crates, and many props that can be used for cover. If the player stays back then the top grunts tend to shoot down at the player while the leveled grunts move up closer. Eventually tossing nades to flush the player out…
You spoiled all the fun!
Knowing is half the battle!
Thanks a lot for the info, can’t wait to experiment it myself
So can we expect the grunts to do “smart tricks” like the clone soldiers (I think) in FEAR, such as vaulting through obstacles or hiding behind doorways to trap the player?
Ahhh yes, F.E.A.R. enemies were fantastic, it would be great if BMS marines compared to them.
Is there a reason Valve created AI for the combine that could take advantage of its environment but created maps that didnt offer many options? (gameplay choices/tester preferences?)
I know its a question that brings about speculation but i was wondering if there was a practical obvious reason.
Valve does strange things. Valve’s sdk code makes you go WTF while other times yell thats Briliant!
Valve is just weird.
…then again it could be the design plan or things didnt go the way the planned so they changed stuff.
We had a behavior implemented into the grunts where they picked up your thrown grenade then threw it back at you. This is cool except for the fact that your grenades last 2.5 seconds and watching the grunt pick your nade and throwing would last between 4-6 seconds. Speeding up the animation would look silly, so I changed it to appear faster by skipping pickup animation if the player could not see the grunt. However this caused an issue that the player wondered WTF happened to his nade. Things get designed because they look cool, but when it affects your gameplay then its time to nerf stuff.
true dat
…That was pages ago.
It’s true, but still.
Could just have them kick it away. Or kneel down and sweep his hand at it into a quick underhand toss.
Will the grunts do Grenade Assaults? I’m not talking about like 1 or 2 grenades. I’m talking about when you look up and see 4 or 5 of them flying at you (which actually happened to me earlier today).
Could be related to the Squad Leader. Since he has command, he could order everyone to throw grenades at once. Then if he’s dead, they won’t do that anymore.
^That’d be a cool feature if it doesn’t hurt gameplay too much.
I’m sure it’s in already, but I want to see limping soldiers and aliens. Scientists and security guards would be nice too. It doesn’t have to affect running speed, but it’d be a nice touch to have them walk slower.
Something I’d like to see, although its very unlikely, are a few elements from Gears of War. I’ve always found the Locust to have pretty decent AI. The ability to hide behind objects and just peek out to shoot at the player I felt really increased the sense of tactical battle. Although obviously we, as players, would not be able to do the fancy cover theory like you can in GoW, I just think it would be cool to see the Hlgrunts do this. Clearly, I don’t want all aspects of GoW’s AI implemented, but the Hlgrunts ability to flank and team up as well as the Locusts ability to hide behind stuff and jump over stuff would be awesome.
I’ve just started wondering this. In HL could the soldiers run out of ammo?
NPC’s never ran out of ammo in HL or HL2.
Not that I was ever aware of.
Although it would be realistic for them to run out, people tend to wait until that happens to attack. And if it goes beyond a certain amount of time for them to run out, then no one will notice when it happens and that defeats the purpose of it.
Makes it sound as if you started gaming in 2003. 1998 was a good year for gaming. I had a lot more fun playing against some of the creatures in Unreal than I’ve had against many ‘more advanced’ AI’s since then. (did Thief come out that same year?).
You can call it nostalgia, but I’ve replayed the game recently and it’s just good design. Again, at the end of the day all of this boils down to how the enemies respond in actual gameplay. If the developers have found a way to maximize the fun and challenge, then it’s a fallacy to think that because the AI in some newer game is more varied, it must be better.
Agreed on the point about environments. This was def. a factor in Unreal as well.
But isn’t that the entire point? If AI is inclusive of things like waypoints, that means that there are other things than just the sheer complexity of the algorithms that effect the gamer’s experience playing against it.
My comment wasn’t a shot against BM, but rather the idea that the more capabilities the AI has the better it must be. A lot of ‘tricks’ have historically led to great gameplay, even if they weren’t authentic in terms of a realistic decision-making process. That goes for texturing, modeling, etc. as well. It’s not always the most complex process that leads to the best result.