I thought about this for 3 seconds. Thought of cyberpunk 2077 which I’m trying to finish at the moment and it hit me. yeah I totally agree. Cyberpunk and other modern games are great but there’s a reason why I obsessed over halo for most of my life and will always hold it above everything else
@bogdanpanchuk296 The game's AI doesn't feel very well aged, play the game on legendary as intended, they are so overly aggressive that it's irritating, play it as unintended and they break lol
@@Hazztech The timeline is a little fuzzy, but Halo CE came out around the time of Half Life, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and 007 Agent under Fire. Go back and look at the enemy AI from those games and you'll see how simplistic it is compared to what Halo achieved. Half Life honestly comes close with having enemies that attack in different ways but IMO Halo is the masterclass of enemy AI that is interesting to fight time and time again along with giving interaction with the player along the way depending on what's going on
You’d think enemy AI in FPS games would only improve in the 21 years since Halo CE, yet here we are, and CE’s enemy AI is still leagues above most modern FPS games that come out today.
I feel like the techniques for AI development have become more advanced, but the way AI is implemented in more modern games often leaves a lot to be desired. This talk really shows how the combination of many creative disciplines, including lots of playtesting, really made the AI in CE awesome.
Love this discussion but big warning to folks listening. There are a HUGE number of audio maxes in the entire video and if you arnt prepped it can be ear smashing.
This was incredibly insightful. Hard to believe some modern games still have trouble creating convincing AI 20+ years later. Shame the original demo footage is lost. Thanks for chucking this all together anyway.
It's really strange to me, how billions of dollars go into project after project, with no observable improvement. Or in the case of the absolute largest and most cash-flush corporations, in some ways laughable downgrades in quality.
I’ve always been fascinated by Halo’s AI, especially after playing Halo CE, as it had one of the more pure enemy sandbox. Thanks for sharing this presentation
The ai before 343 guilty spark: aaaa dont kill meee! (Dies) The ai after: roses are red, my rockets are loaded, the way it stands, you will be exploded.
Just getting back into gaming after almost 19 years. Played Halo CE in 2002 online. Back then we had something called Xbox connect which was a pick up game app - tricking your Xbox into thinking it was system linking. Also played Smash Bros melee, Tribes 1, and counter strike. The insane part is, game have not gotten better. Not even by the newer generations account. Pretty insane we are in the golden era of gaming from 1995-2004 and didn’t even know it
Oddly enough, I feel the AI became less and less sophisticated in each new halo game. Like they became more simple and cheaper, because the games would become bigger and more ambitious. I honestly feel combat evolved A.I. is one of the best in gaming, next to the A.I. in the Stalker games.
@@cleanserofnoobs4162 i think it's not about the AI, but the maps, the sandbox and the ttk. Much of the game changed and the AI wasn't adapted to it. Halo 2 and 3 changed weapon balancing and added dual wielding, while basically nerfing grenades to the ground, and made stun and all other animations in general quicker, while trying to make their movement more natural. I think this basically missed the entire reason why Halo CE is the pinnacle of single player fps combat in gaming. Smaller weapons do barely anything if not dual wielded, and dual wielding means that short to mid range dps is through the roof, enemies don't have the time to make any strategy to outplay you before they are melted. You die in many less shots, and there is no punishement for overextending when there is no health bar, and shields recharge much faster, and their shields also do, this makes encounters more about bursting damage on the first enemy you see rather than thinking about the enemy positions, rankings, space control, AI and emotional state. This is even more remarkable when you think about two handed weapons like the br, just peak around the corner and headshot all the meaty targets till the area is safe. Enemies can still push you and dig your out of your corners, but this happens much less frequently because the maps are usually much bigger and open, and when they are close quarters you are going to have a dual wield weapon setup anyway to burst dps anything that moves in front of you before they can do tactics on you. The battles, instead of being a symphony that have a start, a crescendo, a climax and an outro, where you have to think about all enemy position and damage output and possible behaviors and actions for the entire battle, are more of a game of hide and seek with the enemy where you deal damage to them and try to kill them as fast as possible before they try to hide or they melt your shield. A big enemy in the corner of your vision or hiding in a certain spot feels much more threatening in halo 1 than in the sequels, because the punishements for your mistakes last longer in halo 1. If we then consider that grenades basically became pebbles, killing their entire ultra important strategic value that they had in halo 1 for controlling enemy movement and state of mind at any moment, capable of changing the sort of a battle even when not killing anything, and if we consider that enemies became more bullet spongy in that they falter much less when damaged, the only way for you to have a direct influence on the enemy behaviour is to outright shoot them kill them, while in halo 1 you could do so much more. This doesn't mean that the combat is not fun, just less interesting than Combat Evolved. Haven't played Reach on harder difficulties, but by playing casually i also kept seeing this bullet spongyness and tankiness that the enemies had for no reason, felt even worse than previous games, enemies felt like they had the iron skull on the whole time, although the health bar mechanics in that game and odst are a good step forward in my opinion. Maybe i have to try them again.
48:13 "...these points have no context attached to them at all. All spatial analysis is performed by code. Designers do not place hints or anything. All they do is just place these points and then assign them in groups." The firing points determine where the AI is located at any given moment. Each point is grouped by a letter (like A, B, C, etc. indicated by a different coloured square), but they aren't physically connected. When an AI needs to perform an action, it picks a suitable firing point from its group and moves there to carry out the task needed to achieve its goal. However, the AI likely uses traditional methods like navigation meshes to find the best path to the chosen point.
If you are stuck on level 3 just spam the sniper. Abandon all pretense that sniping is about stealth and careful shots. Just ship it. I started mag dumping on elites and that is how I did it on legendary. Was my accuracy abysmal and used more ammo than I strictly needed? Yes.
This is an excellent presentation! Are there resources or example scripts used for the AIs? Perhaps that way we can contribute in creating the "Illusion of intelligence" in these AIs for battle with the player. Example have AIs go against the players in bloodgulch Red vs Blue style. Reference: th-cam.com/video/lVS7GAsc50M/w-d-xo.html
This is pretty darn cool. Of course it kind of feels a little ancillary when the second half of Halo: CE comprises primarily of Flood charging you mindlessly like they're early Doom-clone enemies.
Have you ever spoken in public for an extended period of time? Standing on a stage and talking for an hour straight dries your throat and mouth out. My boy needs water let him drink damn
over 20 years later and halo 1s ai is still more fun to fight than 99% of new games
I tend to agree. The halo ai design just matched so well with the gameplay design.
I thought about this for 3 seconds. Thought of cyberpunk 2077 which I’m trying to finish at the moment and it hit me. yeah I totally agree. Cyberpunk and other modern games are great but there’s a reason why I obsessed over halo for most of my life and will always hold it above everything else
I haven't played either of the new doom games yet but I heard it's ai is pretty solid
I'm sorry, but I tried Halo 1 recently with Master Chief's Collection (never played it before) and the combat was very mediocre...
@bogdanpanchuk296 The game's AI doesn't feel very well aged, play the game on legendary as intended, they are so overly aggressive that it's irritating, play it as unintended and they break lol
As someone trying to get into indie development, this truly feels like the sacred texts.
Nice
Why's that?
@@Hazztech The timeline is a little fuzzy, but Halo CE came out around the time of Half Life, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and 007 Agent under Fire. Go back and look at the enemy AI from those games and you'll see how simplistic it is compared to what Halo achieved. Half Life honestly comes close with having enemies that attack in different ways but IMO Halo is the masterclass of enemy AI that is interesting to fight time and time again along with giving interaction with the player along the way depending on what's going on
You’d think enemy AI in FPS games would only improve in the 21 years since Halo CE, yet here we are, and CE’s enemy AI is still leagues above most modern FPS games that come out today.
I feel like the techniques for AI development have become more advanced, but the way AI is implemented in more modern games often leaves a lot to be desired. This talk really shows how the combination of many creative disciplines, including lots of playtesting, really made the AI in CE awesome.
Love this discussion but big warning to folks listening. There are a HUGE number of audio maxes in the entire video and if you arnt prepped it can be ear smashing.
Thank you sir you saved me from much pain
This was incredibly insightful. Hard to believe some modern games still have trouble creating convincing AI 20+ years later. Shame the original demo footage is lost. Thanks for chucking this all together anyway.
There's so many gems in this talk. Even compared to the other Bungie Halo games, the AI in CE was just implemented so well.
It's really strange to me, how billions of dollars go into project after project, with no observable improvement. Or in the case of the absolute largest and most cash-flush corporations, in some ways laughable downgrades in quality.
@@MrCantStopTheRobot Corpos chase profit over improvement
I’ve always been fascinated by Halo’s AI, especially after playing Halo CE, as it had one of the more pure enemy sandbox. Thanks for sharing this presentation
Same here! Even now having some understanding about how the AI was designed, the AI is still just as engaging
I really appreciate you trying to replicate the lost demonstration footage.
I hope it made it a little easier to visualise what Chris was describing.
@@nathandc4712 It certainly helped.
The ai before 343 guilty spark: aaaa dont kill meee! (Dies)
The ai after: roses are red, my rockets are loaded, the way it stands, you will be exploded.
I looked up hoping to find an analysis on the ai and instead find this, what a delight.
Ce is a truly 🐐 tier game still play it today
It’s cool hearing explained in detail, what was subconsciously understood to be the factors that made Halo CE so good.
To this day the Elites in this game are the best out of every Halo game!! Wish they kept their movement animations for Halo 2 and 3.
Thanks for posting this. I’m looking to improve my game’s own ai
You're welcome! I thought it was such a great talk with lots of useful information.
Good luck on your game!
Your work is much appreciated. I'm impressed you went as far as to replicate the demo in halo itself :D
Thanks for putting this together. I didn't realize you combined the audio and the slides.
You're welcome! I was super excited when I found the matching slides to the audio
Just getting back into gaming after almost 19 years.
Played Halo CE in 2002 online. Back then we had something called Xbox connect which was a pick up game app - tricking your Xbox into thinking it was system linking.
Also played Smash Bros melee, Tribes 1, and counter strike.
The insane part is, game have not gotten better. Not even by the newer generations account.
Pretty insane we are in the golden era of gaming from 1995-2004 and didn’t even know it
Halo ce's A.I is still one of the best in the world and atleast 10 or so years ahead of its time when it had originally come out.
As a computer programmer working with Behavior Tree and Blackboards in Unreal Engine 5 this info is so valuable, thank you for the good upload.
So many developers need to watch this video.
I'm shocked how there is just this one video about such an amazing AI, people sleep on CE too much
Totally agree! There's a lot to learn from older games
Oddly enough, I feel the AI became less and less sophisticated in each new halo game. Like they became more simple and cheaper, because the games would become bigger and more ambitious. I honestly feel combat evolved A.I. is one of the best in gaming, next to the A.I. in the Stalker games.
@@cleanserofnoobs4162 i think it's not about the AI, but the maps, the sandbox and the ttk. Much of the game changed and the AI wasn't adapted to it. Halo 2 and 3 changed weapon balancing and added dual wielding, while basically nerfing grenades to the ground, and made stun and all other animations in general quicker, while trying to make their movement more natural. I think this basically missed the entire reason why Halo CE is the pinnacle of single player fps combat in gaming.
Smaller weapons do barely anything if not dual wielded, and dual wielding means that short to mid range dps is through the roof, enemies don't have the time to make any strategy to outplay you before they are melted. You die in many less shots, and there is no punishement for overextending when there is no health bar, and shields recharge much faster, and their shields also do, this makes encounters more about bursting damage on the first enemy you see rather than thinking about the enemy positions, rankings, space control, AI and emotional state. This is even more remarkable when you think about two handed weapons like the br, just peak around the corner and headshot all the meaty targets till the area is safe. Enemies can still push you and dig your out of your corners, but this happens much less frequently because the maps are usually much bigger and open, and when they are close quarters you are going to have a dual wield weapon setup anyway to burst dps anything that moves in front of you before they can do tactics on you. The battles, instead of being a symphony that have a start, a crescendo, a climax and an outro, where you have to think about all enemy position and damage output and possible behaviors and actions for the entire battle, are more of a game of hide and seek with the enemy where you deal damage to them and try to kill them as fast as possible before they try to hide or they melt your shield. A big enemy in the corner of your vision or hiding in a certain spot feels much more threatening in halo 1 than in the sequels, because the punishements for your mistakes last longer in halo 1. If we then consider that grenades basically became pebbles, killing their entire ultra important strategic value that they had in halo 1 for controlling enemy movement and state of mind at any moment, capable of changing the sort of a battle even when not killing anything, and if we consider that enemies became more bullet spongy in that they falter much less when damaged, the only way for you to have a direct influence on the enemy behaviour is to outright shoot them kill them, while in halo 1 you could do so much more.
This doesn't mean that the combat is not fun, just less interesting than Combat Evolved. Haven't played Reach on harder difficulties, but by playing casually i also kept seeing this bullet spongyness and tankiness that the enemies had for no reason, felt even worse than previous games, enemies felt like they had the iron skull on the whole time, although the health bar mechanics in that game and odst are a good step forward in my opinion. Maybe i have to try them again.
@@cleanserofnoobs4162 i think they became more simple after reach. Halo Ce marines not being able to drive warthogs feels terrible at times.
Saw an elite crouch behind a small piece of cover after i broke his shield a day or 2 ago and i realized how good halo ce ai actually is
This was fascinating! Thanks for splicing together this lost gem & also replicating your own demonstration footage.
This is great! Thanks for uploading (and adding your own footage at the end, it was really helpful).
Microsoft wasn’t happy with so much detail being given away in this talk.
Oh yeah I think I remember the Bungie devs mentioning that! It's rare to see a dev team speak so openly about how they did things.
Thank you very much!
Amazing. Thank you
Phenomenal watch.
How’d you get the “eye in the sky” footage of Halo 1? It looks really good!
By enabling the console and dev mode for Halo Custom Edition! You can enable a camera to fly around the level.
@@nathandc4712 awesome! Thank you! I’ve been meaning to get into halo modding, and I always wanted to showcase the CE encounter designs.
56:43
So basically they manualy placed navigation points? How did they connect them together so they can be used with pathfinding ?
48:13 "...these points have no context attached to them at all. All spatial analysis is performed by code. Designers do not place hints or anything. All they do is just place these points and then assign them in groups."
The firing points determine where the AI is located at any given moment. Each point is grouped by a letter (like A, B, C, etc. indicated by a different coloured square), but they aren't physically connected. When an AI needs to perform an action, it picks a suitable firing point from its group and moves there to carry out the task needed to achieve its goal. However, the AI likely uses traditional methods like navigation meshes to find the best path to the chosen point.
Halo 3 had peak fps AI
Pretty sure CE had more complexity, idk tho.. Just commenting for the algorithm 😅
halo 3 actually had the most dumbed down version of all the 3 original halos. look it up
Any opinions on the ai on fromsofts games
Good level design can amp up the AI 100x, you can see this also with FEAR.
40:28
If you are stuck on level 3 just spam the sniper. Abandon all pretense that sniping is about stealth and careful shots. Just ship it. I started mag dumping on elites and that is how I did it on legendary. Was my accuracy abysmal and used more ammo than I strictly needed? Yes.
CE's AI put Infinite's to shame
"There are no AI with perfect aim." Boy, did that change in H2...
Thanksgiving 😊
Racial personalities? Grunts being cowards? Jeez, Bungie sure is racist to Ungoy.
"No AI has perfect aim..."
Tell that to the jackal snipers.
This is an excellent presentation! Are there resources or example scripts used for the AIs? Perhaps that way we can contribute in creating the "Illusion of intelligence" in these AIs for battle with the player.
Example have AIs go against the players in bloodgulch Red vs Blue style.
Reference: th-cam.com/video/lVS7GAsc50M/w-d-xo.html
This is pretty darn cool.
Of course it kind of feels a little ancillary when the second half of Halo: CE comprises primarily of Flood charging you mindlessly like they're early Doom-clone enemies.
can he stop drinking so much?
What?
We all need water
Have you ever spoken in public for an extended period of time? Standing on a stage and talking for an hour straight dries your throat and mouth out. My boy needs water let him drink damn