- 28,470
- Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Johnnypenso
AI NEEDS to be sufficient
- Thread starter GT1 Esperante
- 43 comments
- 2,906 views
- 40,757
It was an issue in a PS3 game because PD fought to have a pretty game before they fought to have one that was worth playing. Then they did it again. While it would be nice to assume that PD learned their lesson, GT6 made it pretty clear that they didn't last time they claimed to.
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- 1,245
I'm not sure my comment ended up, on paper, meaning what it meant in my head.
What I meant was that I was hoping Polyphony might be able to make a racing game with decent AI and grid starts on the PS4. If PCARS can pull off grid starts with decent visuals, realistic physics, and excellent AI, there's no reason Polyphony couldn't.
- 28,470
- Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Johnnypenso
Do you know what the tradeoff was that PCars made to be able to do that?I'm not sure my comment ended up, on paper, meaning what it meant in my head.
What I meant was that I was hoping Polyphony might be able to make a racing game with decent AI and grid starts on the PS4. If PCARS can pull off grid starts with decent visuals, realistic physics, and excellent AI, there's no reason Polyphony couldn't.
- 1,245
Is that a rhetorical question or a genuine question, because if it's the latter, then I don't. Whatever tradeoffs they did make, however, were not ones that compromised the overall experience - unlike GT, where there was a very clear and obvious tradeoff (of any real racing thanks to rolling starts) in order to achieve a certain visual quality. OK, so there are instances in PCARS where frames drop, sometimes quite alarmingly in bad weather, but GT was hardly immune to that, even with the hack job effort to fix the framerate by cutting standing starts.
- 28,470
- Windsor, Ontario, Canada
- Johnnypenso
They lowered the polycount significantly to help achieve that. With Driveclub at 250k polygons do you really think PD is going to go any lower? PCars is at 80k polygons by the way, and if PD goes towards the higher end, which is a pretty safe bet, I'm curious to see if they'll have 32+ car grids with standing starts, full weather etc. and still maintain the solid 60 fps needed for VR.
- 1,245
I'm quite glad that VR has a strict minimum framerate of 60fps - it might make Polyphony design the game around how it needs to perform, rather than throwing ever increasing detail into it at the expense of performance. As you say, the question is how much of the experience can carry over to that minimum 60fps gameplay - I can see them doing something odd like making a separate VR mode with nerfed visuals to keep the minimum performance required - a bit like the 60fps "Hi-Fi" mode in GT1, or more pertinently, the Driveclub VR demo without weather and less cars on track...
- 22
- United States
- green_gorrila
Polyphony SHOULD be able to pull it off. They took quite a hard hit with the PS3, mostly due to how the system was structured. But this is the PS4, so there is still hope. Okay, quick change of subject here, but I got a PS4 and PCARS last week and I need to know... Is there a way to make the cars handle somewhat decently without having to buy a wheel. The cars handle like someone trying to steer a paraplegic rhinoI'm not sure my comment ended up, on paper, meaning what it meant in my head.
What I meant was that I was hoping Polyphony might be able to make a racing game with decent AI and grid starts on the PS4. If PCARS can pull off grid starts with decent visuals, realistic physics, and excellent AI, there's no reason Polyphony couldn't.
- 27
- 40,757
That's not true, though.
GT1-GT3 had braindead missiles that also had rubber banding, but more in the Mario Kart "actively goes faster than possible" sense, which only made mistakes when they occasionally they tripped themselves up with how polite they were (Laguna Seca spinouts in GT2 were almost always caused by the AI just taking the outside in turns that really had no outside; ditto GT3 Apricot Hill), but their "regular" speed was higher. The provided much better racing than anything in GT6 and weren't out of line for most of its competition of the time (Toca games excepting), but as far as anything that is usable in a 2016+ game they are useless.
GT4 had braindead missiles that didn't even have properly set up lines for some of the tracks; which is why you'd see things like cars shoot off the end of Mulsanne every single lap, run wide right on Autumn Ring's final turn every single lap, or constantly plow into the concrete walls in Opera V. It would have been awful even for the times of the first GT title, and the only reason races were ever challenging was because the game ramped up the power in AI cars to an insane degree (higher than the player was actually capable of doing, in a few cases).
GT6 has "intelligent," adaptive and responsive AI that just happens to be somewhat off pace to begin with and unfortunately was deliberately set up to do pants-on-head retarded things in a race to offset how pants-on-head retarded the races are designed in the first place. PD doesn't have to throw it out and start from scratch, because I suspect GT6's AI is just GT5's with a heap of bad design decisions places on it. It still obviously reacts to the player's position on the track, because if it didn't it wouldn't be able to do completely idiotic things like this:
GT5's AI was nothing amazing in terms of fighting the player for pace, but if you did a lot of B-Spec you'd notice after a while that for whatever reason the AI in GT5 didn't function the same as it did in A-Spec. A-Spec AI would generally run the same slow-ish laps over and over and over again and once you were past it it was just a rear view attraction, but still was aware of the player's presence just like GT6's is. The Hot/Cold system that was in the game just wasn't there. B-Spec AI was generally way, way more aggressive. Take turns hot, try and push through gaps on the inside, run wide to set up for curves where it was beneficial, pull in behind to draft at the start of a straight, get tangled up in high speed collisions, push the car harder when they are catching up etc. It tended to make realistic mistakes in contexts where they made sense. It wasn't aggressive enough for the most part since it cooled down way too fast, and objectively it was probably no faster than the A-Spec AI. But it felt real, and I have to think that upping the "aggression" and general pace is easier than starting from scratch and would accomplish much the same thing.
PD already has the pieces there. They need to be tweaked for sure, but most of the work is done. It wasn't in GT1-GT3, and it sure as hell wasn't for GT4. But whatever thought process brought them to conclude that turning the game into OutRun 2006 in every single race was the only solution to the stupid rolling start crap that they also decided was acceptable needs to be taken into the street and shot, or the series will never get better no matter how good the AI is underneath.
GT1-GT3 had braindead missiles that also had rubber banding, but more in the Mario Kart "actively goes faster than possible" sense, which only made mistakes when they occasionally they tripped themselves up with how polite they were (Laguna Seca spinouts in GT2 were almost always caused by the AI just taking the outside in turns that really had no outside; ditto GT3 Apricot Hill), but their "regular" speed was higher. The provided much better racing than anything in GT6 and weren't out of line for most of its competition of the time (Toca games excepting), but as far as anything that is usable in a 2016+ game they are useless.
GT4 had braindead missiles that didn't even have properly set up lines for some of the tracks; which is why you'd see things like cars shoot off the end of Mulsanne every single lap, run wide right on Autumn Ring's final turn every single lap, or constantly plow into the concrete walls in Opera V. It would have been awful even for the times of the first GT title, and the only reason races were ever challenging was because the game ramped up the power in AI cars to an insane degree (higher than the player was actually capable of doing, in a few cases).
GT6 has "intelligent," adaptive and responsive AI that just happens to be somewhat off pace to begin with and unfortunately was deliberately set up to do pants-on-head retarded things in a race to offset how pants-on-head retarded the races are designed in the first place. PD doesn't have to throw it out and start from scratch, because I suspect GT6's AI is just GT5's with a heap of bad design decisions places on it. It still obviously reacts to the player's position on the track, because if it didn't it wouldn't be able to do completely idiotic things like this:
GT5's AI was nothing amazing in terms of fighting the player for pace, but if you did a lot of B-Spec you'd notice after a while that for whatever reason the AI in GT5 didn't function the same as it did in A-Spec. A-Spec AI would generally run the same slow-ish laps over and over and over again and once you were past it it was just a rear view attraction, but still was aware of the player's presence just like GT6's is. The Hot/Cold system that was in the game just wasn't there. B-Spec AI was generally way, way more aggressive. Take turns hot, try and push through gaps on the inside, run wide to set up for curves where it was beneficial, pull in behind to draft at the start of a straight, get tangled up in high speed collisions, push the car harder when they are catching up etc. It tended to make realistic mistakes in contexts where they made sense. It wasn't aggressive enough for the most part since it cooled down way too fast, and objectively it was probably no faster than the A-Spec AI. But it felt real, and I have to think that upping the "aggression" and general pace is easier than starting from scratch and would accomplish much the same thing.
PD already has the pieces there. They need to be tweaked for sure, but most of the work is done. It wasn't in GT1-GT3, and it sure as hell wasn't for GT4. But whatever thought process brought them to conclude that turning the game into OutRun 2006 in every single race was the only solution to the stupid rolling start crap that they also decided was acceptable needs to be taken into the street and shot, or the series will never get better no matter how good the AI is underneath.
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- 22
- United States
- green_gorrila
Thanks
- 704
- Minnesota, USA
- Jack1982cp
As long as the AI doesn't mindlessly drive though you all the time - like in GT5 at launch - I can live with it not being terribly realistic. What I would REALLY like to see is adjustable difficulty - many of the seasonal events feature excellent difficulty levels and it would be great to have that made available in all races right from the start of the game. As an option for those of us who want it of course.
