You phrased it as “the newer generation of AI”, so it was unclear what you meant, but it seemingly referred to the AI we hear about all too often these days in the news. I do think there’s more room to get closer to approximating a human opponent in fighting games, and I know how I’d attempt to tackle it at a high level, but it must be harder than I think it is, or it would have been done by now; one potential pitfall would be having to update it every time you put out a balance patch, because that would affect how the computer player would have to behave.
Well, that’s the good part. I don’t think AI will ever replicate the kinds of full-system dynamics that occur in ranked modes, but I DO think it could make for an interesting challenge when the goal is to reduce the game state to just a few techniques the game is trying to teach the player.
For instance, an AI playing as Guile that can only use Flash Kick and Sonic Boom, and teaches players to counter him by spotting out his charging and blocking what comes through.
Even that is tricky though, because now you have to program the computer player to take bait. A computer Guile that can tell when you’re blocking and when you’re not could be just about unbeatable, and a human player can’t tell that, so they have to guess. In any case, I think the genre’s single player modes are lacking because we’ve only been taking them seriously for about 15 years. NetherRealm does what they do well, but they could still stand to do a better job of diagetically teaching you through the story mode like you’re saying. SF6 has its RPG mode, which I think is a better idea on paper than it is in how they executed it. RGG is talking a big game about the single player offering in the new Virtua Fighter, and I believe they’ll probably do a great job at it, because if you fork the code for Yakuza, you’re most of the way to a single player Virtua Fighter already; just make the plot something like Blood Sport.
You phrased it as “the newer generation of AI”, so it was unclear what you meant, but it seemingly referred to the AI we hear about all too often these days in the news. I do think there’s more room to get closer to approximating a human opponent in fighting games, and I know how I’d attempt to tackle it at a high level, but it must be harder than I think it is, or it would have been done by now; one potential pitfall would be having to update it every time you put out a balance patch, because that would affect how the computer player would have to behave.
Well, that’s the good part. I don’t think AI will ever replicate the kinds of full-system dynamics that occur in ranked modes, but I DO think it could make for an interesting challenge when the goal is to reduce the game state to just a few techniques the game is trying to teach the player.
For instance, an AI playing as Guile that can only use Flash Kick and Sonic Boom, and teaches players to counter him by spotting out his charging and blocking what comes through.
Even that is tricky though, because now you have to program the computer player to take bait. A computer Guile that can tell when you’re blocking and when you’re not could be just about unbeatable, and a human player can’t tell that, so they have to guess. In any case, I think the genre’s single player modes are lacking because we’ve only been taking them seriously for about 15 years. NetherRealm does what they do well, but they could still stand to do a better job of diagetically teaching you through the story mode like you’re saying. SF6 has its RPG mode, which I think is a better idea on paper than it is in how they executed it. RGG is talking a big game about the single player offering in the new Virtua Fighter, and I believe they’ll probably do a great job at it, because if you fork the code for Yakuza, you’re most of the way to a single player Virtua Fighter already; just make the plot something like Blood Sport.