AI: Real time interactions

+
This is an article from 2016, when Cyberpunk began development in earnest. CDPR applied for a grant to develop 'real-time AI' and 'living cities':


in 2018 they talked about the immersive nature of their AI, and their living cities.

We know now that the AI is almost in a placeholder like state from what was planned. (police, gang, citizen, car interactions) and during an investor call in December CDPR stated that AI will be fixed along with their bugfixes.

Does anyone know or think is it possible that they are able to create the world they intended to with what they have, or is such a rework impossible? Are they interested in creating a reactive enviroment as part of their MP experience?
 
This is an article from 2016, when Cyberpunk began development in earnest. CDPR applied for a grant to develop 'real-time AI' and 'living cities':


in 2018 they talked about the immersive nature of their AI, and their living cities.

We know now that the AI is almost in a placeholder like state from what was planned. (police, gang, citizen, car interactions) and during an investor call in December CDPR stated that AI will be fixed along with their bugfixes.

Does anyone know or think is it possible that they are able to create the world they intended to with what they have, or is such a rework impossible? Are they interested in creating a reactive enviroment as part of their MP experience?

I mean, given enough time and resources, you can. Just look at the AI of RDR 2 or GTA 5. Although, you must know that in order to accomplish such feat you must have the right tools in your hands. CDPR's REDEngine seems to be lacking or worse: they have core issues in the tools.

I don't know if they will deliver or even fix it. Maybe make it a bit more reactive and call it a day. Only time will tell.
 
The question would be what they exactly promised or we think they promised.
I think it's likely that they can finish the police hunt system and driving ai. But i don't think we'll get gang wars or some deep level automatic interaction. This game is running on "old" consoles, which wouldn't be able to handle stuff and we already got sliders for NPC density - meaning it's unlikely they'll implement any AI that would need really persistent masses of NPCs.

But having something similar to Watchdogs Legion? I don't think they couldn't reach such levels.
 
The question would be what they exactly promised or we think they promised.
I think it's likely that they can finish the police hunt system and driving ai. But i don't think we'll get gang wars or some deep level automatic interaction. This game is running on "old" consoles, which wouldn't be able to handle stuff and we already got sliders for NPC density - meaning it's unlikely they'll implement any AI that would need really persistent masses of NPCs.

But having something similar to Watchdogs Legion? I don't think they couldn't reach such levels.

It seems like with another year of development, or maybe 2, it could have been delivered on the new current consoles and really just blow everything out of the water.

Over and over I keep hearing that the old consoles are very limited. In his message, the CDPR fellow recently lamented the very fact that it was difficult to scale the game to it. Well, why make such a lofty game, work on it in various ways for 8-9 years and then choose to release it for a system that wont allow you to realize it? It really should have been put out for PC first with consoles worked out later. Wait until the PS5 is more widely adopted (+1 year post launch) and sell a zillion copies.

No one made them release it for PS4, XBOX, they wanted to. That was always their plan. So I'm just not sure why, now, it's being said that is the limiting factor as to why they can't make their game how they want to.

If that truely is holding the AI/immersive reactivity back then I agree, there wont be any fixing it.
 
Last edited:
It seems like with another year of development, or maybe 2, it could have been delivered on the new current consoles and really just blow everything out of the water.

Over and over I keep hearing that the old consoles are very limited. In his message, the CDPR fellow recently lamented the very fact that it was difficult to scale the game to it. Well, why make such a lofty game, work on it in various ways for 8-9 years and then choose to release it for a system that wont allow you to realize it? It really should have been put out for PC first with consoles worked out later. Wait until the PS5 is more widely adopted (+1 year post launch) and sell a zillion copies.

No one made them release it for PS4, XBOX, they wanted to. That was always their plan. So I'm just not sure why, now, it's being said that is the limiting factor as to why they can't make their game how they want to.

If that truely is holding the AI/immersive reactivity back then I agree, there wont be any fixing it.

Nah, i realize my post sounds as if it's old consoles alone.
No... it's simply that AI interactions need to be calculated and each and every game developer has more or less the same budget (which is lower for older hardware) in how much time they can spent on single NPCs. Some companies might have somewhat faster/smarter algorithms to do stuff, but it's pretty clear that the when the current "masters" of masses of NPCs need to 'cheat' (despawning NPCs when out of sight; having them perform idle animations in fixed places while they're actually inactive) that it's unlikely that anyone has found the secret silver bullet(algorithms) to suddenly outperform them by miles, or that such a silver bullet even exist.
Yes a gradual increases because of faster hardware and maybe some smarter algorithm possibly..

So to paraphrase - i think CDPRs devs are as smart as Rockstar devs and will therefore likely be able to pull off the same level of AI as them ;)
 
I mean, given enough time and resources, you can. Just look at the AI of RDR 2 or GTA 5.

It's almost like Rockstar has multiple giant studio's around the globe to work on their games, and CDPR bit off way more then they could chew with their one 500 man studio.
 
It's almost like Rockstar has multiple giant studio's around the globe to work on their games, and CDPR bit off way more then they could chew with their one 500 man studio.
8 years and over $300M.
Not as big as Rockstar, but they clearly stated money was not an issue.

GTA V is an old game, so excuse us if we want something relevant to that experience.
 
8 years and over $300M.
Not as big as Rockstar, but they clearly stated money was not an issue.

GTA V is an old game, so excuse us if we want something relevant to that experience.

Multiple credible sources have already confirmed real development only started back in 2016, that means development took 4 years, not 8.

Rockstar has 9 studios, CDPR has 1 legit studio, and an extra office with like 70 people, they should've never tried to make something remotely close to GTA5 in the span of 4 years...
 
the most nonsense i did read here was someone claiming that cyberpunk took 13/14 years...
so started 2007 when CDPR did release their 1st game ever.. rofl

CDPR did clearly say, they start with cyberpunk when the DLCs for Witcher 3 are done.. Blood and Whine got released 2016
some concepts may have started earlyer...
and also Cyberpunk is Redengine 4, not sure how much influence the engine change had
 
Multiple credible sources have already confirmed real development only started back in 2016, that means development took 4 years, not 8.

Rockstar has 9 studios, CDPR has 1 legit studio, and an extra office with like 70 people, they should've never tried to make something remotely close to GTA5 in the span of 4 years...
Yeah, as credible as CNN.
 
the most nonsense i did read here was someone claiming that cyberpunk took 13/14 years...
so started 2007 when CDPR did release their 1st game ever.. rofl

CDPR did clearly say, they start with cyberpunk when the DLCs for Witcher 3 are done.. Blood and Whine got released 2016
some concepts may have started earlyer...
and also Cyberpunk is Redengine 4, not sure how much influence the engine change had
Full production started in 2016, but I suspect they were at least experimenting something back in 2009.

Look this video released by CD Projekt Red back in 2009. At 0:49 you can see a game in first person which looks futuristic.

 
Does anyone know or think is it possible that they are able to create the world they intended to with what they have, or is such a rework impossible? Are they interested in creating a reactive enviroment as part of their MP experience?

AI is usually one of the last things to be worked on in game dev, I wouldn't be surprised if this got cut short due to the time crunch and they did put in a "place holder" AI. Now will it get corrected? While I can see it go both ways I have to lean to it getting a overhaul of some kind. I can't see the AI not be on their to-do list of things to fix. They are under so much scrutiny right now if they have any amount of common sense this is not the time to cut corners. So I do think we will get a AI update in the Feb patch.
 
The difference between the scope of the studios is a valid point but the size of your studio has nothing to do with releasing a game way before it's ready to be released, that is a decision made by the studio and the studio alone. I'm fairly certain Hello Games had less than 25 people who worked on No Mans Sky before launch but that wasn't a factor in whether or not they deserved criticism nor was it a defense though they could have used it as one.

They didn't, they fixed and improved the game and continue to do so. They didn't argue with the fans and customers.

They took personal responsibility.

download (1).png


Personal responsibility, coming when it's ready.
 
Last edited:
Cdpr tried to do the unity/syndicate crowd system which has a night and day cycle and you can follow some people as they go around , but couldn't or didn't understand it enough. There was gdc event that ubisoft did to demo the tech and how it worked (super interesting) I think the issue came down to the streaming of data as cdpr said and it had to be cut for something simpler to stream the data on the older gens.
 
Could CDPR overhaul the AI? Yes.
But they are focusing in fixing bugs. AI overhaul could mean a lot of new bugs. So i don't expect that to happend.
And to be clear, 500 devs , you are talking about 500 devs like something small?
I work as a SR dev in small company, you have no idea what 500 devs could do in 4 -8 years.
It's a lot of resources and not an excuse for not reaching goals.
 
Cdpr tried to do the unity/syndicate crowd system which has a night and day cycle and you can follow some people as they go around , but couldn't or didn't understand it enough. There was gdc event that ubisoft did to demo the tech and how it worked (super interesting) I think the issue came down to the streaming of data as cdpr said and it had to be cut for something simpler to stream the data on the older gens.


This is how unity did it...
 
The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3 really had no problem matching (most) people's expectations. They either directly improved on past games in the genre or the good parts were so strong they blinded people to the weaker parts. I played The Witcher 3, then I played Dragon Age: Inquisition. Because of the high bar set by The Witcher 3, I couldn't finish DA:I, the bar and expectations of RPGs had been raised for me.

The reality is that CDPR created a game that steps into the realm of GTA and RDR(2). We've played those games, we've seen what can be accomplished, the bar and our expectations were raised for open-world games.

I just finished RDR2 before Cyberpunk 2077 came out, I was late to the party. So I came straight from a super polished open-world experience with a lot of very developed open-world systems and mechanics, to Cyberpunk. You can imagine which way the comparison goes with RDR2 still fresh in my mind.

Is this comparison entirely fair given budget, studio size etc. etc. No, not really, I'm even consciously aware of this. But once you've experienced something better, there really is often no going back.
 
I think they will fix bugs in the ai. The current AI isn't even at Half-life 2 level. Will they add an AI to the game that will revolutionize the industry, no way.
 
Top Bottom