If you are playing ANY sort of game, and you are not making ALL of the moves, you are of course playing against an AI.
Let's just get one thing straight right at the start.
AI stands for artificial intelligence, and sadly, there is precisely no intellect whatsover in ANY form of AI anywhere in gaming today. There also never has been. It's like the equally brain dead term "real time strategy" where the term "real" has precisely no relevance, because 1 second of YOUR life, is not identical to 1 second of the design's timeline.
Therefore, when playing a game, against any form of AI, it is NOT cheating. Cheating is a thought process required response to unfavourable conditions. YOU might cheat by various forms of action, but the design is incapable of changing any of it's design at whim. YOU might elect to save a game, then make an attack, and see if you win, and failing winning, you can resort to quitting, and restarting the game from the save point. That's actually cheating, as the game can not do that while you can.
A lot of people whine over AI's cheating, when in fact, the player is just pissed off with the premeditated difficulty settings meant to make the game increasingly harder for the player to win whilst the player is forced to play the game fairly.
The player sees it as "unfair" when really, the player is really just disagreeing on a matter of game design choices.
The game may elect to make some aspect of the design "cheaper" for the AI. Or it might have an escalating set of game settings for the game's forces meant to make it harder and harder to outperform or defeat them.
That isn't cheating per se, the AI didn't change them without your permission or knowledge.
And what is so frustrating, is so many players bitch and complain about "lousy AI" and yet, they just can't wrap the bloody heads around the idea, AIs can't think. The AI you have in the game will never be any more than the AI you had on day 1 when you bought the game. It might acquire and store data, but you can also always uninstall and reinstall and start all over again too.
Even the crappiest human player you could ever find, will still be capable of thinking. And you can't reset them either
And the problem with AI only becomes greater the more complicated we expect the games to be.
Programming a Chess AI is actually simple. In a game of Chess, there is a definite finite sum of potential moves. It will be a damn high number, but remember, out modern computers can process actions on the order of numbers so large it simply doesn't matter if the number seems large to YOU.
Compare all the possible move options and responses with a game of Chess to a game of Panzer Tactics. Varying types of pieces and numbers of pieces and terrain that is not a uniform grid. Add to that the sides are not identical. The AI for a game such as Panzer Tactics needs to be soo much more capable.
This is why massive games like some of my more complex PC wargames can have so much trouble with AI design.
Because never is the AI thinking. It's limited to the thinking potential of the game's designer. Because all of the possible responses, have had to be predicted and planned for in advance.
And just because a person knows how to code, doesn't mean that they are any fucking good playing their own game actually.
Which is why increasingly people are being subjected to games increasingly that need to be immediately patched the same day they are released to the market.
Because suddenly a lot ot people, able to possibly see a lot of things the designer missed, are finding the game had flaws in design.
Game designers are not using gamers as unpaid yet paying beta testors as is a common complaint.
The truth is, gamers want an ever increasing level of sophistication in the game, yet designers are basically no smarter than they were 30 years ago for the most part. The code software has become harder to use and more complex to allow for more complicated game design, but, programmers are not really that much smarter really.
And AI is simply not up to the challenge. It's not as easy as drawing pretty graphics and making the game an eye candy spectacle. 3d is not all that hard at the "clever" level. It takes longer to draw, but it doesn't take smarter to draw.
So in the last decade, our games have lept forward visually, but not substantively in the realm of AI and all that is not tied to graphics. Gameplay simply isn't going anywhere.
Recently I have been playing Civilization Revolution on the DS. Love the game. Can't get past Warlord and win currently. I just haven't yet mastered the difficulty setting requirements on my play style.
But the game is no better in many respects from the game play of PC Civ IV. I peaked at about the same difficulty setting too.
Graphically the Civ experience has been evolving, but challenge wise, it's the same game Sid made all those years back really.
In the case of my wargames, I usually stick to the ones that can be played Hotseat Mode so that if I feel like a REAL challenge, I can play human vs human, even if my only alternative is to be both of those humans.
I rarely spend cash on games that can't be played hotseat. It's a rare game that I will call well enough designed to be a valid challenge or at least sufficiently amusing when played against the AI.
Playing the AI is frankly identical to jacking off and not minding that it isn't real sex. Hey, whatever amuses you eh
Most people demand a game have an AI, simply because of the myriad excuses about not being able to find an opponent.
You know, I only jack off when my wife is unavailble
And those that play the AI, likely are just unwilling to get off their asses and find a human.
I've actually seen some games ruined just so it could make use of an AI.
I've watched games get massively delayed, all so it could have the usual crummy AI incorporated, all so the game could accomodate the usual gamers that simply don't want to go the effort to find a human to play against.
It's frustrating as hell.
I'll admit, I DO play the AI in a lot of cases. But, I never whine about the AI cheating. I KNOW the AI is going to have built in bias. If I want a totally fair game, I will not play against the AI. If I NEED a game that can be played hotseat mode, I simply won't buy games that don't have it.
It's that simple.
Every time I here the term AI and the phrase "AI bug" I just want to scream.
All of a game's AI flaws disappear the second the AI disappears.
Let's just get one thing straight right at the start.
AI stands for artificial intelligence, and sadly, there is precisely no intellect whatsover in ANY form of AI anywhere in gaming today. There also never has been. It's like the equally brain dead term "real time strategy" where the term "real" has precisely no relevance, because 1 second of YOUR life, is not identical to 1 second of the design's timeline.
Therefore, when playing a game, against any form of AI, it is NOT cheating. Cheating is a thought process required response to unfavourable conditions. YOU might cheat by various forms of action, but the design is incapable of changing any of it's design at whim. YOU might elect to save a game, then make an attack, and see if you win, and failing winning, you can resort to quitting, and restarting the game from the save point. That's actually cheating, as the game can not do that while you can.
A lot of people whine over AI's cheating, when in fact, the player is just pissed off with the premeditated difficulty settings meant to make the game increasingly harder for the player to win whilst the player is forced to play the game fairly.
The player sees it as "unfair" when really, the player is really just disagreeing on a matter of game design choices.
The game may elect to make some aspect of the design "cheaper" for the AI. Or it might have an escalating set of game settings for the game's forces meant to make it harder and harder to outperform or defeat them.
That isn't cheating per se, the AI didn't change them without your permission or knowledge.
And what is so frustrating, is so many players bitch and complain about "lousy AI" and yet, they just can't wrap the bloody heads around the idea, AIs can't think. The AI you have in the game will never be any more than the AI you had on day 1 when you bought the game. It might acquire and store data, but you can also always uninstall and reinstall and start all over again too.
Even the crappiest human player you could ever find, will still be capable of thinking. And you can't reset them either
And the problem with AI only becomes greater the more complicated we expect the games to be.
Programming a Chess AI is actually simple. In a game of Chess, there is a definite finite sum of potential moves. It will be a damn high number, but remember, out modern computers can process actions on the order of numbers so large it simply doesn't matter if the number seems large to YOU.
Compare all the possible move options and responses with a game of Chess to a game of Panzer Tactics. Varying types of pieces and numbers of pieces and terrain that is not a uniform grid. Add to that the sides are not identical. The AI for a game such as Panzer Tactics needs to be soo much more capable.
This is why massive games like some of my more complex PC wargames can have so much trouble with AI design.
Because never is the AI thinking. It's limited to the thinking potential of the game's designer. Because all of the possible responses, have had to be predicted and planned for in advance.
And just because a person knows how to code, doesn't mean that they are any fucking good playing their own game actually.
Which is why increasingly people are being subjected to games increasingly that need to be immediately patched the same day they are released to the market.
Because suddenly a lot ot people, able to possibly see a lot of things the designer missed, are finding the game had flaws in design.
Game designers are not using gamers as unpaid yet paying beta testors as is a common complaint.
The truth is, gamers want an ever increasing level of sophistication in the game, yet designers are basically no smarter than they were 30 years ago for the most part. The code software has become harder to use and more complex to allow for more complicated game design, but, programmers are not really that much smarter really.
And AI is simply not up to the challenge. It's not as easy as drawing pretty graphics and making the game an eye candy spectacle. 3d is not all that hard at the "clever" level. It takes longer to draw, but it doesn't take smarter to draw.
So in the last decade, our games have lept forward visually, but not substantively in the realm of AI and all that is not tied to graphics. Gameplay simply isn't going anywhere.
Recently I have been playing Civilization Revolution on the DS. Love the game. Can't get past Warlord and win currently. I just haven't yet mastered the difficulty setting requirements on my play style.
But the game is no better in many respects from the game play of PC Civ IV. I peaked at about the same difficulty setting too.
Graphically the Civ experience has been evolving, but challenge wise, it's the same game Sid made all those years back really.
In the case of my wargames, I usually stick to the ones that can be played Hotseat Mode so that if I feel like a REAL challenge, I can play human vs human, even if my only alternative is to be both of those humans.
I rarely spend cash on games that can't be played hotseat. It's a rare game that I will call well enough designed to be a valid challenge or at least sufficiently amusing when played against the AI.
Playing the AI is frankly identical to jacking off and not minding that it isn't real sex. Hey, whatever amuses you eh
Most people demand a game have an AI, simply because of the myriad excuses about not being able to find an opponent.
You know, I only jack off when my wife is unavailble
And those that play the AI, likely are just unwilling to get off their asses and find a human.
I've actually seen some games ruined just so it could make use of an AI.
I've watched games get massively delayed, all so it could have the usual crummy AI incorporated, all so the game could accomodate the usual gamers that simply don't want to go the effort to find a human to play against.
It's frustrating as hell.
I'll admit, I DO play the AI in a lot of cases. But, I never whine about the AI cheating. I KNOW the AI is going to have built in bias. If I want a totally fair game, I will not play against the AI. If I NEED a game that can be played hotseat mode, I simply won't buy games that don't have it.
It's that simple.
Every time I here the term AI and the phrase "AI bug" I just want to scream.
All of a game's AI flaws disappear the second the AI disappears.
