/v/ - Video Games

A good majority of it can be played fairly stealthy. I remember coming off Thief and trying to play a lot of games in the same sneak fashion. I think the combat route is just fine though. The "MP5" is though though for the most part and is just a grenade delivery device to me.

>is though though

is trash though

>>16782077

Portal came from Narbacular Drop which came out a few years after HL2, but there could be something to them really wanting to make a first person puzzler and trying to find a profitable way of making back on what they invested in tech.

>>16782076

This may sound silly to you now, but back during release the AI for the military you fight against was considered pretty good. The FPS parts were definitely a big part of the game.

>>16782088

I remember; someone set up a custom arena that could show off the AI. They made strong use of covering fire, formed attack teams, flanked, etc.

The environments in HL2 weren't remotely capable of showing off how good the AI was

>>16782088

>This may sound silly to you now, but back during release the AI for the military you fight against was considered pretty good.

I wouldn't doubt it, but that brings up the question of why didn't they just make a straight-up shooter then? With the way Half-Life is designed, the enemies are more of an obstacle and annoyance rather than a threat.

>>16782135

How did the AI for HL2 compare to the AI in F.E.A.R.?

>>16782227

HL2's ai was a step down from HL1 Ai, let alone being anywhere near F.E.A.R's league . Although, there has been various attempts to improve HL2 a.i. throughout the years.

>>16782227

>How did the AI for HL2 compare to the AI in F.E.A.R.?

The combines in HL2 might as well be stationary turrets.

>>16782292

Halo was supposed to be a fucking 3rd person shooter as well. The enemy designs just aren't very threatening by design, I just find it insulting to play even compared to awful shit like Half-Life 2.

>>16782076

I think you have a very warped idea of how game development works. I can think of exactly two puzzles in HL1 that took more than an hour or two to implement (the airstrike machine and the conveyor belt maze), whereas the combat mechanics were being continuously refined for most of the game's development cycle. The same goes for

>muh six million man-hours wasted on smell AI

, that's the sort of thing that a bored programmer can write up in a single afternoon.

Also

<The combat is serviceable, but there's nothing fun about it.

you can fuck right off with that shit taste

>>16782326

very insightful post,do you know any other material about how ai works in certain games?

>exploration

You are literally shoved down a tube and have 0 backtracking. I agree though the combat is shit.

>>16782478

Heres an old article for STALKERs AI https://web.archive.org/web/20080430134115/http://aigamedev.com/interviews/stalker-alife

>>16782478

AI isn't really black magic, it's just if statements.

>>16782514

The human brain is just if statements.

>>16782511

thanks buddy

>>16782267

>>16782135

>>16782227

This was HL2's ""AI"" on release.

>>16782717

>on release

that one CP is still as stupid today as he was day one

>>16782670

>that pic

While I can see that this way of coding is very inefficient, what would be the better way to write this code? I don't know much about coding, but I'm curious.

>>16782757

Instead of 10 million if statements that each must be checked, a switch is a faster way to do that where you point at what variable you're checking and make your list of items

sort of like

switch(this.ThingToCheck)

[ThingIsCool]

//Place statements here

[ThingIsCool2]

//Place stuff here

….

[Etcetera]

//Place stuff here

No need to force your computer to check literally twenty things. Your program will just check it once and go to the correct option.

>>16782076

The defining quality of Half-Life is that the enviroment is as much of a threat, as the enemies. You are tasked with crossing a dangerous world, not just gunning down things.

>>16782077

>given how all accounts I've heard of Half-Life 2 are that it's mostly a tech demo for Source 2

Further proof millennials play more social media than actual games.

>>16782077

>And, given how all accounts I've heard of Half-Life 2 are that it's mostly a tech demo for Source 2

>Valve were demoing Source 2 in 2004

>>16782760

>Instead of 10 million if statements that each must be checked

That's only true if you use a bunch of if statements like so:

if (A) {
    X;
}
if (B) {
    Y;
}
if (C) {
    Z;
}

That way every condition for every if statement is evaluated.

Cuckdev is using else if statements which in C# are just else with an if block nested inside. If the condition of an if-else statement is true, the else block is ignored and so is everything nested inside.

In other words, this:

if (var == A) {
    X;
} else if (var == B) {
    Y;
} else if (var == C) {
    Z;
}

And this:

switch (var) {
case A:
    X;
    break;
case B:
    Y;
    break;
case C:
    Z;
    break;
}

Should compile to the same CIL, assuming var isn't a string, and so the execution speed will be the same. CIL can be easily checked using a decompiler like ILSpy/dnSpy.

That Cuckdev code pic is bumfuck retarded for two reasons. Firstly, he has a bunch of repeating blocks with identical content. Instead of having FOUR Insanity blocks, he could use just one with a better defined condition. Same for two Weapon blocks.

Secondly, he's using string comparisons as conditions. String comparisons are by their nature slow so they should only be used when there's absolutely no other way. Yet he's using strings when he could've just used an enum.

WHAT THE FUCK

And people wonder why his shitty never ever runs worse than triple ayys.

Switch statements can actually work around his brain damage because if var is a string and so case labels are string constants, the compiler will hash the labels, build a lookup table out of the results, and so when var is evaluated, it will also get hashed first and its hash will get compared to label hashes in LUT. That's faster than direct string comparison. But Cuckdev would need to actually learn how to program to know that.

I feel like Half Life would have been a much better game if they stuck with the Survival Horror feel at the beginning where you are constantly low on ammo, it really gave me first person Resident Evil vibes which they unfortunately abandoned pretty early on. Emphasising and expanding on Stealth would have also improved it, having the monsters and military be a real threat with shootouts as a last resort.

>>16782840

Which is faster, enum or integer comparisons?

>>16782770

Retards can't be bothered to play video games, they have to watch other people play them so they can be "In the know" with their favorite jewtube/twitch eceleb personalities.

>>16782863

An enum is just a bunch of, by default, int constants, so the compiler breaks it down into those. Ergo, you end up with int comparisons in both cases, and so the performance is the same. Or should be, if the compiler doesn't fuck up. There used to be a time when ternary operator statements like

var = (condition) ? A : B;

were measurably slower in C# than

if (condition) {
    var = A;
} else {
    var = B;
}

because ternaries were being broken down a bit differently, even though the code snippets above should amount to the same thing.

If you're worried about performance, look at IL.

Or do some benchmarking using the Stopwatch class.

>>16782866

You do realize that playing through a game actually takes time, right? I don't want to be one of those idiots who only plays the first few hours, and then prances about declaring how great/terrible a game is when they couldn't even be asked to complete it.

Git gud.

>>16782840

>If the condition of an if-else statement is true, the else block is ignored and so is everything nested inside.

Yes but it has to do every check until it gets to the end so if the comparison is not true it could run through multiple checks. My understanding is that in a switch statement it can just jump to the proper location.

>>16782968

How would you check if an enemy has an hp less than 50 and 5m less away from you under a switch statement?

>>16782903

If a game isn't fun within the first few hours it's failed as an entertainment product, anyone can feel free to trash garbage.

>>16782982

You mean like how the first 40 minutes of Half-Life is absolutely boring because it's all nothing but setup?

>>16782925

Are you an autistic?

>>16782076

Why didn't you watch any gameplay or read literally anything about the game before playing it?

>>16782989

The shitty intro buildup isn't exclusive to half-life though. It should be a major point against a game, but a game could have a shitty intro buildup and still be good.

>>16782968

>Yes but it has to do every check until it gets to the end

In an if - else if - else chain, it sequentially rummages through conditions until it finds one that evaluates to true, executes the code in the corresponding block, and ignores the rest of the chain.

>in a switch statement it can just jump to the proper location.

No, it too just compares var to cases sequentially until it finds a match, so if the very last case is the one that's actually true, it will have to go through comparing all the cases. It can't immediately jump to the proper location because it doesn't know beforehand where that location is; otherwise, there would be no need for any evaluations at all. That's why it's recommended to put the cases that are the likeliest to be true to the top of the list. Same for if blocks in a chain.

A switch statement at its core is just a more elegant way to write a long if - else if - else chain. It might have some cool things like that hash trick, but those are language/implementation dependent. Every program you write is eventually compiled into machine code, which is just a stream of instructions for the CPU so it can actually execute it. The CPU has a limited instruction set, and all the logic boils down to "equal to", "greater than", "less or equal than" and other simple shit like that. C# doesn't compile directly into machine code, but CIL, the intermediate language it compiles to, is low-level enough to showcase what I'm on about. That's why I mentioned compiler output and looking at it with relevant tools. You'll see that a properly written if - else if - else chain and a switch look similar, if not outright the same: basic logic and lots of jumps. The problem with Cuckdev is that he can't write properly.

>>16782993

Wouldn't watching anything more than just the trailer to a game taint one's perception as to the actual quality and experience of a game?

>>16782995

That's the thing, how would you know how good a game is if you don't stick to the end? I can understand things getting to a point where you just "Nope" out of it, but that would require the game to be of a legendary level of terrible (And, there's only a handful of games that reach that point). Everything else would just require a "palette cleanser" that you'd be playing alongside it (Or, take a break altogether, play something else, and return later on).

>>16782996

switch statements are the equivalent of ==, they don't check <=, <,>, or >=.

You could associate it with integers beforehand, but why not use an if statement to begin with?

>>16783001

>switch statements are the equivalent of ==, they don't check <=, <,>, or >=

I didn't imply otherwise. I used ==, >, and <= as examples of hardware logic simplicity. What I stated was that a good chain and a switch will look similar after compilation.

>why not use an if statement to begin with?

Not disputing that. Anon above just suggested that switches are superior to chains, which isn't true.

>>16783001

>>16783007

Unless you mean what I said about switches being more elegant chains. Yeah, I should've worded that more clearly that I still had Cuckdev's code in mind when I wrote that.

>>16782757

All those lines are the same exact thing give or take one thing. He could've just had an enum/bit flag which kept track of what was witnessed, and then substituted in the highest priority one. He could've done that all in 8 lines of code max and it'd be way easier to read.