Development Update #9 - AI

Hey Everyone!

In this episode we wanna spotlight the latest ai changes mainly driven by our new AI programmer, better known as Solarint. You may know him from the AI mod for SP-Tarkov called “SAIN”. Before we start, we want to get ahead of any possible confusion around the use of the term “AI”. When we talk about AI or bots, this has nothing to do with LLMs or any of the hype around “AI”. This is a normal game system inspired by decades of work from other developers. The point of this dev-log is to list the major new mechanics being introduced and explain the reasoning and goals for each system. So, let's talk about what we’ve been working on for the past few months. In 1.3 we will introduce the first version of RedFor - an AI system for all bots in Incursion Red River. Shoutout to our discord community who suggested the fantastic name!

Overview

AI behavior has been completely rebuilt. It will feel fundamentally different to the enemies you will encounter in 1.2. We are aiming for grounded and realistic behavior. Bots won't be doing jumpshots or anything that a person in their situation wouldn’t plausibly do. This first version is designed to be a solid framework to build off in future updates. That means it is not feature complete and some behavior is placeholder until the systems can be made to support it as intended. Even so, we think it will be a very compelling upgrade compared to 1.2. Just like in 1.2, RedFor is using a version of Goal Oriented Action Planning or “GOAP” called “Hierarchical Task Networks”. This is certainly not a comprehensive list of everything new, but should give you a good idea of what we are designing going forward. All the clips shown are recorded in editor on a test map, unscripted, and mostly unedited. Everything is actively in development and there are several issues currently being worked on.

Movement

The way bots move around in the world has been something of particular importance. We want bots to have a sense of physicality - like they exist in the game world. This will be an ongoing process, but for 1.3 we have rebalanced the speed at which bots move in all situations, and implemented inertia in their movement along with many smaller changes. We want them to mess up sometimes as long as their mistakes feel like human mistakes rather than buggy ai. But of course - It's a fine line here and this is going to be something I’m closely watching as play testing begins. Designing bots to fail in interesting ways is a lot more difficult compared to having them execute everything perfectly.

Dynamic Lean

Bots can lean around any corner at any time, and will try to minimize how much of their body is exposed to an enemy. **Video**

Difficulty: Challenging but Fair

The goal is to make every enemy feel like a threat and require respect, even for experienced FPS players. If things are too easy, it cheapens the experience. So much has changed that it's difficult to give an exact measure of how much more difficult it will be compared to 1.2. In some ways, it may be easier, and in others, it may be harder. At the same time, accessibility for players of all skill levels is important. We believe in allowing players to modify the experience in the way they seem fit. At risk of sounding corny