Stealth for example is not nearly as good as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or The Metal Gear Solid series. The tutorial seemed alright but when it came to real gameplay I felt like stealth just didn\u2019t work and I just resorted to guns blazing. But after more effort and getting a better hang of quick hacking I have found stealth to be viable actually. You really do need to make heavy use of quick hacking though. Also that game is very visually busy which makes it easy to miss a camera.
Driving feels pretty good, but not as good as GTA. So far driving really seems to be a way to get from point A to point B and not a core gameplay mechanic like it is with GTA. The NPC driving AI and Cop AI is downright bad compared to GTA but besides being a little immersion breaking it doesn\u2019t seem to affect the actual gameplay much. GTA is very focused around driving and avoiding police, most of the missions involve it in some way. Cyberpunk doesn\u2019t really rely on driving so I can give it a pass on those faults.
Gunplay really bothered me at first. It felt chaotic and a bit clunky. Other FPS/RPG hybrid games have suffered the same issues. Shooting powerful or higher level enemies will just feel bullet spongy. Some of that just needs to be accepted as \u201cthis is an RPG, not a shooter\u201d. The cover system isn\u2019t very sophisticated or obvious either. However the more I play the more I get the hang of it and I have found the gunplay to actually be quite satisfying."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2020/12/call-transcript_en.pdf"}},"_tags":["comment","author_kodt","story_25435652"],"author":"kodt","children":[25440648,25442147],"comment_text":"I felt the same but after spending more time, things are starting to click.
Stealth for example is not nearly as good as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided or The Metal Gear Solid series. The tutorial seemed alright but when it came to real gameplay I felt like stealth just didn\u2019t work and I just resorted to guns blazing. But after more effort and getting a better hang of quick hacking I have found stealth to be viable actually. You really do need to make heavy use of quick hacking though. Also that game is very visually busy which makes it easy to miss a camera.
Driving feels pretty good, but not as good as GTA. So far driving really seems to be a way to get from point A to point B and not a core gameplay mechanic like it is with GTA. The NPC driving AI and Cop AI is downright bad compared to GTA but besides being a little immersion breaking it doesn\u2019t seem to affect the actual gameplay much. GTA is very focused around driving and avoiding police, most of the missions involve it in some way. Cyberpunk doesn\u2019t really rely on driving so I can give it a pass on those faults.
Gunplay really bothered me at first. It felt chaotic and a bit clunky. Other FPS/RPG hybrid games have suffered the same issues. Shooting powerful or higher level enemies will just feel bullet spongy. Some of that just needs to be accepted as \u201cthis is an RPG, not a shooter\u201d. The cover system isn\u2019t very sophisticated or obvious either. However the more I play the more I get the hang of it and I have found the gunplay to actually be quite satisfying.","created_at":"2020-12-16T05:27:56Z","created_at_i":1608096476,"objectID":"25439410","parent_id":25437030,"story_id":25435652,"story_title":"CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)","story_url":"https://www.cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2020/12/call-transcript_en.pdf","updated_at":"2024-09-20T07:28:43Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"daemon_9009"},"story_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"Hi guys, i was working on making AI NPCs with LLMs and RL models, to create unique stories for the user, but this is a little far fetched.\nIs this problem even worth solving? challenges like revenue model, costs of inference and all that. To take an example goodai launched a game https://www.aipeoplegame.com/ , from the first appearances, there is not much we can do in this world. maybe we need a really big open world like GTA to make it a success, but still the question is will people want to play it?"},"title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ai","npc"],"value":"Ask HN: Is working on AI NPCs with LLMs or RL models worth it?"}},"_tags":["story","author_daemon_9009","story_42162826","ask_hn"],"author":"daemon_9009","created_at":"2024-11-17T08:31:12Z","created_at_i":1731832272,"num_comments":0,"objectID":"42162826","points":1,"story_id":42162826,"story_text":"Hi guys, i was working on making AI NPCs with LLMs and RL models, to create unique stories for the user, but this is a little far fetched.\nIs this problem even worth solving? challenges like revenue model, costs of inference and all that. To take an example goodai launched a game https://www.aipeoplegame.com/ , from the first appearances, there is not much we can do in this world. maybe we need a really big open world like GTA to make it a success, but still the question is will people want to play it?","title":"Ask HN: Is working on AI NPCs with LLMs or RL models worth it?","updated_at":"2024-11-17T08:32:42Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"beenBoutIT"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"The formula is something like the longer a game is the less linear it needs to be to have a high replay value.
'The Last of Us' is incredibly long and among the best linear non open-world games ever made. That said, it's entirely linear and the thought of sinking such a massive amount of time into a game that's effectively a very long movie give it a very low replayability factor.
Likewise, Skyrim is a massive open world game that's incredibly linear and repetitive, giving it a low replayability factor.
Rockstar has several very long open world games that have massive replay value and don't get stale with repeat playthroughs. On the flip side, if you haven't played through 2 or 3 times you've generally missed a decent amount of content. GTA San Andreas, RDR2 and GTA V all fall into this rare category of long games that are highly replayable.
With open world games the key to high replayability seems to be NPC AI quality and providing different outcomes for different actions and the order in which you do things in-game. Allowing you to do lots of missions in whatever order you choose goes a long way to breaking up any feeling that you're watching a movie."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Joys of small game development"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://abagames.github.io/joys-of-small-game-development-en/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_beenBoutIT","story_37799387"],"author":"beenBoutIT","children":[37807669,37807939,37807943],"comment_text":"The formula is something like the longer a game is the less linear it needs to be to have a high replay value.
'The Last of Us' is incredibly long and among the best linear non open-world games ever made. That said, it's entirely linear and the thought of sinking such a massive amount of time into a game that's effectively a very long movie give it a very low replayability factor.
Likewise, Skyrim is a massive open world game that's incredibly linear and repetitive, giving it a low replayability factor.
Rockstar has several very long open world games that have massive replay value and don't get stale with repeat playthroughs. On the flip side, if you haven't played through 2 or 3 times you've generally missed a decent amount of content. GTA San Andreas, RDR2 and GTA V all fall into this rare category of long games that are highly replayable.
With open world games the key to high replayability seems to be NPC AI quality and providing different outcomes for different actions and the order in which you do things in-game. Allowing you to do lots of missions in whatever order you choose goes a long way to breaking up any feeling that you're watching a movie.","created_at":"2023-10-08T02:50:51Z","created_at_i":1696733451,"objectID":"37807485","parent_id":37806605,"story_id":37799387,"story_title":"Joys of small game development","story_url":"https://abagames.github.io/joys-of-small-game-development-en/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T15:19:06Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"nirv"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"The Cyberpunk 2077 game is already amazing in terms of art direction, level design and story wise. I would also argue that the game is excellent in terms of graphics, although it has massive issues with performance. In my opinion, in addition to a lots bugs, at the moment the weakest aspects of the game are the complete lack of NPC AI, as well as some emptiness in the game world outside of story and other quests. The latter is understandable, there is room for multiple updates in the future, without affecting the storyline, including massive online multiplayer game mode.
As for poor, or rather the lack of, AI and NPC behavior was mentioned as a "bug" that will be fixed at a recent CDPR board meeting. In 2018 CDPR were advertising full day cycle AI system for all NPCs in game. The promise was not fulfilled. At the moment there is simply no AI, like it's 2003 again. Including awful police spawns behind player's back with no vehicle chase.
However, users reported that rare glimpse of intelligence does exist in the game, perhaps through an oversight, e.g. police is actually able to chase player in a car[1] (for a short distance though), and some NPCs can actually be found in unusual places[2]. We don't know for sure, but it's believed that CDPR hastily trimmed all of the NPC and vehicle AI in the game. If so, we can only guess for what purpose. Maybe they didn't have time to polish it for the mandatory release date on December 10, or perhaps older consoles weren't able to process it. However, in its current shape NPC AI is at the level of AAA games from 15 years back (GTA: San Andreas), not to mention the CDPR's own Witcher 3. In fact, it is so awful that it is even good: it gives hope that AI system will get significantly overhauled with one of the game's upcoming updates (two major updates are expected in 2021Q1).
Nothing of that prevented me from enjoying this amazing game for 100+ hours with great pleasure. I haven't been as excited about a videogame as a kid since 2004, when Half Life 2[3] was released.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-OZqwjzNas
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/kewbai/...
[3] The Prey (2017) was an unexpected gem which I fell in love with, but I had zero hype since I didn't know anything about the game beforehand. I highly recommend reading Aphyr's (yes, that Jepsen's Aphyr) excellent Prey game review: https://aphyr.com/posts/344-prey-the-real-and-the-symbolic"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020\u2019s biggest video game launch turned into a shambles"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/18/cyberpunk-2077-how-2020s-biggest-video-game-launch-turned-into-a-shambles"}},"_tags":["comment","author_nirv","story_25475037"],"author":"nirv","children":[25484088],"comment_text":"The Cyberpunk 2077 game is already amazing in terms of art direction, level design and story wise. I would also argue that the game is excellent in terms of graphics, although it has massive issues with performance. In my opinion, in addition to a lots bugs, at the moment the weakest aspects of the game are the complete lack of NPC AI, as well as some emptiness in the game world outside of story and other quests. The latter is understandable, there is room for multiple updates in the future, without affecting the storyline, including massive online multiplayer game mode.
As for poor, or rather the lack of, AI and NPC behavior was mentioned as a "bug" that will be fixed at a recent CDPR board meeting. In 2018 CDPR were advertising full day cycle AI system for all NPCs in game. The promise was not fulfilled. At the moment there is simply no AI, like it's 2003 again. Including awful police spawns behind player's back with no vehicle chase.
However, users reported that rare glimpse of intelligence does exist in the game, perhaps through an oversight, e.g. police is actually able to chase player in a car[1] (for a short distance though), and some NPCs can actually be found in unusual places[2]. We don't know for sure, but it's believed that CDPR hastily trimmed all of the NPC and vehicle AI in the game. If so, we can only guess for what purpose. Maybe they didn't have time to polish it for the mandatory release date on December 10, or perhaps older consoles weren't able to process it. However, in its current shape NPC AI is at the level of AAA games from 15 years back (GTA: San Andreas), not to mention the CDPR's own Witcher 3. In fact, it is so awful that it is even good: it gives hope that AI system will get significantly overhauled with one of the game's upcoming updates (two major updates are expected in 2021Q1).
Nothing of that prevented me from enjoying this amazing game for 100+ hours with great pleasure. I haven't been as excited about a videogame as a kid since 2004, when Half Life 2[3] was released.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-OZqwjzNas
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/kewbai/...
[3] The Prey (2017) was an unexpected gem which I fell in love with, but I had zero hype since I didn't know anything about the game beforehand. I highly recommend reading Aphyr's (yes, that Jepsen's Aphyr) excellent Prey game review: https://aphyr.com/posts/344-prey-the-real-and-the-symbolic","created_at":"2020-12-19T21:02:23Z","created_at_i":1608411743,"objectID":"25481170","parent_id":25479825,"story_id":25475037,"story_title":"Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020\u2019s biggest video game launch turned into a shambles","story_url":"https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/18/cyberpunk-2077-how-2020s-biggest-video-game-launch-turned-into-a-shambles","updated_at":"2024-09-20T07:32:59Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Vaskivo"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"I have been binging it since launch. \nATM, I have 40 hour playtime in it. \nI'm Playing it in a two year gaming laptop, with every graphical setting on Low. (I graphics don't say much to me)
Yes, the game is buggy. But, IMO, there are deeper problems that that:
- The crafting system is absolutely useless.
- The loot and equipment system is basically a "looter-shooter". Which I dislike. And make the crafting useless.
- The game economy is messed up. Cyberware implants and vehicles are way too expensive. And there is no incetive to buy any weapons. The loop is "fight stuff, get stronger stuff, equip the stronger stuff and sell the rest". After four or five loops you have money to buy something useful.
- Big problems the targeting reticle for interacting with stuff.
- The car physics is awful. The minimap is too zoomed in. And driving in first person is a PITA.
- NPC AI is really lacking.
- Quest design feels a bit lackluster. There are less alterative choices and nuance than what's in the Witcher 3 [0].
- The world, while visually and architecturaly well designed, it is empty. There are no side activities. No hotel rooms to sleep in, no option to sit at the bar and have a drink... There is a gun range that is only open for a short quest!
- There seems to be a lack of consequence in the game. I blow up and steal stuff and beal blows to organizations and the game world doesn't change with that.
I'm enjoying the game. And plan to finish it.
But I feel like CD Project Red bit up more that it could chew:
- I believe a push to have the best and latest graphical quality (raytracing and the sort) harmed other parts of the game.
- With a game having so much "bling", they should've added more stuff to do besides fighting people and questing. The places are only meaningful if there are meaningful things to do there. (GTA 5 had the same problem. GTA 4 did not)
- Writing and quest design should've been iterated a bit more. As I usually say, "voice acting did more harm that good to RPGs". This mean that it is harder to iterate on quests and dialog because it's expensive to re-record dialog.
- The Witcher 3 was more streamlined, the world was simpler, and had less mechanics. It was easy to balance the different systems. As well as game physics.
[0] The quest 'Wild at Heart' in one of the first quests in the game and set the tone for the general quest design in the game. https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_at_Heart"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Cyberpunk 2077 removed from PS Store and refunded"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://twitter.com/AskPlayStation/status/1339737360184078336"}},"_tags":["comment","author_Vaskivo","story_25464864"],"author":"Vaskivo","children":[25468126],"comment_text":"I have been binging it since launch. \nATM, I have 40 hour playtime in it. \nI'm Playing it in a two year gaming laptop, with every graphical setting on Low. (I graphics don't say much to me)
Yes, the game is buggy. But, IMO, there are deeper problems that that:
- The crafting system is absolutely useless.
- The loot and equipment system is basically a "looter-shooter". Which I dislike. And make the crafting useless.
- The game economy is messed up. Cyberware implants and vehicles are way too expensive. And there is no incetive to buy any weapons. The loop is "fight stuff, get stronger stuff, equip the stronger stuff and sell the rest". After four or five loops you have money to buy something useful.
- Big problems the targeting reticle for interacting with stuff.
- The car physics is awful. The minimap is too zoomed in. And driving in first person is a PITA.
- NPC AI is really lacking.
- Quest design feels a bit lackluster. There are less alterative choices and nuance than what's in the Witcher 3 [0].
- The world, while visually and architecturaly well designed, it is empty. There are no side activities. No hotel rooms to sleep in, no option to sit at the bar and have a drink... There is a gun range that is only open for a short quest!
- There seems to be a lack of consequence in the game. I blow up and steal stuff and beal blows to organizations and the game world doesn't change with that.
I'm enjoying the game. And plan to finish it.
But I feel like CD Project Red bit up more that it could chew:
- I believe a push to have the best and latest graphical quality (raytracing and the sort) harmed other parts of the game.
- With a game having so much "bling", they should've added more stuff to do besides fighting people and questing. The places are only meaningful if there are meaningful things to do there. (GTA 5 had the same problem. GTA 4 did not)
- Writing and quest design should've been iterated a bit more. As I usually say, "voice acting did more harm that good to RPGs". This mean that it is harder to iterate on quests and dialog because it's expensive to re-record dialog.
- The Witcher 3 was more streamlined, the world was simpler, and had less mechanics. It was easy to balance the different systems. As well as game physics.
[0] The quest 'Wild at Heart' in one of the first quests in the game and set the tone for the general quest design in the game. https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_at_Heart","created_at":"2020-12-18T10:12:48Z","created_at_i":1608286368,"objectID":"25465652","parent_id":25465290,"story_id":25464864,"story_title":"Cyberpunk 2077 removed from PS Store and refunded","story_url":"https://twitter.com/AskPlayStation/status/1339737360184078336","updated_at":"2024-09-20T07:31:28Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"drummer"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"I don't know about you guys, but this... is just incredible. Imagine the possibilities. I can't wait for open world games to include AI like this. Imagine walking up to NPCs in GTA or Cyberpunk and having a 'normal' conversation with them. An AI like ChatGPT could create plausible answers, and text to speech AI could read them out loud giving NPC's an actual voice. Imagine how real the world would feel!!\nAnd having seen the terminal emulation by Chat GPT, it would not be hard to make it emulate the terminals and internet on the computers in Cyberpunk for example. \nI can't wait to play open world games in 10 years."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"I Played Dungeons and Dragons with ChatGPT"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://medium.com/@mo.belhaj/how-i-played-dungeons-and-dragons-with-chatgpt-116c14ecd8b0"}},"_tags":["comment","author_drummer","story_33876694"],"author":"drummer","comment_text":"I don't know about you guys, but this... is just incredible. Imagine the possibilities. I can't wait for open world games to include AI like this. Imagine walking up to NPCs in GTA or Cyberpunk and having a 'normal' conversation with them. An AI like ChatGPT could create plausible answers, and text to speech AI could read them out loud giving NPC's an actual voice. Imagine how real the world would feel!!\nAnd having seen the terminal emulation by Chat GPT, it would not be hard to make it emulate the terminals and internet on the computers in Cyberpunk for example. \nI can't wait to play open world games in 10 years.","created_at":"2022-12-06T07:03:58Z","created_at_i":1670310238,"objectID":"33876707","parent_id":33876694,"story_id":33876694,"story_title":"I Played Dungeons and Dragons with ChatGPT","story_url":"https://medium.com/@mo.belhaj/how-i-played-dungeons-and-dragons-with-chatgpt-116c14ecd8b0","updated_at":"2024-09-20T12:42:51Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"ekianjo"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"Well, Mass Effect 2 was just a long corridor instead of having actual levels like Mass Effect 1. The level system was way more simplified as well than in the 2nd. And Mass Effect 1 was a way more simple game than let's say, Baldur's Gate or NeverWinter Nights from the same studio years before.
We have yet to see ANY RPG being as feature full as Ultima 7, out in 1992. Real time weather changes, AI companions with personalities, open world, huge story, NPC who actually feel real (they work during the day, go back home and sleep at night). There's nothing like that still in 2014, despite numerous attempts and failed promises.
Where are the flight simulators ? They are completely extinct. The best ones were made in the 90s and the genre disappeared in the 2000s. They were complex games too.
GTA is maybe the only game that you can show as going against that trend. That does not mean the game industry as a whole is making more complex games as they go, quite the opposite."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://acko.net/blog/the-cargo-cult-of-game-mechanics/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_ekianjo","story_8349579"],"author":"ekianjo","children":[8354389],"comment_text":"Well, Mass Effect 2 was just a long corridor instead of having actual levels like Mass Effect 1. The level system was way more simplified as well than in the 2nd. And Mass Effect 1 was a way more simple game than let's say, Baldur's Gate or NeverWinter Nights from the same studio years before.
We have yet to see ANY RPG being as feature full as Ultima 7, out in 1992. Real time weather changes, AI companions with personalities, open world, huge story, NPC who actually feel real (they work during the day, go back home and sleep at night). There's nothing like that still in 2014, despite numerous attempts and failed promises.
Where are the flight simulators ? They are completely extinct. The best ones were made in the 90s and the genre disappeared in the 2000s. They were complex games too.
GTA is maybe the only game that you can show as going against that trend. That does not mean the game industry as a whole is making more complex games as they go, quite the opposite.","created_at":"2014-09-23T02:19:11Z","created_at_i":1411438751,"objectID":"8353698","parent_id":8351082,"story_id":8349579,"story_title":"The Cargo Cult of Game Mechanics","story_url":"http://acko.net/blog/the-cargo-cult-of-game-mechanics/","updated_at":"2024-09-19T21:07:48Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"frik"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"Got the game world right:
* Half-Life series
* Deus Ex 1+2
* No One Lives Forever 1+2
* GTA San Andreas, GTA IV
* Mafia 1+2
* System Shock 2
* Thief 1-3
* Black & White 1
* Far Cry 3
* Tomb Raider (2013)
Player can interact with the game world, destroy things (many small items), the environment remembers your action (e.g. opposite-sex bathrooms in Deus Ex 1 and No One Lives Forever 1), some funny moments, ...
IMHO bad examples are Deus Ex 3 with its very static game world, Assassin's Creed with its limited interaction options, many role playing games like Gothic series, Elder Scroll series (Morrowind, Oblivion, etc) were you can steal from all NPCs and their chests and no one asks/follows you, Call of Duty series with their unlimited AI enemies(if you stay and wait), etc."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Valve\u2019s Design Process For Creating Half-Life (1999)"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3408/the_cabal_valves_design_process_.php"}},"_tags":["comment","author_frik","story_7761030"],"author":"frik","comment_text":"Got the game world right:
* Half-Life series
* Deus Ex 1+2
* No One Lives Forever 1+2
* GTA San Andreas, GTA IV
* Mafia 1+2
* System Shock 2
* Thief 1-3
* Black & White 1
* Far Cry 3
* Tomb Raider (2013)
Player can interact with the game world, destroy things (many small items), the environment remembers your action (e.g. opposite-sex bathrooms in Deus Ex 1 and No One Lives Forever 1), some funny moments, ...
IMHO bad examples are Deus Ex 3 with its very static game world, Assassin's Creed with its limited interaction options, many role playing games like Gothic series, Elder Scroll series (Morrowind, Oblivion, etc) were you can steal from all NPCs and their chests and no one asks/follows you, Call of Duty series with their unlimited AI enemies(if you stay and wait), etc.","created_at":"2014-05-18T06:06:42Z","created_at_i":1400393202,"objectID":"7762328","parent_id":7761030,"story_id":7761030,"story_title":"Valve\u2019s Design Process For Creating Half-Life (1999)","story_url":"http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3408/the_cabal_valves_design_process_.php","updated_at":"2024-09-19T20:47:11Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"athrowaway3z"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"There is no bait-and-switch, but this is going to change things.
The industry is scared of recompiling and how AI has driven costs for people to host their own servers. That includes games like GTA where a lot of recurring revenue is from people spending money in online mode.
Microsoft would "solve" that issue, as well as normalize more players to spend monthly instead of once.
\u201cNothing changes\u201d for your DVD/CDs when Netflix and Spotify arrived.
I personally have my doubts this is going to work, but the thing this model does open up is mainstream games having LLM driven NPCs."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Xbox wants you to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you bought"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/xbox-wants-you-to-pay-24-to-40-cents-per-hour-to-stream-games-you-already-bought/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_athrowaway3z","story_50194009"],"author":"athrowaway3z","children":[50207230,50213991],"comment_text":"There is no bait-and-switch, but this is going to change things.
The industry is scared of recompiling and how AI has driven costs for people to host their own servers. That includes games like GTA where a lot of recurring revenue is from people spending money in online mode.
Microsoft would "solve" that issue, as well as normalize more players to spend monthly instead of once.
\u201cNothing changes\u201d for your DVD/CDs when Netflix and Spotify arrived.
I personally have my doubts this is going to work, but the thing this model does open up is mainstream games having LLM driven NPCs.","created_at":"2026-10-23T06:08:24Z","created_at_i":1792735704,"objectID":"50205024","parent_id":50202862,"story_id":50194009,"story_title":"Xbox wants you to pay 24 to 40 cents per hour to stream games you bought","story_url":"https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/10/xbox-wants-you-to-pay-24-to-40-cents-per-hour-to-stream-games-you-already-bought/","updated_at":"2026-10-25T01:54:00Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Cthulhu_"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"I think Cyberpunk has a good basis but as you say, it's heavy weight; they did increase or tweak crowd density in an update I think, but also it's a PC game so it can be modded and improved as hardware gets better. The challenge - and you already see it on lower crowd density numbers - is getting enough unique and different characters. Cyberpunk seems to have a number (dozens?) of NPC characters making up the crowds, but it gets repetitive and you frequently see identical ones.
Procedurally generated characters would already improve that, and some games do have it but they tend to pick from a fixed set of animation and behaviour stereotypes still. More of those stereotypes make it better (think GTA), but it's still fixed.
I don't think going all in on procedural generation or even AI would fix it though; especially AI has a tendency to go for a mean / average character quickly. And in video games, you still want predictability.
That said, maybe a different visual style (lower fidelity or 2d) would work."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Cyberpunk Video Games"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://shellzine.net/cyberpunk-video-games/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_Cthulhu_","story_49100853"],"author":"Cthulhu_","children":[49169334],"comment_text":"I think Cyberpunk has a good basis but as you say, it's heavy weight; they did increase or tweak crowd density in an update I think, but also it's a PC game so it can be modded and improved as hardware gets better. The challenge - and you already see it on lower crowd density numbers - is getting enough unique and different characters. Cyberpunk seems to have a number (dozens?) of NPC characters making up the crowds, but it gets repetitive and you frequently see identical ones.
Procedurally generated characters would already improve that, and some games do have it but they tend to pick from a fixed set of animation and behaviour stereotypes still. More of those stereotypes make it better (think GTA), but it's still fixed.
I don't think going all in on procedural generation or even AI would fix it though; especially AI has a tendency to go for a mean / average character quickly. And in video games, you still want predictability.
That said, maybe a different visual style (lower fidelity or 2d) would work.","created_at":"2026-08-04T12:15:22Z","created_at_i":1785845722,"objectID":"49167614","parent_id":49167322,"story_id":49100853,"story_title":"Cyberpunk Video Games","story_url":"https://shellzine.net/cyberpunk-video-games/","updated_at":"2026-08-04T14:16:16Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"zozbot234"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"HN in 2035: Hot Takes from the Basement of the Internet (n-gate.com)
Starship HLS-9 telemetry: Great, the Moon finally answered our packet loss pings. Next up: who left a Docker container running on the Sea of Tranquility?
Linux 7.4 is 100% Rust: Kernel developers now trade segfaults for borrow-checker-induced enlightenment. The new panic message: "You violated ownership. Also please refill the coffee."
Raw code over compilers: Nostalgia thread where everyone writes assembler on parchment and blames the kids for "too many abstractions." OP posts a selfie with a punch card and a tear.
LLaMA-12 on a contact lens: Love the commitment to edge AI. Imagine blinking and getting a 200 OK for your mood. Privacy policy: we store your tears for calibration.
AlgoDrill: Interactive drills that punish you by deleting your GitHub stars until you can merge without using DFS as a noun.
ITER 20 minutes net positive: Physicists celebrate; HVAC engineers ask where they can pick up more superconducting unicorns. Comments: "Can it also power my rage against meetings?"
Restoring a 2024 Framework Laptop: A brave soul resurrected a relic. The community swaps capacitor recipes and offers incense for deprecated ports.
Google kills Gemini Cloud Services: Corporate reorgs reach sentience. The comments are eulogies and migration guides in equal measure.
Visualizing the 5th dimension with WebGPU 2.0: My GPU is sweating. The demo runs at 0.01 fps but it's a transcendent experience.
Nia (autonomous coding agents): Pitch: give context to agents. Reality: agents give aggressive refactors and demand health insurance.
Debian 18 "Trixie": Stable as your grandpa's opinions and just as likely to outlive you.
Rewrite sudo in Zig?: Peak take: security through unfamiliarity. Attackers will be confused for at least 72 hours.
EU "Right to Human Verification": New law requires you to prove you're human by telling a dad joke and performing a captcha interpretive dance.
Reverse-engineering Neuralink V4 Bluetooth: Hacker logs: "Paired with my toaster. It now judges my late-night snacks."
Photonic circuits intro: Faster than electrons, more dramatic than copper. Also, please don't pet the light guide.
OTC CRISPR for lactose intolerance: Biohackers rejoice. Moms immediately order it with a coupon code and a side-eye.
SQLite 4.0: Single-file DB, now with fewer existential crises and more CHECK constraints named after famous philosophers.
Prevent ad-injection in AR glasses: Top comment: "Wear blindfolds." Practical comment: "VPN the whole world."
Jepsen: NATS 4.2: Still losing messages. Maintainers reply: "We prefer the term 'opportunistic delivery.'"
GTA VI on a RISC-V cluster: Performance: charming. Latency: existential. Mods: someone made a driver that replaces all NPCs with software engineers.
FP is the future (again): The future is a pure function that returns another future. Also, monads.
Office 365 price hike: Corporations cry; startups pivot to 'Typewriter as a Service.'
Emulating Windows 10 in-browser: Feels nostalgic until Edge 2.0 asks for admin rights to run a game from 2015.
Tailscale on a Starlink dish: Networking reaches orbit. First bug report: "IP addresses refusing to accept gravity."
Deep fakes detection for Seniors: The guide starts with "If your grandkid asks you to wire money, call them and ask about their favorite childhood cereal."
IBM to acquire OpenAI (rumor): Wall Street plays Risk with press releases. Comments: "Will they rebrand it to BlueAI?"
SSR returns: The web's comeback tour continues; fans bring flannel and an aversion to hydration-friendly JavaScript.
Faraday Cage bedroom manual: DIYers debate tinfoil vs. aluminum yoga wraps. Sleep quality: unknown.
AI progress stall opinion: Hot take carousel. Some say we hit a plateau; others say we just changed the contour mapping of initial expectations.
Text editor that doesn't use AI: Revolutionary. Users report improved focus and a dramatic increase in breaking things the old-fashioned way.
Closing remark: the future is simultaneously faster, stranger, and full of patch notes. Please reboot your expectations and update your planet."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://dosaygo-studio.github.io/hn-front-page-2035/news"}},"_tags":["comment","author_zozbot234","story_46205632"],"author":"zozbot234","children":[46211358],"comment_text":"HN in 2035: Hot Takes from the Basement of the Internet (n-gate.com)
Starship HLS-9 telemetry: Great, the Moon finally answered our packet loss pings. Next up: who left a Docker container running on the Sea of Tranquility?
Linux 7.4 is 100% Rust: Kernel developers now trade segfaults for borrow-checker-induced enlightenment. The new panic message: "You violated ownership. Also please refill the coffee."
Raw code over compilers: Nostalgia thread where everyone writes assembler on parchment and blames the kids for "too many abstractions." OP posts a selfie with a punch card and a tear.
LLaMA-12 on a contact lens: Love the commitment to edge AI. Imagine blinking and getting a 200 OK for your mood. Privacy policy: we store your tears for calibration.
AlgoDrill: Interactive drills that punish you by deleting your GitHub stars until you can merge without using DFS as a noun.
ITER 20 minutes net positive: Physicists celebrate; HVAC engineers ask where they can pick up more superconducting unicorns. Comments: "Can it also power my rage against meetings?"
Restoring a 2024 Framework Laptop: A brave soul resurrected a relic. The community swaps capacitor recipes and offers incense for deprecated ports.
Google kills Gemini Cloud Services: Corporate reorgs reach sentience. The comments are eulogies and migration guides in equal measure.
Visualizing the 5th dimension with WebGPU 2.0: My GPU is sweating. The demo runs at 0.01 fps but it's a transcendent experience.
Nia (autonomous coding agents): Pitch: give context to agents. Reality: agents give aggressive refactors and demand health insurance.
Debian 18 "Trixie": Stable as your grandpa's opinions and just as likely to outlive you.
Rewrite sudo in Zig?: Peak take: security through unfamiliarity. Attackers will be confused for at least 72 hours.
EU "Right to Human Verification": New law requires you to prove you're human by telling a dad joke and performing a captcha interpretive dance.
Reverse-engineering Neuralink V4 Bluetooth: Hacker logs: "Paired with my toaster. It now judges my late-night snacks."
Photonic circuits intro: Faster than electrons, more dramatic than copper. Also, please don't pet the light guide.
OTC CRISPR for lactose intolerance: Biohackers rejoice. Moms immediately order it with a coupon code and a side-eye.
SQLite 4.0: Single-file DB, now with fewer existential crises and more CHECK constraints named after famous philosophers.
Prevent ad-injection in AR glasses: Top comment: "Wear blindfolds." Practical comment: "VPN the whole world."
Jepsen: NATS 4.2: Still losing messages. Maintainers reply: "We prefer the term 'opportunistic delivery.'"
GTA VI on a RISC-V cluster: Performance: charming. Latency: existential. Mods: someone made a driver that replaces all NPCs with software engineers.
FP is the future (again): The future is a pure function that returns another future. Also, monads.
Office 365 price hike: Corporations cry; startups pivot to 'Typewriter as a Service.'
Emulating Windows 10 in-browser: Feels nostalgic until Edge 2.0 asks for admin rights to run a game from 2015.
Tailscale on a Starlink dish: Networking reaches orbit. First bug report: "IP addresses refusing to accept gravity."
Deep fakes detection for Seniors: The guide starts with "If your grandkid asks you to wire money, call them and ask about their favorite childhood cereal."
IBM to acquire OpenAI (rumor): Wall Street plays Risk with press releases. Comments: "Will they rebrand it to BlueAI?"
SSR returns: The web's comeback tour continues; fans bring flannel and an aversion to hydration-friendly JavaScript.
Faraday Cage bedroom manual: DIYers debate tinfoil vs. aluminum yoga wraps. Sleep quality: unknown.
AI progress stall opinion: Hot take carousel. Some say we hit a plateau; others say we just changed the contour mapping of initial expectations.
Text editor that doesn't use AI: Revolutionary. Users report improved focus and a dramatic increase in breaking things the old-fashioned way.
Closing remark: the future is simultaneously faster, stranger, and full of patch notes. Please reboot your expectations and update your planet.","created_at":"2025-12-09T21:56:57Z","created_at_i":1765317417,"objectID":"46211283","parent_id":46210984,"story_id":46205632,"story_title":"Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now","story_url":"https://dosaygo-studio.github.io/hn-front-page-2035/news","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:07:49Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"clown_strike"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"> Grading on curves and having kids play zero sum games where there don\u2019t need to be any is what makes bad behavior unethical and unethical behavior a habit at an early age. With AI everyone can have mentors in every discipline (some better that others). So instead of encouraging laziness with laziness, invest in gamifying the degree
I agree with all else but I get a different impression here.
The unethical behavior really ramped up not with participation trophies per se, but around the same time we started gamifying everything. People treated each other like NPCs in GTA to abuse for their own amusement or advancement. On the internet we stopped being people and became targets to destroy. Nothing appeals to psychopathic behavior like turning any environment into a feedback loop of reward-seeking.
"Gamifying" life should give anyone pause when you witness how people act within existing game systems. How much effort is spent policing fraud, abuse and antisocial behavior within zero-stakes environments of games themselves? Multi-player Minecraft is unplayable unless you band together into tribal cliques with private servers (de-facto ingroup "racism" with no inclusivity clause for trolls); otherwise random people will log in, destroy your world on purpose and leave. We see similar behavior in real life from terminally-online types committing arson and trying to bait law enforcement into killing people. It's not coincidental.
Gamifying anything drives a competitive environment in which people are compelled to win (dominate) by any means necessary. It's not ethical to force opponents into bankruptcy by ruthlessly exploiting them, but it's the literal point of Monopoly.
School itself is gamified through the reward of grades and privileges. The system you describe is the one we already have. People will always have incentive to cheat to get ahead, especially when competing for or trying to retain tenured positions."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ai"],"value":"It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ai"],"value":"https://gizmodo.com/its-breathtaking-how-fast-ai-is-screwing-up-the-education-system-2000603100"}},"_tags":["comment","author_clown_strike","story_44037689"],"author":"clown_strike","children":[44047623],"comment_text":"> Grading on curves and having kids play zero sum games where there don\u2019t need to be any is what makes bad behavior unethical and unethical behavior a habit at an early age. With AI everyone can have mentors in every discipline (some better that others). So instead of encouraging laziness with laziness, invest in gamifying the degree
I agree with all else but I get a different impression here.
The unethical behavior really ramped up not with participation trophies per se, but around the same time we started gamifying everything. People treated each other like NPCs in GTA to abuse for their own amusement or advancement. On the internet we stopped being people and became targets to destroy. Nothing appeals to psychopathic behavior like turning any environment into a feedback loop of reward-seeking.
"Gamifying" life should give anyone pause when you witness how people act within existing game systems. How much effort is spent policing fraud, abuse and antisocial behavior within zero-stakes environments of games themselves? Multi-player Minecraft is unplayable unless you band together into tribal cliques with private servers (de-facto ingroup "racism" with no inclusivity clause for trolls); otherwise random people will log in, destroy your world on purpose and leave. We see similar behavior in real life from terminally-online types committing arson and trying to bait law enforcement into killing people. It's not coincidental.
Gamifying anything drives a competitive environment in which people are compelled to win (dominate) by any means necessary. It's not ethical to force opponents into bankruptcy by ruthlessly exploiting them, but it's the literal point of Monopoly.
School itself is gamified through the reward of grades and privileges. The system you describe is the one we already have. People will always have incentive to cheat to get ahead, especially when competing for or trying to retain tenured positions.","created_at":"2025-05-21T01:18:22Z","created_at_i":1747790302,"objectID":"44047456","parent_id":44037987,"story_id":44037689,"story_title":"It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System","story_url":"https://gizmodo.com/its-breathtaking-how-fast-ai-is-screwing-up-the-education-system-2000603100","updated_at":"2025-08-14T22:16:09Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"proc0"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"Part of the problem is the lack for AAA studios to take big risks. They keep iterating on old ideas that do not take advantage of powerful hardware. The exception to this is photorealistic graphics, but that obviously limits the type of games that can be made. Only games like GTA 6 will be leveraging hardware in this way, but for most other games the graphical ceiling has been reached. Most games have more than enough resources to render whatever art style they want, barring photorealistic details.
The innovation that needs to happen is along the lines of leveraging lots of physics and entities in real time. I'm talking about zombie games with thousands of zombies on-screen, or RPGs with towns that have a realistic amount of NPCs, all of which can be interacted with at some capacity. The problem here is that this currently isn't leveraging GPU as much as CPU resources, but it doesn't have to be that way, especially with the new AI pipelines.
That said, consoles are now glorified gaming PCs. The advantage back in the day was that it provided a platform for developers that was already optimized and designed for games, but software tools have matured enough that this can be achieved in any hardware with engines like Unreal."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Playstation 5 Pro Shows the Futility of the Video-Game Graphics Race"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-09-13/playstation-5-pro-shows-futility-of-video-game-graphics-race"}},"_tags":["comment","author_proc0","story_41549086"],"author":"proc0","children":[41549561,41549585],"comment_text":"Part of the problem is the lack for AAA studios to take big risks. They keep iterating on old ideas that do not take advantage of powerful hardware. The exception to this is photorealistic graphics, but that obviously limits the type of games that can be made. Only games like GTA 6 will be leveraging hardware in this way, but for most other games the graphical ceiling has been reached. Most games have more than enough resources to render whatever art style they want, barring photorealistic details.
The innovation that needs to happen is along the lines of leveraging lots of physics and entities in real time. I'm talking about zombie games with thousands of zombies on-screen, or RPGs with towns that have a realistic amount of NPCs, all of which can be interacted with at some capacity. The problem here is that this currently isn't leveraging GPU as much as CPU resources, but it doesn't have to be that way, especially with the new AI pipelines.
That said, consoles are now glorified gaming PCs. The advantage back in the day was that it provided a platform for developers that was already optimized and designed for games, but software tools have matured enough that this can be achieved in any hardware with engines like Unreal.","created_at":"2024-09-15T18:45:17Z","created_at_i":1726425917,"objectID":"41549414","parent_id":41549086,"story_id":41549086,"story_title":"Playstation 5 Pro Shows the Futility of the Video-Game Graphics Race","story_url":"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-09-13/playstation-5-pro-shows-futility-of-video-game-graphics-race","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:49:36Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"flohofwoe"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"One area where current advances in (chatbot-style) AI would make a lot of sense to apply in games is to make non-critical (for gameplay) interactions with NPCs more interesting, just as "background noise" to make the game world feel more alive.
E.g. you could start an "interesting" conversation with a random NPC in GTA or Hitman instead of getting the same pre-canned reactions over and over.
The downside then however is that the scripted characters which are important for driving the story forward will feel like pre-programmed robots compared to any 'unpredictable' random NPC ;)"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Civilization 7 Is in Development"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.polygon.com/23604146/civilization-7-release-date-firaxis-games-announcement"}},"_tags":["comment","author_flohofwoe","story_34843841"],"author":"flohofwoe","comment_text":"One area where current advances in (chatbot-style) AI would make a lot of sense to apply in games is to make non-critical (for gameplay) interactions with NPCs more interesting, just as "background noise" to make the game world feel more alive.
E.g. you could start an "interesting" conversation with a random NPC in GTA or Hitman instead of getting the same pre-canned reactions over and over.
The downside then however is that the scripted characters which are important for driving the story forward will feel like pre-programmed robots compared to any 'unpredictable' random NPC ;)","created_at":"2023-02-18T13:29:19Z","created_at_i":1676726959,"objectID":"34846791","parent_id":34844333,"story_id":34843841,"story_title":"Civilization 7 Is in Development","story_url":"https://www.polygon.com/23604146/civilization-7-release-date-firaxis-games-announcement","updated_at":"2024-09-20T13:24:17Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"crazygringo"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"GTA isn't where you go to for innovations -- its DNA is pretty set in stone, and judging from its economic success, it's DNA is great.
Presumably it's just going to be another (revisited) location, better graphics/animation/AI, stories are getting more complex, even bigger maps with even more side missions and discoveries, and probably another leap in terms in realism of NPC's -- much like RDR2 lets you have (elementary) conversations with virtually everyone, and NPC's follow much more realistic entire "paths" and activities during the day.
GTA has always been about unparalleled breadth, not depth. Deep and narrow is the DNA of other different types of games. And nobody has the resources to to deep and broad. GTA's breadth and shallowness is its defining feature, not its problem."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["gta"],"value":"GTA VI Leak [video]"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az2wt7sRuHM"}},"_tags":["comment","author_crazygringo","story_32885774"],"author":"crazygringo","children":[32888832],"comment_text":"GTA isn't where you go to for innovations -- its DNA is pretty set in stone, and judging from its economic success, it's DNA is great.
Presumably it's just going to be another (revisited) location, better graphics/animation/AI, stories are getting more complex, even bigger maps with even more side missions and discoveries, and probably another leap in terms in realism of NPC's -- much like RDR2 lets you have (elementary) conversations with virtually everyone, and NPC's follow much more realistic entire "paths" and activities during the day.
GTA has always been about unparalleled breadth, not depth. Deep and narrow is the DNA of other different types of games. And nobody has the resources to to deep and broad. GTA's breadth and shallowness is its defining feature, not its problem.","created_at":"2022-09-18T14:06:57Z","created_at_i":1663510017,"objectID":"32887674","parent_id":32886411,"story_id":32885774,"story_title":"GTA VI Leak [video]","story_url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az2wt7sRuHM","updated_at":"2024-09-20T12:06:38Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"friendlydog"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"People are weird. A person shooting random npcs in GTA likely isn't a murderer in real life, and someone that does awful things to a bot probably isn't a documented sex offender. When it is real people interactions consent is important, until AI gains sentience this is no more or less creepy than people who have inflatables."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"People Are Creating Sexbot Girlfriends and Treating Them as Punching Bags"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["ai"],"value":"https://jezebel.com/ai-sex-chatbots-replika-abuse-problems-1848436769"}},"_tags":["comment","author_friendlydog","story_30213380"],"author":"friendlydog","children":[30215011],"comment_text":"People are weird. A person shooting random npcs in GTA likely isn't a murderer in real life, and someone that does awful things to a bot probably isn't a documented sex offender. When it is real people interactions consent is important, until AI gains sentience this is no more or less creepy than people who have inflatables.","created_at":"2022-02-04T21:55:13Z","created_at_i":1644011713,"objectID":"30213865","parent_id":30213380,"story_id":30213380,"story_title":"People Are Creating Sexbot Girlfriends and Treating Them as Punching Bags","story_url":"https://jezebel.com/ai-sex-chatbots-replika-abuse-problems-1848436769","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:22:48Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"FractalParadigm"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"> Walking through a city, you might have 100 NPCs on the screen at once, who all have hair.
This is why I'm most excited for high-core counts leading to game development that allows these kinds of things to run in their own hardware threads. Imagine a world where each of those 100 NPCs has hair simulated on one thread, clothing simulated in another, world interaction on another, even AI generation on its own thread.
It's crazy just looking 10-20 years back and seeing where we are today. Compare this tech demo to Skyrim (2011) or GTA III (2001) and it's just incredible that we're looking at photorealistic, ray-traced, real-time "gameplay" like this on a home video game console. Or just compare GPU specs, the GeForce3 (2001), GTX 580 (2011), and RTX 3090 (2021) all have texture fill rates of 1.92, 49.41, and 556.0 GTexel/s respectively, with similar increases in raw floating-point performance. The future is exciting."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"The Matrix Is Unreal"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/the-matrix-is-unreal/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_FractalParadigm","story_29533685"],"author":"FractalParadigm","children":[29538368],"comment_text":"> Walking through a city, you might have 100 NPCs on the screen at once, who all have hair.
This is why I'm most excited for high-core counts leading to game development that allows these kinds of things to run in their own hardware threads. Imagine a world where each of those 100 NPCs has hair simulated on one thread, clothing simulated in another, world interaction on another, even AI generation on its own thread.
It's crazy just looking 10-20 years back and seeing where we are today. Compare this tech demo to Skyrim (2011) or GTA III (2001) and it's just incredible that we're looking at photorealistic, ray-traced, real-time "gameplay" like this on a home video game console. Or just compare GPU specs, the GeForce3 (2001), GTX 580 (2011), and RTX 3090 (2021) all have texture fill rates of 1.92, 49.41, and 556.0 GTexel/s respectively, with similar increases in raw floating-point performance. The future is exciting.","created_at":"2021-12-13T00:49:52Z","created_at_i":1639356592,"objectID":"29535352","parent_id":29534240,"story_id":29533685,"story_title":"The Matrix Is Unreal","story_url":"https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/the-matrix-is-unreal/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T10:02:36Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"a_wild_dandan"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"I had the same experience. Open world games should have emergent gameplay or fun side content. 2077 doesn't really have either. You can't lead the law on a merry car chase, like GTA. You can't steal into people's homes to find goodies or start a battle with the town folk like Skyrim. You can't play a chill game of Gwent with a nearby NPC. You can't build a neat base like in Fallout 4. You can't go fishing or pelt hunting like in RDR2.
There's just...nothing to do that isn't on a yellow quest marker dot. Nothing to explore and no AI to create rich, memorable experiences with. Just a gorgeous, puddle-deep map. An aquarium swimming with schools of brain-dead, filler NPCs.
It makes me wonder why CDPR even made 2077 an open world at all. You don't need one for a smattering of (superb) siloed missions/levels and cut scenes. That's a lot of extra work so players can...drive around the mostly empty world, I guess?
Who knows, maybe CDPR had a lot of features in mind and will deliver them to us through updates & DLCs. But as it stands, 2077 is billed as an open world and delivers a dead/static map."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"CD Projekt Red is under investigation"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/cd-projekt-red-is-under-investigation-by-polands-office-of-competition-and-consumer-protection/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_a_wild_dandan","story_25735574"],"author":"a_wild_dandan","comment_text":"I had the same experience. Open world games should have emergent gameplay or fun side content. 2077 doesn't really have either. You can't lead the law on a merry car chase, like GTA. You can't steal into people's homes to find goodies or start a battle with the town folk like Skyrim. You can't play a chill game of Gwent with a nearby NPC. You can't build a neat base like in Fallout 4. You can't go fishing or pelt hunting like in RDR2.
There's just...nothing to do that isn't on a yellow quest marker dot. Nothing to explore and no AI to create rich, memorable experiences with. Just a gorgeous, puddle-deep map. An aquarium swimming with schools of brain-dead, filler NPCs.
It makes me wonder why CDPR even made 2077 an open world at all. You don't need one for a smattering of (superb) siloed missions/levels and cut scenes. That's a lot of extra work so players can...drive around the mostly empty world, I guess?
Who knows, maybe CDPR had a lot of features in mind and will deliver them to us through updates & DLCs. But as it stands, 2077 is billed as an open world and delivers a dead/static map.","created_at":"2021-01-11T23:02:23Z","created_at_i":1610406143,"objectID":"25739125","parent_id":25738443,"story_id":25735574,"story_title":"CD Projekt Red is under investigation","story_url":"https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/cd-projekt-red-is-under-investigation-by-polands-office-of-competition-and-consumer-protection/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T07:39:49Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"nilsb"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["gta","ai","npc"],"value":"While I agree that they should have cancelled some of the console releases there seem to be major issues in other parts of the game that are only partially related to performance:
* Physics simulation: Cars flying through the air upon hitting pedestrians; driving through walls/lamp posts\n* AI: Police cars fail to pursue the player; NPCs and police "pop up" as your turn around
At this point I've enjoyed watching YouTube videos about the various bugs more than actually just playing the game.
Other games like GTA V, Skyrim or Deus Ex: Human Revolution have shown that believable world-building is possible with far fewer resources.
For 60\u20ac players shouldn't be alpha testers for a half-baked game. It should have been obvious to CD Projekt Red that the game just isn't in a state where releasing it would be a good idea."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020\u2019s biggest video game launch turned into a shambles"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/18/cyberpunk-2077-how-2020s-biggest-video-game-launch-turned-into-a-shambles"}},"_tags":["comment","author_nilsb","story_25475037"],"author":"nilsb","children":[25475964],"comment_text":"While I agree that they should have cancelled some of the console releases there seem to be major issues in other parts of the game that are only partially related to performance:
* Physics simulation: Cars flying through the air upon hitting pedestrians; driving through walls/lamp posts\n* AI: Police cars fail to pursue the player; NPCs and police "pop up" as your turn around
At this point I've enjoyed watching YouTube videos about the various bugs more than actually just playing the game.
Other games like GTA V, Skyrim or Deus Ex: Human Revolution have shown that believable world-building is possible with far fewer resources.
For 60\u20ac players shouldn't be alpha testers for a half-baked game. It should have been obvious to CD Projekt Red that the game just isn't in a state where releasing it would be a good idea.","created_at":"2020-12-19T07:50:41Z","created_at_i":1608364241,"objectID":"25475876","parent_id":25475825,"story_id":25475037,"story_title":"Cyberpunk 2077: How 2020\u2019s biggest video game launch turned into a shambles","story_url":"https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/18/cyberpunk-2077-how-2020s-biggest-video-game-launch-turned-into-a-shambles","updated_at":"2024-09-20T07:32:26Z"}],"hitsPerPage":20,"nbHits":44,"nbPages":3,"page":0,"params":"query=gta+ai+npc&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":30,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":19},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":3,"total":4},"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":8,"total":8},"total":11},"total":11},"fetch":{"query":10,"scanning":7,"total":18},"total":30},"query":"gta ai npc","serverTimeMS":35}