FeedWill You Be Left 4 Dead?
by bob dole on Mar.03, 2009, under Opinions, PC, xbox 360
Everybody is dead. Your family, neighbors, and co workers are gone forever. All you have left is your gun and three other survivors to fight for survival in the endless horde of zombies and the best part is; it is fun. Left 4 Dead, the newest game from Valve, puts you and three friends in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and makes you rely on each other to survive. The attributes that makes the game what it is, is the AI and music “director” who control where the zombies are, how many there are, what kind of zombie are spawned and what kind of music and sound effects each player will hear.
The director is truly something never seen before in games. It is able to randomly generate zombies anywhere and whenever it wants to but if it always put them wherever it wanted to it would be unfair and make players not have fun. To fix this Valve made the director analyze the players stress level and adjust accordingly. This makes this game unique every time you play it. You can fight a horde of zombie in one room one time but the next time you play it again there may be none there. It can also tell when to send in a mob of zombies. It sees what the player is doing like if they are staying one place to long, if they are hurt and close to dying, or going in the wrong direction and either sends more zombies their way or gives them a break and time to relax and or heal themselves. It also controls when special class zombies appear like the witch and the tank and where and when items will spawn like med-kits and pipe bombs. The most important thing the AI director controls is tutorials. It always has a list of tutorials of what the player need to know when jumping into a game so they do not die and ruin their, and teammates, experience and once the player does whatever the tutorials says correctly and constantly it will never show it again.
One of the things that most people do not realize that there is music director as well. This director controls what sound effects and music the player will hear while playing the game but the truly great part of this is that each player’s musical experience is different. Like the AI director it uses the players stress level to detect what sound effects and music that will be played. Valve realized that sound effects and music where important to create atmosphere for any horror film, so to recreate this they had to convince the player to not to turn off their music. To make sure that that never happened, Valve made sure that audio would be important for survival. Audio cues can tell a player what is happening with their teammates, if a special infected was around, and when a horde of zombies where coming. It also can make sure that dialogue between characters is never repeated over and over again. Each string of possible dialogue has certain requirement to meet before it can be said; it is even possible that most people have not even heard all the dialogue in the game. For example, if Zoey heals Bill and then a couple of minutes later has to heal him again then a special kind of dialogue will pop up that is unique to that moment.
Left 4 Dead has revolutionized what AI can do. By creating a program that can make the game new every time you play it and making sure that audio and character dialogues never becomes annoying or overused means getting to the point of boredom in this game is near impossible. Valve took a big risk by putting these features in this game and they were worried if they would be able to pull this off. Lucky for us; they did.
March 4th, 2009 on 1:40 am
Great piece, it really exposes the AID and why it makes L4D so different from other generic shootans.
March 4th, 2009 on 3:44 am
I have to completely disagree with this entire article. The AI director is nothing new. All you’re basically saying is that it scales up when youre doing well, and scales down when you suck. Not going to lie, thats been done before.
Not only that, but the “genius” AI director also sees fit to spawn 400 zombies in your dogs shoe closet or in the vegetable crisper in your minifridge. To put it politely, it is completely fucking retarded.
Is the game fun? Hell yeah its fun. Is the game new or innovative in any way? Not even remotely.
March 4th, 2009 on 3:50 am
You obviously know nothing about game programming then. Most AI directors in games only have pre set things they can do.
They either do one thing or another and have pre written responses that they have to do and have no choice to change. Do yourself a favor and listen to the commentary option in Left 4 Dead it will teach you much of what they did and improved upon.
March 4th, 2009 on 1:08 pm
I’ve both played L4D and listened to the little commentary thingy. Just because someone tells you they are doing something doesn’t mean it’s true. You and I both know the AI director is slightly more advanced than other systems. How much more? I’m not convinced it’s as proficcient as valve claims.
I would also question exactly how much YOU know about game programming. After all, it wouldn’t do to attack me on my ignorance of programming when you yourself have no knowledge of the subject either, now would it?
March 4th, 2009 on 5:13 pm
Hycran, bob dole is a Game Development student so shut your fucking mouth. Now listen up god dammit, all you fucking do is flame and I’m tired of it. You do know that most games have pre-determined spawn points for enemies, so yes the AI director IS innovative in that it can spawn enemies ANYWHERE it wants to on ANY kind of map. To prove this, all you have to do is look up videos around L4D’s release and see the PC players using the AID on Counter-Strike maps. There are zombies in many places, on a map that wasn’t made for L4D.
Also, please shut the fuck already, unless you are willing to provide examples instead of just flames, DON’T FUCKING POST.
March 4th, 2009 on 5:38 pm
Hahaha, oh wow.
1st off: I’d like to know where my flaming is. Apparently giving an alternative opinion is a flaming.
2nd off: Bob Dole being a game development student (1st year if im not mistaken) doesn’t automatically make his opinion better than mine. I took C++ programming in university, does that mean i have a better opinion? Of course not
lastly: If you have a problem with me, please feel free to shoot me an email, rather than sullying both my name and the comments box on this website. I highly doubt that I will take any form of advice from someone who so unprofessionally criticises me for flaming and proceeds to do what he has just chastised me for.
March 4th, 2009 on 9:31 pm
well I go to Full Sail which is the best school for programming. I am only a couple months in but I do know what im talking about. What I think is that you do not know what you are talking about. I have talked with people in my class and my teachers, who have been in the industry for many years and they all agreed with me. These AIDs are truely revolutionary and cant wait to see what happens with them next.
March 5th, 2009 on 2:14 am
Shiny review. Certainly impressed with L4D. I just hope Steam keeps ‘em coming. –Shannyn.
March 9th, 2009 on 12:05 pm
to hycran: you say the AI director isn’t new, and has been done before. by whom? which other games was it used in? let me know.