Judging by the current status quo, I would suggest to have TWO AIs in Raceroom. One for the original default sized car fields (not more than two dozen cars) and one for the new XXL-sized car fields. Resource management probably demands to focus on developing further just one of these two , which imo should be the small car field AI. The huge number of cars came at the price of changes in the AI that are not welcomed by many. The AI took a step backwards, and i would prefer to have smaller car fields if that means the AI works better again. The sim could automatically switch between both AI models during the race menu selections, depending on the number of cars players chose. I miss the Ai that there was summer last year. I took the bends in not smooth turns, okay - but depsite that it really burnd a show into the tarmac, full of surprises. Compared to that, it now is sterile, somewhat lifeless. Already was before the XXL-numbers of cars on some tracks. Better AI was indicated already last late summer or early autumn again. I recall that because it was a reply to a posting of mine. Bit it did not come.
Great timing with your post, @Skybird ;-) What we have right now from @Robert Holm in our dev builds (soon reaching test team) is pretty close to what you're talking about. If you remember where we were at before introducing big grids to the game, we had a pretty good AI code base that we had even nicknamed "smooth operator". Then we had to chop their brain a little to allow for having plenty of cars on the track and that came at a price. We had to reduce their "rate" for their physics and actual thinking abilities. The physics being the part eating the most performance. I hope @Robert Holm can come explain it better than I am trying to, but basically it can be summarized like this: - Dynamic update rate based on selected number of opponents (small grid, higher rate of calculations, big grids, lower) - Introduction of a special behavior at race starts. We now have the means to tell the AI to be extra careful in areas such as turn 1 and turn 2, effectively reducing wreckfests and traffic jams. - AI's now draft. And they're very good at it. Before they would constantly wave, and you'd end up with 3 AI following each other in a straight but spread on the width of the track, not using slipstream at all. - AI's starting order now have a random success factor, which occasionally can bring slower AI's in front of the grid, allowing for more action. Until now, they would all qualify in order of abilities and you'd result in having quite a boring race where not much action was going on between AI's. Now of course this is still only in dev environment. The above might change during testing phase.
Either my way - or this way^indeed. Nice to hear. Just do not make the AI too msooth again. It does no harm if it is a bit coarse at times, making mistakes and thus creating "fun". I always grin like a clown when passing by an AI car in the end that spun off the track all by itself. I would like to use the opportunity to once again remind of the many mess-ups in that killer-hairpin at Macau. If the AI cannot handle it in free mode, than switch on something like the auto-piloting mode in pitlane, or switch off the collisions. Racing at Macau against AI cars makes no sense, and that is a shame, its such a great track. One car alone mostly gets around that hairpin - but heaven forbids that there are several cars at the same time trying to get through that bottleneck. I can understand if the AI struggles there with several cars. I sometimes mess up myself even if I pass that hairpin all alone with myself, when messing up my timing to turn in.
That's the best news I've read for ages JF, thanks for the insight. Look forward to bugging you about it more when the next dev stream rolls around.
Is this going to be system dependant or simply if selected ai number is x performance will be y? Edit, nevermind, single core usage only unless you have a big surprise for us, im guessing its simply is xselected performance is y, no calculations based on system performance. Aslo sounds like some nice additions to the ai.