Swat 4 - How Does the AI Work?

Patreon: patreon.com/MitchellGodsend
[ I have the SEF mod installed! ]
Swat 4 - How Does the AI Work?
Between constant crashes while using the debugging tools, rewriting the script four separate times, and then finally saying screw it and going scriptless, five days later, I finally made this video :D
Swat 4 Gold Edition: www.gog.com/ga...
Swat 4 Elite Force mod: www.moddb.com/...
Music sourced from: / freemusictunes

[@Pika0294]

"You stand in my way boss"

[@samaeldesolado]

Boss ! Youre in my spot !

[@the_eagle_of_masyaf]

Move over sir

[@Afganistan289]

get out my way boss

[@Svistov]

You're on my mark

[@TrajanAugustus]

Would love to see similar stuff for SWAT 3's AI. I've noticed they clear areas "dynamically," often clearing rooms differently depending on context. For instance, on the Import Store map there's section of the basement hallway that can be cleared a number of different ways by the AI. Sometimes the entire element clears the hallway together, sometimes they split in half to flank. It's really interesting stuff.

[@MitchellGodsend]

That's definitely on the list of things I'll be doing at some point - I've always heard that SWAT 3's AI was more advanced.

[@ossihurme7572]

Following happened to me so many times in SWAT 3: I'm shooting enemy, team mate decides to walk into my line of fire and get injured. My team considers me a hostile and guns me down. I think they might have patched that at some point. Also your team mates gunning each other down while breaching doorway wasn't rare. Definitely don't feel like it was better than AI in 4.

[@TrajanAugustus]

@@ossihurme7572 That's funny, I've literally have never had either scenario happen.

[@IHateYoutubeHandlesVeryMuch]

@@ossihurme7572 Pretty sure there's a setting that turns off friendly fire in the game. Currently I can't remember where though.

[@jackcoleman1784]

I was literally about to post this comment. I started with SWAT 4 then went back and played SWAT 3 Gold. I remember that even though there were friendly fire issues the ai teammates could be so good sometimes it could make the game trivial. Like they would actively lean and use it to pie doorways.

[@HansHammertime]

Honestly, the threshold jam at 0:35 is rather realistic. Tends to happen in RL when the front man is overwhelmed by all the info flying at him when he enters the room, while his teammates behind him keep pushing

[@tatronhox8711]

I played swat a lot. I only had a few problems and I was very happy to have the team with me. especially on the scarier missions.

[@tatronhox8711]

@Muney Jordan is a pro And I am sure you were also happy to have your Ai team with you right ?

[@exefune2960]

I always feer more secure when have the teamate with me

[@Kamletue]

@@exefune2960 true

[@Dmitry_Medvedev]

I would feel secure if they hadn't shot me in the back of my head multiple times.

[@randomusernameidk]

​@@tatronhox8711 Always. Swat 4 is one of those few games where you would feel hopeless without your teammates by your side.

[@MrSniper9296]

16:55 is why as the player I always try to enter a room with the team more often than not, to try and mitigate this exact event happening. It's a strange feeling having to constantly wrestle with cause the AI are really only as effective as the player commanding them.

[@cadronagaming]

it amazes me how well the AI works, even with its issues, its great, especially for a 2005 game!

[@pellemiljoona5330]

Very interesting analysis. Here I was thinking I knew everything there was to know about the game and the AI after almost 15 years of playing it. I would like to mention though, that the SEF mod improves the AI a ton. Would be interesting to see a similar video of vanilla AI. Atleast the officer AI is infuriatingly slow to engage sometimes and that's why they die very easily. SEF made them more prone to shoot.

[@natalianatalia8778]

A few months ago I discovered the SEF and the truth is I was impressed with the improvements they made obviously there are always things to polish and one of those in my opinion is that the AI when it goes to clear a room with grenades is exposed too much when opening the door, it would be good that they position themselves in a better way so as not to be so exposed

[@heloxiii8894]

They managed to shoot down a suspect that already dropped his weapon as i was teasing him. They are the reason why i cannot play in Expert without losing (because suspect are dying or the team get shot) I cannot count the times where i had to finish off the suspects alone.

[@vanboy5697]

Very good insight into the practical programming aspects of a game that is heavily based on ai judgements!

[@bencheshire]

Oh man I was putting full faith in these guys before I clicked the video

[@giulipascarelli8158]

This was a really great and useful video, thank you for taking the trouble of explaining this to us!

[@notlegitkoolaid4911]

If Ron’s devs can get the ai like swat 4 and add more to it would be perfect

[@peegoblin8372]

I really hope that RON fate isn't like B4B to L4D2

[@jonahsingh5645]

I have binging your vides, they're incredible! Happy Holidays!

[@ryean1_aus]

2:40. The amount of times the weapon is facing a different direction yet I get shot, thanks for explaining that! 7:35. I'm guessing "threat" being positive means that it would not cause a Rules of Engagement violation to shoot that enemy? 17:00. He was technically an immediate threat within the immediate threat area yet they bypassed him. Ouch. 18:00. Interesting how they stop to engage, it's actually a commonly observed behaviour in real-life with some entries that meet resistance. I think there must be a little lag time between shoot and no shoot in the coding there, as the A.I. could have legally engaged (justified shoot) seconds before during that encounter. I think Sierra got the ROE wrong, they should have allowed players to modify it in server or mission parameter settings.

[@MitchellGodsend]

You're exactly right about the threat-check allowing lethal ROE - I wish I would have thought to mention that in the video! And YES that would be amazing if they allowed users to edit the ROE, in fact, that would open the game up to all sorts of mods and game modes

[@IHateYoutubeHandlesVeryMuch]

@@MitchellGodsend That would have been awesome. It always bugged me playing the game since the AI ROE and the score penalty system would sometimes have inconsistencies.

[@vanboy5697]

@@MitchellGodsend There are definitely mods for tweaking ROE related behaviors on moddb, I saw at least one though the latest Elite Force update makes things much better in regards to that!

[@realbasherverse]

Hey gang the debug commands cause crashes, I figured this out idk why but turning any of them on increases ur crash chances by a ton

[@MrBean0528]

It was great to see this one. Can you do a similar analysis with SWAT3? They feel more advanced :)

[@MitchellGodsend]

If it happens it'll be off in the future after I've gotten some of the videos I'm wanting to do done - You're not the first person I've heard say that Swat 3's AI was atleast a notch above Swat 4's, so it is something I'd genuinely be interested in doing.

[@MrBean0528]

@@MitchellGodsend Thanks! Will wait for it :) Also it was interesting to see that Ready or Not uses the these "box system" as well. Now I understand what they could be twitter.com/VOIDInteractive/status/1347358135812386816

[@TrajanAugustus]

​@@MrBean0528 IIRC SWAT 3 uses something similar. The SWAT AI clears rooms via threatnodes, from which I can tell have specific values denoting the threat level. You can actually adjust the threat level threshold in the config and it'll completely change how the AI clears rooms.

[@faydulaksono]

this swat 4 with sef 7.0 or just swat 3?

[@Afganistan289]

Now you can explain how ready or not swat ai works when update releases today :)

[@GuilhermeSilva-kx6ms]

Great video. RIP for all the crashes you had to endure xD

[@theagemon5]

great video! nice to see that this game isn't fully dead, would be cool to see the elite force mod or another mod that changes ai to compare with the vanilla game. either way never thought i would see such a well explained video about this games mechanics

[@TheHellSpawN1st]

Interesting stuff...

[@MrSniper9296]

Would love for you to analyse the Ready or Not Ai, I suspect not much will be differet ironically from a game from 2005.

[@youarenotmadenough655]

I was struggling to clear that second hallway and stairway on the roof spawn of the automotive repair shop because they would stop moving in the worst possible spot and all die to one bad guy. Thanks.

[@mean_ice2833]

Still way better than Ready or Not's broken SWAT AI with their latest Adam update lol.

[@JAA_007]

Solid work, very eye opening.

[@ThangTN]

For a 2005 game the AI made me impressed

[@dux3644]

good voice, good music, good commentary, will subscribe and will give like

[@simplycharacterized8604]

should do a ready or not video like this tbh

[@ant-dev]

i appreciate the effort you put into this video. great content!

[@the_eagle_of_masyaf]

I fkin love this game imagine still playing it

[@metalsnake27]

The most annoying part is when they see a suspect or a civilian and will RUN OVER TO THEM and you can't stop them because they just fucking ignore you. Also surprised you're doing this on the mod and not the vanilla/expansion A.I.

[@chloewebb5526]

I like to think the AI knew that the single door upstairs held their death. They kept staring, waiting for the almighty player to clear it first. Yet, one by one their leader sent them through every door, until there was only one door left. They knew it. The god damned music knew it. lmao

[@shampun2281]

Do they explore the area and put tags when they use the camera under the door?

[@silverhawkflash]

Would mirroring a room affect the SWAT AI if a suspect was spotted in that room?

[@MitchellGodsend]

To an extent, yes. It will set the nearest nodes to 'danger' but the SWAT AI is also infamous for having something that overrides their attention, like if you've ever had them breach a room just as a bad guy is trying to walk through that specific door they just flat-out won't shoot him and your entire squad gets wiped by one dude. But, if everything goes the way it's supposed to, yes, it should help them find that target faster/first.

[@francescovanspronsen404]

12:07 I'm trying to make a video dude xD Thanks for the vid!

[@MikeHalk100]

Great video - thanks!

[@clericneokun]

Is there a way to play with debugais turned on without the game crashing all the time when someone gets shot? for context: I find this to be a great tool to objectively confirm if lethal force is finally authorized on a suspect.

[@MitchellGodsend]

Ha, I wish! The game crashed on me a ridiculous amount of times while I was trying to make this video.

[@clericneokun]

@@MitchellGodsend I'm actually looking over the source codes of SEF. I was wondering if I can make a mod where Suspects start out and maintain as threats. Do you happen to know where I should start?

[@Foxtrot19]

Why use a modded map for demonstration instead of one made by the developers?

[@Infarlock]

Great stuff

[@dc_mini_shredder3420]

Great video

[@MitchellGodsend]

Thank'ya :D

[@Infarlock]

11:50

[@fernandohood5657]

this is very informative, i just wonder how SEF would be the best platform to show how AI works... wen it comes to suspect AI, sef in many ways has changed the suspect AI for the worse, from adding new zigzag moves, even adding giant deelays to their reaction times,making them never shoot in fullauto,making them never shoot at doors wile u open them, amoung many other examples.. its my opinion that SEF suspect AI just feels broken in many parts (and a giant reason while your officers feel more competent)

[@SWBGPGMG]

What's the song at : 12:10 ? Awesome video by the way !

[@MitchellGodsend]

Paralyzed by ALESTI - and thanks :D

[@SWBGPGMG]

@@MitchellGodsend Thank you for showing us that "particular" AI and going through a lot to do so XD !

[@kkduds3119]

just a suggestion: drop the 2010s techno music

[@shampun2281]

What commands did you use to fly like that and not get killed?

[@fernandohood5657]

open game console and write "ghost"

[@rojomojobrand5364]

What song is @ 16:25 ?

[@ucnguyenminh3473]

how to install it pls

[@the_eagle_of_masyaf]

All true

[@gamesinperfection]

the music is the worst from this game i mean the stream

[@JuninhooC3]

what commands do you have used?

[@deleted405]

How does SWAT 4's AI work? It doesn't.

[@Somethingaweful]

9:53

[@the_eagle_of_masyaf]

Ah btw what's the song name?

[@kainan613]

Wtf is that music