It's a Hit!

In my last post, I explained how it's easy to decide what weapon a player wants to use given some simple data and one magic value: the player's accuracy with a weapon. It makes perfect sense-- if two weapons deal similar damage and you'll hit twice as often with one of them, then of course that's the weapon you want to use!

There's just two problems with writing AI for this. First, there's no innate concept of "weapon accuracy" like there is for weapon damage or weapon reload. A player's ability to use a weapon well is emergent behavior based on their reaction speed, mental estimation, and muscle precision. Bots don't magically know how accurate they are with a weapon-- they must be taught.

Second, even if bots knew their overall accuracy, that wouldn't be enough. Some weapons are much more effective in some situations than others. The shotgun is good at close range because the shot spread makes it ineffective at long ranges. Rockets are good when you are above your target because you can blast the rocket against the floor, making your target take blast damage even if they dodge the missile, and so on.

To get truly human-like weapon selection, bots need a relatively accurate answer to the following question:

How likely am I hit to hit my target from my current position?

The goal of the accuracy engine (ai_accuracy.c) is to answer this question. Bots solve this question by tracking the results of their attacks in game and modifying their behavior accordingly. If a bot starts scoring a lot of hits with one particular weapon in a certain situation, then it will naturally favor that weapon whenever it's in a that situation again.

Tracking accuracy against actual shots also lets the bots react to differences in player skill. Some weapons are particularly good against players who dodge poorly. If the bot encounters a player like this, their accuracy will increase and they'll know to use weapons that player has trouble with.

The accuracy data is reset every level to prevent bias. For example, if one level is wide open (favoring instant hit weapons) and the next level has many narrow hallways (favoring missile weapons), the bot will notice its higher accuracy on the second level and show a preference for missile weapons.

To differentiate the different combat situations a bot could be in, the bot analyzes both the distance to the target (whether it's near or far) and the bot's pitch view angle (whether the bot has to look up or down to aim at the target). These two values define a "Combat Zone". For example, 500 units away and 15 degrees down is one possible combat zone.

There are a total of 12 "reference" combat zones, forming a 4x3 grid of four distances (close, mid-range, far, very far) and three pitches (high, level, low). When the bot scores a hit (or miss) in a zone, the data is split between the four nearest combat zones. For example, one zone might split its data as:

• 10% (close, low)
  
• 40% (close, level)
  
• 10% (mid, low)
  
• 40% (mid, level)
  

But if the enemy moved further back, the accuracy data could get split as:

• 5% (close, low)
  
• 20% (close, level)
  
• 15% (mid, low)
  
• 60% (mid, level)
  

Similarly, whenever the bot wants to read data for a new combat zone situation, it simply averages together the data from the four nearest reference points. So even if the bot has never been in the exact combat situation of 682 units away, 4.3 degrees down, it has a very solid estimate of accuracy with all weapons.

The bot doesn't even need to know why rockets are better when it aims down at a target. Maybe it's the opponent, maybe it's the level, or maybe it's the bot's aiming algorithm. The reason really doesn't matter. The historical data will tell the bot that the rocket launcher is good in that situation, and that's enough for the bot to select that weapon.