Monster infighting added so much to the game and was relatively "cheap" to program.
What other games even use it apart from Doom, Quake and Half Life? (HL 1 had some impressive AI)
What other games even use it apart from Doom, Quake and Half Life? (HL 1 had some impressive AI)
Marathon is a game series from Bungie, the first version released shortly after Doom, but only on Macintosh.
There are defense drones [0] that aid the player and later on enslaved cybernetic aliens [1] that revolt against their alien overlords.
As in Doom, if an enemy would accidentally hit another enemy, they would fight one another.
The Marathon series can be played on modern computers using Aleph One [2]
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[0]: https://marathongame.fandom.com/wiki/Marathon_Automated_Defe...
They described how the player wants to feel like the game play is about themselves, not about some ultra smart enemy. So big and dumb enemies tend to work best, even though they don’t use sophisticated AI by today’s standards.
It was like the the Jurassic Park meme: just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
(Also very strong agree on monster infighting, it added so much depth, as a kid I didn’t even know monsters could infight until the level with cyberdemon and arachnotron in the same room)
Couldn't that be said about all natural intelligences too? "state machines of some sort" is a very broad characterisation fitting almost anything.
I also remember at some point playing an RPG where you found an ongoing even fight between two armies and you could join one to make the fight go your way, but I don't remember what it was.
I think I managed to get a Shambler pissed off at some zombies once, there was much shredding.. but the zombies always won in the end while I hid and watched.