The design behind Linear FPS Corridor games?

Im currently playing through one of my favorite games (Cryostasis) and its' corridor design is very intriguing. Its' really inspiring me to maybe try my hand at creating something similar.

What is the design layout for creating Linear FPS Corridor games? Even though the game play & general tech is fairly simple, developing the game seems fairly difficult. The main area that seems fairly difficult is the AI. Most Ai is able to move freely in an open area. Corridor games are insanely tight and this leaves AI open to glitching out constantly.

Term:
These games have little to no free-roam / exploration. Players are funneled from A to B. Corridor shooters tend to have a solid story.

Game Examples:

• Battlefield 4 - Single Player
• Call Of Duty - Single Player
• Medal Of Honor - Single Player
• UberSoldier Series
• The Suffering Series
• Metro Series - Partial Corridor Shooter. Some areas allow for exploration but still require you to go from A to B

 

Since I haven't played FPS games much since the days of Quake III, I was completely unfamiliar with this term. But tvtropes.org to the rescue.

But can you give an example of a game or two you have in mind that fit the "linear FPS corridor" description and have glitchy AI?

Personally, I would expect the constraints on movement to make the AI easier, not harder... maybe the games you're thinking of would have had lousy AI regardless.

 

Medal of honor, Call of Duty, Cryostasis, The Suffering and UberSoldier all follow the corridor setup. They have little to no exploration. The Ai usually gets stuck in walls or door ways. I do agree that these games most likely have bad Ai to start with.

 

Gotcha. All I can say is, this shouldn't be a big challenge for modern AI. If anything, knowing which way the player will be coming from, and roughly where they are going to be, should make it easy for the level designer to place enemies in ways that seem clever (ambushes, etc.).

In fact, maybe that's the problem: unlike an open world game, where you pretty much have to have decent AI since you don't know where the player will be, designers of corridor games may be tempted to rely too heavily on these constraints, and skimp on putting in any real AI. This works well enough that they feel they've gotten away with it, but then players like you start noticing the shortcomings.