AI development, structuring, tactic gaming genre
Is Natural Selection 2 still going to include an official AI? If so, I suggest putting up a thread for AI orientated discussion. Perhaps including a 'webbed' post naming the official contributors and noteworthy links.I was highly interested in the AI wars ( Whichbot vs RC-bot). Perhaps as a point of interest, we can develop and discuss the base class of the official AI, and have future AI wars between the tweaked implementations.
There was an old DOS game (I cannot find any information on the web about) that was similar to this in concept.
The perspective was a top down view of a battle between 2 teams of 5 dragon-like creatures.
each of dragon-like creatures were customized pre-battle (using a arbitrary point-value system)..
Outside of visuals, the customization of factors such as; size of their head, size of the body, held other factors such as damage/attack rate, and endurance/defense, respectfully
Their movement was customized as well, within the unique movement system that was based off the relative position of their current target. For example, if the target object was directly in front of the dragon-like creature, you could plan out a tactic to jump/move in a circular motion around the target object (lets say 6 sequential movements in a clockwise fashion around the target would effectively get you behind the target if it were standing still). You could also plan out the movement to jump back, than strafe right over 2 sequential movements, and than perform other movements of your choosing. The attack system was relative to the individual creature factors, so if the attack rate was every three sequential movements.. your creature would be attacking (ranged attacks) at a point during your movement tactic, so it had a predictablility factor in that manner.
What this actually was, was a prelude to this interesting battle system implementation featured in Final Fantasy 12. Which is of course based in an 'event, conditional, effect list (sequential)' loop. FF12 had a priority system implementation that the DOS game didn't have, while the DOS game implemented a movement system that FF12 didn't implement as a customizable feature, but certainly had factored it in.
What I'm imagining here, is perhaps making a game out of the tactics of AI tweak implementations. An arbitrary point-value system may not be necessary, unless this sort of tactic gameplay becomes its own ns game genre, so to speak.
I would like to see the AI base class be implemented around enumerations, for the purpose of customization. So that the developing user can prioritize targets, as well as conditional statements and writing out an effect/order/command list to be executed sequentially.