AI

[Gaming_World]

Can anyone help me by telling me how to make some simple AI? I want to start making more 1 player games but I need some help with AI. So far I have only made 2 games, a pong game (with very dumb AI; moves the wrong way, too fast, too slow, or moves with the ball (never misses)) and a game w/out any need for AI. Basiclly all I want is the comp to make simple discions depending upon given infomation. At this point I don't have a good idea on what I may do with the knowadge, but I will come up with ideas in the future.

[kedaman]

you want to have some ideas for the pong game ai or what?

[Koralt]

When you make an AI, you need to know what conditions the AI must function in--ie, what's the game? How's the stuff stored? How much information can the AI use?

[Gaming_World]

To make a general AI, would I just use a select case? Do you think that would be the easiest way?

[/\/\isanThr0p]

YOu should really give some information what the AI should do!
I think if then is the better way, bcause normaly you check much more than one variable to get some 'intelligent' behaviour!
For a pong game a simple AI is
if ball.x > player.x then player.x = player.x +1
so it is following the ball, but could still be slower than the ball!

CU

[Gaming_World]

That is more of what I wanted to know. Just the best way to write some AI. Just incase this might help some more I will tell you the game I am writting (and yes I know it is copied). What it will do will be a Planet Wars. I don't know the name of the orignal verson. It is where you get X planets each producing ships. The ships are grouped into fleets and then you can move the fleets around play area. In my verson there are 2 types of planets, moon-like and earth-like. You can gain control over the planets. Moon-like produce 5 ships/turn, Earth-likes produce 10 ships/turn. At the start the worlds are randomized and there is a 16/28 chance of a Earth-like and a 12/28 chance of Moon-like worlds. In case you wanna help me with the AI, the computer will need to anailize # of ships, # of Earth-like worlds, # of Moon-like worlds, distance to each fleet, positions of worlds, owners of worlds. There may be more I didn't list.

[kedaman]

AI with no need learn from situations:

Just think about how you yourself reacts in different situations in the game, sum them up and start making huge if blocks for every possible situation. Yeah I know this sounds hard, but it's they way you can work out a good AI.
In general these situations comes in second, you put the goals of the AI at first, try to make it prioriate different ways of acting or reacting by using a "points" - system. If a way to react have more points it will choose that one isntead of anoter way with minor points. To calculate these points is another hard one, it can depend of many factors and the result needs to get balanced, one misstake and your AI will be easy to cheat.

[Koralt]

In my experience, big chukns of If statements, although somewhat easy to implement, do *not* work very well. I am working on a very complex tactical game (not in VB, admittedly, but...) , and I have been developing the AI for some time. It's more like fuzzy logic, not the static logic of "If" statements.

First, I need to say, it's a turn based, tile based game. Each unit has a number of Time Units with which to act each turn.

Basically, my AI is able to find routes to every square that a unit can reach. It makes one big routemap, with the time to the tile included... actually, let me just paste in a description of the AI I wrote a while back.


*** A summary of EDF's Tactical AI ***

There are too many components in the EDF's AI for me to list
them all and give them adequate description.

The central entity in EDF's AI is the pathfinder. Most
pathfinders in most games are designed to find the best route
from point A to point B. EDF's routefinder finds the best routes
from point A to every point the unit can possibly reach.

What's the advantage to this? Does it justify the fact that it
must be significantly slower than a simpler routefinder? Well,
first, it's not much slower than a conventional routefinding
algorithm, even for finding a way to only one point. It's
certainly faster than XCOM's.

The true advantage, though, comes from the fact that routes to
any number of potential destinations can quickly be tested and
compared. If there are 10 squares where the alien can shoot
an EDF agent, the AI can check all 10 to see which is closest
without using any more processing time than if it only had to
check one.

This routefinding technique has more upsides than just that, of
course. If a unit, controlled by the AI, is short of energy,
the routine can easily be made to find the routes which require
the least energy expenditure.

Further, it will be possible to have "danger modified routemaps"--
basically, the computer will be able to determine roughly how
dangerous each square is to step in--based on the possible
reactions of known enemies--and then avoid overly dangerous zones
of the map. This will be even more useful when the AI is
seriously outmanned and must use extreme caution, and when
individual AI controlled units are badly wounded.

The AI will be able to create LOF maps just like the routemaps.
It will be able to, then, find the fastest route to a place where
it can shoot an enemy by comparing the routemap with the LOF
map. This feature will also let it calculate the danger maps for
routefinding, because it can find the LOF map for an enemy as
easily as it can for friends.

That alone would make the AI more formiddable than XCOM's by
a significant amount. There's more to it, though. A bunch of
semi-intelligent aliens fighting you on their own would be
tougher than XCOM's random aliens fighting you on their own, but
a coordinating force must be present. The AI must be able to
identify goals and know when it's worth taking risks--and making
sacrifices.

To facilitate this, the AI will be able to set goals. The basic
idea of this--and I'll admit, it's still in the planning stages--
is to let it identify:
a) Risks to its own soldiers
b) Overall objectives that must be met (kill civilians, take out
control center, etc.)
c) Beneficial, yet unimportant, activities (killing civilians
while on a research mission)

To use XCOM units and weapons as examples because EDF's aren't
fully developed, if an alien sees one soldier with a blaster
launcher and another with a stun rod, it will try to take out the
blaster equipped soldier first. Unless, of course, the soldier
with the stun rod is very close, will likely stun it, and the
alien has valuable knowledge that the aliens can't afford to let
the humans learn about ...

The next task, then, is to identify what each unit can do to
achieve those goals. Once that is done, units who are most able
to help achieve the most important goals--but unable to achieve
less important ones--will go first. At the point when they cannot
help in achieving that goal, they will try to identify another
which they can. The most important goals will always be dealt
with first, to ensure that they *are* dealt with, and whenever
possible the ability to deal with lesser goals is retained.

There are a few more features about which I will write later.


Hope those concepts help.

[Gaming_World]

I have gotten all the help I need to make my AI. Although it may not be smart, it isn't dumb. I have seen both better and worse AI then mine. If you would like to see my game, I am still fixing bugs in it but I will e-mail you a copy if you e-mail me and tell me that you want it. Thanks for the help. (I will no longer post replys to the thread)