Mythruna

So Paul, what have you been up to recently? If your having trouble on what to do next (Thats funny) I can help you with Ideas... But then you would NEVER get your game done.... EVER..... EVER, EVER, EVER.... ever......

that is some very small writing :p WHO FINDS THIS ANNOYING XD

Yes, it is so EVER EVER ever so small! And how is it annoying? Its only a SMALL annoyance :3

I have a huge impossible road map to implement... so I never run out of things to do.

AI is what I'm working on and it's a big job.

Yay AI! I know, The Not To Be Named Game, HE had to hire an AI guy to do it for HIM. I understand that that will be a LONG while...

The last time I played that other game, the creatures were just player-seeking-missiles.  They'd jump right off the side of a cliff to get to you.

I want to have NPCs that get up in the morning, go to work, eat lunch, go home, go to sleep... repair their house if it's busted, buy materials if they run out, etc...   That requires a pretty well-formed AI system.

Don't forget: "Wake up, eat breakfast, goto work, go home, fight dragon at door-step, fus-ro-da, sleep with steel helmet on a prison bed."

Edit: If that game was Minecraft: Good thing in 1.0 they made enemies find paths to get to you/beat down your door. (<Zombies :D)

Yeah, in my case it was a looong time ago.  On a friend's server, I'd built a James Bond-villain style base in the side of a mountain cliff... it had a huge glass window that looked down on the beach below.  At night you could sit and watch the zombies and creepers falling past the windows to their deaths.

YAY! That is EXACTLY what I was hoping fore (The other post before this) and yeah, he got past them jumping off... Now they will jump down and land in front of the windows and THEN get smacked off by ya FISTS... They really need to UP the AI to what your going for :3

No.  I think they need to stop adding stuff and just rest on their laurels now. :)   Heheh.

Well, if you hurry up (I know its immpossible because its not your job) then maybe they will surrender :3

that would surely make it a bit easier for you, wouldn't it?  ;)

My dog is a bacon-seeking-missile, having recently just hurt his leg by jumping off a platform to get to the neighbor's barbecue which featured bacon, so I don't think it is unreasonable to have a couple of NPCs who are neither motivated by habit or "long-term" goals - you know, like surviving to the end of the day. But yes, AI for the rest of them must be a bitch. Best of luck!

Yes, of course, there will be some random spawns that are created just for you to battle.  Mostly not, though.

Actually, the plan is to have prey-animals be random encounter spawns but have predator animals (like wolves, grue-lizards, etc.) have actual dens/camps/nests and a reasonable pack behavior.  The random spawns will be based on terrain and the game will know (when the player isn't there) how much forest will spawn deer+rabbits+etc to feed the local wolf pack.  But if you were to burn down most of the forest then the game should know that the wolves cannot be properly fed and then there is a chance they start raiding the local town or being more aggressive to travelers. 

The AI should be multi-tiered so that in this case, the AI can calculate the pack behavior without having to worry about the individual animal... in the same way that a town will still function even when the player is gone but won't be using a ton of CPU time to do it.  So the wolves exist somewhere between totally random spawn and fully named and tracked entity.  But they still have lives, goals, relationships, etc... if you carry lots of bacon, maybe they seek you out like a missile.  Then again, maybe you use the bacon to tame one that will be be your friend. :)

I just have to ask, How much of the AI have you actually got done? When the day comes when you have AI that can do all of that plus the amazing land and scenes created, the game would be a new level of rpg gaming. It will be EPIC.  :o

Not as much as I'd like.  I have a system designed that can do basic reasoning and I've mapped out how the level of detail will work regarding AI with the player around versus AI with the player far away.  (multi-tiered AI for the win.)  You can read about some of this in other threads, I think.

... but before any of that can work, I need the "AI primitives", ie: the things that can take simple commands like "walk to point X" and act on them appropriately with the right feed-back when it's taking too long, etc..  In fact, incorporating the action planning into the path finding is one of the hardest nuts I have to crack.  For some of this, I have designs but needed some other bits and pieces working before I could try it out.

I have to fully flesh out a few AI personalities and then make them work in whatever way I can and then iterate a few times simplifying the layers.  Then we'll really start to see some interesting things.  They will make much more interesting videos if they work.

Paul, I've got to say. You're one of the best game-creators I've met so far. Mainly because you keep us up to date, and fill us in with all of these crazy ideas/realities. Your AI is what I've dreamed of in games :D And now you've got a basic structure down. :)

Thanks.  Hopefully I succeed.  :)