[MUD-Dev] Re: 1997 CGDC AI Roundtable Moderator's Report

[Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	J C Lawrence [SMTP:claw at under.engr.sgi.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, July 08, 1998 1:39 PM
> To:	mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject:	[MUD-Dev] Re: 1997 CGDC AI Roundtable Moderator's Report
> 
> 
> On Wed, 01 Jul 1998 14:32:58 -0700 
> J C Lawrence<claw at under.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
> 
> Now kick back a little and imagine putting these sort of supports
> underneath your NPC/mobiles for everything from combat systems and
> effectiveness to NPC societies, population controls, herd/flocking
> behaviours, and NPC economic and political systems (yes!  Your NPC's
> can have their own internally evolved politics!).
> 
> I'm scared.
> 
You should be more scared by the hardware requirements needed to run all
that. :)

BTW, Creatures has now been adapted to fly model fighter planes with
goal-based missions, organizational ("flocking squadrons?") behaviors
and the like. By all reports it's successful. That was the proof of
concept test for the next stage: putting Creatures in the seat of real
air forces. There was a brief blurb about it in one magazine or other
recently--it's a military contractor project in the UK. Creatures was
done by people who made a game just as a proof of concept--their intent
was always serious research. It's quite fun to play with, too.

> Ultima Online was brought up as an interesting example of a
> > quasi A-life approach backed up by careful overview of Game
> > Moderators to prevent things from getting too wildly out of hand.
> 
> Oops.
> 
Yeah, oops. :) As some of you may know, most of the A-life stuff got
turned off because it was too expensive. We are gearing up to make
another run at it though, see if we can get it done better and cheaper.

-Raph