[MUD-Dev] FEAR Animat style AI for Quake 2

[Frank Crowell]

From: "shren" <shren at io.com>
> On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Freeman, Jeff wrote:
>> From Ted L. Chen

>>> It lacks learning, and reaks of hard-coding if-then statements.
>>> But in most cases, it gives the semblance of high-level
>>> intelligence and isn't as prone to generating really really
>>> weird conditionals (unless of course your AI programmer has had
>>> one too many beers).

>> There's a danger here, I think is being overlooked: What if you
>> succeed?  So, great, now your AI is as able as a real human
>> being.  Fighting an orc isn't like fighting an orc any more, it's
>> just like fighting a player who is pretending to be an orc.

>> In my experience, players don't even like it when AI is given the
>> ability to determine that a given battle is a lost cause, that
>> the AI ought to just run away.  They like the AI to be a bit
>> stupid.

> An interesting side-tale - Angband is a permadeath single player
> game that has been around a long time.  There was a long period of
> time where the AI got tougher, and was better able to use the
> abilities of each monster.  It was starting to reach the point
> where the game was much, much harder.

> Any modification to your AI beyond the trivial calls for
> rebalancing.

Actually this is an issue that is rarely considered and could very
well ruin the notion of "game".  In the FPS community the bots are
much disliked.  The assumption is that the bots cheat and therefore
shouldn't be allowed.

I have posted several times on the theme that bots are disliked by
the admins and most players.  The only ones that seem to like bots
are the botmakers.  Even MUDs quickly made the environments hostile
to bots and almost every mud today still has the restrictions
against cyborgs and bots.  The smart bots were kicked out and the
dumb bots got to stay taking in-server jobs as mobs and NPCs.

The assumption is that smart mobs are only for players.  Actually
smart mobs can also be for external bots in bots vs mobs events.
This would not unbalance the overall game play and certainly could
be an excellent laboratory for both the botmakers and the mobmakers.
I would go as far as saying there should be a new player object -- a
bot that also has its own race/class.  The biggest problem that I
see with this setup is the cyborg (combo PC and Bot).  I am not sure
how the cyborg fits in all this although cyborgs have been common in
most MUD environments thanks to tinyfuge and a few other macro
tools.

frank


_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev