[MUD-Dev] Re: Combat intelligence

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 29 Jun 1998 16:32:11 -0700 
J C Lawrence<claw at under.engr.sgi.com> wrote:

> A while ago we discussed making NPC's more intelligent combat
> opponents.  Many good ideas were sucked out of thumbs.  I don't
> recall any structured or rigorously duplicable techniques comeing up
> however.  I've long suspect that the makers of DOOM-esque bloodbaths
> weren't so undisciplined.

> Look at the top graphic at the following page:

>   URL:http://crack.crack.com/games/golgotha/screenshots/

I just noticed that I embedded the above graphic in the middle of this
message (urk!), rather than at the end, so those of you without fully
MIME-capable readers may have lost the following text:

> The caption reads:

>   "This shows our strategy test program for computer AI. The blue
> circles are areas the computer tries to defend/take over. The
> colored regions represent areas near the strategy points. Lines show
> which points can defend/attack other points. This is used for long
> term strategy planning, rather than immediate path solving. Some
> paths are one-way because you can go down a hill, but not
> necessarily up it, making hill tops more advantageous.

> Have you ever thought of mapping the topology of your MUD world and
> analysing it against any of a number of the standard tactical
> metrics and *then* pumping that into the combat brains for your
> Midgarrd FIDO?

> Per the screen shots it also seems that Golgotha has also handled
> much of the problem of handling large unbounded spaces in a
> DOOM-style game, tho I also note that most of the timestamps seem to
> be in September of last year.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...