Re: [TuxKart-devel] Ideas for AI

[Charles G. <ch...@ve...>]

On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 23:24 +0100, Oliver Jeeves wrote:
> > I also don't believe we should make each driver in the race be of
> > increased difficulty so it is hard to get to #1.  Some people aren't
> > game wizards and they'll find it frustrating if they can't win on easy.
> 
> I'm not exactly sure what you mean here, but I think there should be an 
> approach similar to Mario Kart - where the AI ahead of you becomes weaker, 
> and the AI behind you becomes stronger (or maybe just adjust the speed). This 
> causes the karts to bunch a bit more and means that a good player always has 
> a threat of being overtaken, and a weak player always has a chance to 
> overtake.

No, I meant that 'easy' should be really easy (ie a young kid should be
able to win after a big of practise), 'medium' should be a mild
challenge but nothing for experienced gamers, 'hard' should be a
challenge for most people, and 'invincible' should be damn near
unbeatable.

I really don't like the idea of relative speeds according to how well or
not somebody is playing.  Not only does that cause problems for players
(they approach the same corner at full speed in two parts of the race,
only full speed has changed), it's also a challenge for the AI (same
corner problem).

> Basically, what you're saying is that we need to define some heuristics to 
> determine what actions to take. It's not as simple as good/bad/normal 
> decisions. For example, taking a slower route to collect a powerup makes less 
> sense if you are in the lead.

No, it wouldn't be that simple.  But that was an example of classifying
actions.  You would probably add 'attacking', 'defensive', and 'neutral'
so that you would have aggressive AI, defensive AI, and AI that just
races as fast as possible.

It needs thinking through by somebody, but if we can add a couple of
categories for classifying actions then we can really give AI characters
a bit of *character*... the Octopus and Killer Whale could be really
agressive, for instance, whilst Tux and Gown could be really defensive.
-- 
- Charlie

Charles Goodwin <ch...@ve...>
Online @ www.charlietech.com