Re: [TuxKart-devel] Ideas for AI

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Charles Goodwin wrote:

> 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).

The problem is that with no dynamic handicapping, the karts get spread
out all around the track and you just never see any of them after about
30 seconds into the race.  The track is about a mile around - if everyone
is well spread out, the nearest kart is a quarter mile away - which puts
it somewhere two corners away.  You'll never see it.

For some kinds of game, that's realistic - but the trouble for a MarioKart
clone is that most of the fun is not in driving really well - most of it
is in the powerups and collectables.  Blowing people away with missiles
and bombs and things that shrink the enemy do half size...stuff like that.

But if the enemy karts aren't somewhere nearby, none of that interesting
stuff happens and we are left with "just another race game".

The trick is to do it subtly enough so it's not really noticable - and
make it such that good driving will let you beat them despite their
tendancy to speed up behind you.

MarioKart certainly does this...so do most other 'fighting-with-racing'
games that I've played.

> 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.

Yes.  Some kind of noticable character 'personality' could add a lot of
play depth.

If you know in advance how your opponent tends to react then you can
strategize about how to beat them.  Some might require good driving,
others need to be blown to bits with exploding herring...whatever.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>    WorkEmail: <sj...@li...>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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