Re: [TuxKart-devel] Ideas for AI

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

Oliver Jeeves wrote:

> On another note, I think the 'array of arrows' method could _possibly_ be
> improved by instead of having a huge array, splitting the map into 'areas'
> and having directions assigned to each of these areas. If you had an array,
> many adjacent arrows would be pointing in the same direction, and there would
> be a lot of duplicate information. I have attached another diagram. The
> question is whether using this method, you could cut down the amount of areas
> significantly enough so that the extra information used to store the
> boundaries of the areas doesn't make it less efficient...

WOW!

That's an interesting idea because we could create those polygons in a modelling
tool using the texture coordinates to represent the 'arrow' direction.

You could make up a texture with lots of arrows painted on it and use the
texturing tool in the modeller to point the arrows where you think the AI
should drive.   Then the (u,v) deltas on the polygon could be loaded by
TuxKart and converted into a direction number.

The existing collision detection code could then figure out which polygon the
kart is sitting on each frame (or however often we run the AI decisionmaking).

This gets over both the storage issue AND the 'how do I build it' issue for
the vector field approach...and it leverages existing tools, existing loaders
and existing collision detection stuff.

What's better still is that this additional polygon mesh can be fully 3D so
that bridges will naturally fall out of the same mechanism.

Even more than that, if this is a fully legit 3D model, it could be animated
in sync with the 'visual' model so my idea of the track changing as the game
progresses is possible.

Also, track builders (who may not be programmers) would be able to understand
it easily enough.

Interesting!

I still like this idea better than waypoints because it explicitly tells
the AI which direction to head in - so no matter what, he can ALWAYS
get out of a jam of any kind...and it's very easy to understand.

---------------------------- 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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