Re: [TuxKart-devel] Things have gone very quiet....

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

Charles Goodwin wrote:

> One thing Ingo and I chatted about was the AI.  We seem to agree on an
> 'arrow-map' method where the track is broken into segments with each
> segment assigned an arrow, the properties of which dicate how the AI
> karts make decisions on that section of the track.

Yep - that seems like the way to go.

> What's the plan on this?  Who is implementing it?  How will it be
> implemented?  And how will track builders generate these arrow maps?

Well, a couple of people said they wanted to work on AI.  I havn't
heard from either of them since those early discussions.

I can easily make the track loader pull in the 'ai model' as another
3D model just like the 'visual model' - PLIB can store it and you
can do collision testing just like the visual model so we know which
'arrow polygon' each AI Kart is driving over.  From then on, it's up
to the AI code to deal with it.

The 'ai model' would be built just like the visual model - except that
it would be **MUCH** simpler.  I think the easiest way to store the
"arrow direction" for each polygon is to apply a texture to it with
an actual texture-mapped arrow on it.  Then, it's easy to pull the
3D model into blender or whatever and *see* where the arrows are
pointing.

We could also (in principle) have a hidden keystroke in TuxKart to
toggle between displaying the visual model and displaying the
ai model.  Hence, if something is going wrong with the AI, you'd
be able to easily see whether the underlying 'ai model' was confusing
them somehow.

One nice feature about doing the arrow map as a 3D model is that it
can (in principle) have things like animation in it.

Suppose (for example) that you had a bridge providing a short-cut
over a river - and a longer way around that avoided the bridge. We
could maybe have it possible to blow up the bridge with a missile.

The bridge destruction animation would switch the bridge model for
a destroyed bridge model - and AT THE SAME TIME, it could switch
the AI model of the turns leading up to the bridge to automatically
make the AI karts "know" that they now have to go the long way around.

I'm sure you could think of other uses.

Anyway, the point is that if the AI 'arrow map' is just another 3D
polygonal model, then we can deal with it with minimal additional
code and build/visualise it using the tools we're already
familiar with.

However, things *have* gone rather quiet.

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