AI

[Helderic]

Is it possible to create AI in BBG's? If so, what language is this usually done in/what languages can it be done in?

[Qwerty]

Do you mean an enemy AI that can attack, or choose how to respond to a players attack?

[jannesiera]

What is AI?

[raestlyn]

AI=Artificial Intelligent.

I'm using Fussy Logic and ANN (artificial neural network) in my next game thats all about trading and diplomacy. The game world will actually be "alive" without any player interaction, it will have wars, alliances, ongoing trade deal and criminal activity even when there is no player characters. All players will be able to affect anything that happens in the game world, like help one Kingdom to attack another or stop it if it will help the player to make more gold/fame.

There are some AIs that are written in PHP like FANN (fast artificial neural network) and A.L.I.C.E (chat program) and I have seen some movement AIs written in JavaScipt, so there are good choices for BBGs.

[Helderic]

Cool thanks. Is there a list of these compiled somewhere on the net? Or a easier way to find them? Or specific keywords I should google?

[Scion]

I'm using Fussy Logic ...

Oh i wouldnt do that if i was you.....id stick with the good old regular fuzzy logic.....

The big problem with Neural Nets is that theyre only as good as the training data set.....and building a good representative training set is more of an art than a science.

[Chris]

Only client side, I can't imagine running A* for 1000 players on server side. Server side only for a limited amount of bots (like a global AI that sets something for all players at once). Hardware limits and huge players count practically limits any serious use of AI for us

[goodie]

I've been considering the use of AI... but more along the lines of having an ingame event where you have one uber powered up AI Vs the game.

This *shouldn't* be to *hard* to implement (i hope).

-Goodie

[Zeggy]

In that case... you could just use PHP and a bunch of ifs/elseifs, where the 'AI' does a set of actions according to what state the AI/the enemy/the environment are in and any other variables you might want to include.

[Scion]

My suggestion to anyone wanting to incorporate an AI  element into their game....

If its a game element then use simulated AI....let the players imagine the I part of the AI...

if your wanting an AI adversary for your players.....then your probably best of with a simple rule based approach....i guess it depends on how complicated the game is....but after a certain level of complexity in game dynamics its pretty easy to beat AI....Im sur weve all played games where suddenly you find a pattern of play that the AI isnt capable of dealing with efficiently.....and you can bet in a web bassed game as soon as one person finds it....it wont take long till everyone knows...

Personally Im planning to include bot bassed NPC's into my game to help ensure that those players that start playing first have someone/thing to play against.....a lot of effort you say....fiddlesticks....ill also be using them to test various elements of game play, and whether the game engine itself is balanced....sort of an automated dry run....

Id be interested in hearing if anyone has experimented with including NPC's that are intended to be indistinguishable from real players...

One of the points i am turning over and over is wether to provide some sort of indication if the character is real player or NPC.... I will probably have too since unanswered PM's will probably give it away anyhow...

Another point ive already considered is that the bots playing activities will probably mirror the live player bases playing activity.....in other words if 67% of teh population do between 2 & 3 missions per day then so will 67% of the bots....

Finally bots will progress through the game just as the real players do... I have in mind a minimum number of chars that shoudl the live player base be below will be made up to with bots.....

My plan might seem overly ambitious....but then again the game im planning is not hughly complicated in scope.....Im just planning to do it properly....

[raestlyn]

...
Id be interested in hearing if anyone has experimented with including NPC's that are intended to be indistinguishable from real players...

One of the points i am turning over and over is wether to provide some sort of indication if the character is real player or NPC.... I will probably have too since unanswered PM's will probably give it away anyhow...

In a game where I was in a game dev they made the whole test server full of automated bots to fight against each other and balanced the battle mechanic based on their findings. After that they released the game and left 6 of them as the first "members". The bots did quite far before they were destroyed (the game had option ti fully kill an opponent) and I think no-one noticed that they were not real players. Although they didn't reply to imails or come to the chat at all..

[Zeggy]

Well, I have played games where there are NPCs that play the game exactly as a regular player would do it. (Their actions update in ticks though, so they're not completely ninjas)

I think that would be very interesting to code and play around with...

You could also make them appear in the chat and respond to mail, even sending mail on their own occasionally...

Mail responses could be generic like 'I don't care what you say, I will destroy you!!!'.

You could also treat the bots as regular players in terms of where they are in the database (also in the players table), and you can occasionally login to a random bot account (or code an admin panel for this), and respond to mail yourself, maybe attack a few people

Like I said, very interesting!

[Scion]

hmmm ...  good point ....i guess one could build an admin interface to the bots pm's so that you can reply to their pm's...as long as its not too many.....

yes i had intended to only distinguish the records in the db that were bots by having a bot table linked to the player table....so that in all other respects they get treated as normal players....shown up on highscore boards....progressing in character development...all the same things a player does.

[codestryke]

We don't have AI per say but in one of our games we do generate fake in-games from generated events in the game. It's always funny each round to see players reply to these emails as if they are real in-games from a player.

One thought on AI which again isn't really AI was capturing a players progress though out the game then feeding that players play style to a bot during the round.  Haven't had the time to implement this idea yet but it's on my to do list

[Helderic]

Lol, I like everyones ideas on the subject. So generally AI is good to use on tick-based games?

[Chris]

Lol, I like everyones ideas on the subject. So generally AI is good to use on tick-based games?

Nope, it is bad I mean, we have superior inteligence already (other players), what is the point of using inferior AI then? Setup it the way that players oppose themselves, no place for AI there. Maybe for some lowly low level tasks (like pathfinding, managing battles when player is not online, etc) but otherwise I do not see a point of implementing it.

[Helderic]

Ok, thanks.

[goodie]

Well, I have played games where there are NPCs that play the game exactly as a regular player would do it. (Their actions update in ticks though, so they're not completely ninjas)

I think that would be very interesting to code and play around with...

You could also make them appear in the chat and respond to mail, even sending mail on their own occasionally...

Mail responses could be generic like 'I don't care what you say, I will destroy you!!!'.

You could also treat the bots as regular players in terms of where they are in the database (also in the players table), and you can occasionally login to a random bot account (or code an admin panel for this), and respond to mail yourself, maybe attack a few people

Like I said, very interesting!

You could always implement some of the code from the chat bots for the mail responders, and have them join chat every so often.

Some of those bots are either fairly humorous, or realistic, or just both.

-Goodie