Just ran across a pretty good article on Game AI and how it’s all smoke and mirrors as opposed to real AI and a brief introduction to some of the basic concepts, such as finite state machines etc etc.
Pretty good introduction to the topic. The full article can be found here:
http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2009/03/05/how-ai-in-games-works/1
Category: Code
Short update
Its been a bit of a slog to make much progress. Tons of little ‘try this.. er.. hmm well how about that.. ooh that broke it… humm well then how about ….’
BUT the upside.
The player now triggers doors when he/she walks across em. (yes the collision polygons need some tweaking but basically it works). This causes a recusive floodfill to determine all the tiles that are available inside the room. There was an issue where it caused the game to stutter while the fill ran but with the use of some scheduling calls I actually wound up with a smooth and more even area determination.
So.. why does that make me happy?
Well, glad I asked.
So now I have a nice and easy way to get all the available tiles in a room, with just some minor tweaks the monster spawner (in the inital Alpha) will be able to find an open spot and start spawning critters.
Esentially I’m just a few minor tweaks from having a playable core base to work off of.
Then I can start going crazy with different monsters, powerups etc etc.
Further Mapmaking Tools and Integration
Got some good progress done. The online Map editor is coming along nicely with some new additions such as, saving to a database, generating exportable content files for integration into Torque. Still I need to do a couple things to it, mainly bulletproofing the submitted maps to make sure I don’t forget to add doors, things are sealed properly etc etc.
Easy as cake
Hmm so I’m grandually getting comfortable wiht the whole MCV arhictecture of dev elopment. I’ve decided to more or less just give a pass to Ruby on Rails for now and see about getting cakephp up and implemented to my workflow.
Having a hard time with the initial mental gymnastics to fully embrace it but it’s gradually starting to make sense.
For now, though, It may be time to just take a break and take a look at some bigger picture items and play around with my paints while things gel.
Turkey Time approaches.
Well the year sure went fast.
Been playing with some basic python and pygame stuff. Seems like a pretty easy to learn language and api, just havent gotten myself convinced for the need to learn yet another language… oh well Im sure I’ll think of something to use for an excuse.
But it probably wont be until Xmas. Letting the brain relax and just enjoying some neglected games and movies and such. blah blah blah blah..
Joomla seems like a good thing to know
Bought a book about Joomla a lil bit ago and just reading over it makes it seem like a wonderful platform for doing a whole bunch of really really neat things. It kinda makes me want to redo the custom CMS i’ve been making at work for the last 3 months for fuddruckers. Well ok there’s some pretty significant things that aren’t in there for that particular job. Nonetheless it looks like a very robust foundation to know and be able to expand upon. So I’m goind to get started on the Drakkheim.com lan planning / management site just to get more comfortable with the ins and outs of the system.
Hopefully once I knock it out I’ll have the knowledge to use Joomla as a base platform for many many other things that I’ve got planned both at home and at work.
In completely unrelated news Robert Asprin and Lody Lynn Nye have released another book in the wonderful MYTH series called Myth-Chief.. Jeez come to think of it I’ve been following those for close to 15 years now.. Well here’s to another 15.
