🚀 go-pugleaf

Khan writes:
>
>I read an article in an old Byte (April 1980 I believe) written by a
>couple of the authors of Zork, talking about the implementation of the
>game. The article says that basically the thief is just a formula: the
>chances of him attacking are a certain percentage, lower if you are
>unarmed; the chances that he will filch an item vary depending on how
>valuable the item is, and so forth. It doesn't seem as though there's a
>whole lot to it, but I'm interested in what other techniques there are
>to implement computer opponents.

I've found that for "most" games (excluding pure strategy games), you
can get by with a "fake" computer opponent.  That is, the computer doesn't
use sophisticated AI routines, but rather uses only a few simple rules with
a little randomness thrown in.  You can make the computer act more
aggressively by tweaking a few values.

[Aside:  the whole concept of "faking it" it central to game programming.
Do you think the track in Pole Position is really make up of splines?
Or that every star in Star Raiders really "exists" in the game universe?]

The more complex a method used, unless you go full out with an exhaustive
search tree (not possible for many games), the higher the chances of
there being holes in the computer's strategy, IMO.  Unless you plan to devote
most of your time devloping AI algorithms it is better to go with something
simple and use speed, number (i.e. multiple attackers at once), and randomness
to overload the player.

--
James Hague   
exuhag@exu.ericsson.se