Re: [pygame] AI Module

[Thadeus Burgess <thadeusb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sounds like an excellent idea to me.

-Thadeus





On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:08 AM, James Ravenscroft
<ravenscroftj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> My Names is James Ravenscroft and I am an Artificial Intelligence and
> Robotics major from Aberystwyth, United Kingdom. I am interested in taking
> part in PyGame for the Google Summer Of Code.
>
> I was interested to see that a pygame 'AI' module was on the list of ideas,
> under the unsorted/incomplete section. I had a quick read through your
> mailing list and noticed that a couple of other students have also been
> interested in this field. However, I wanted to bring something new to the
> table.
>
> I appreciate that a general purpose 'AI' module is quite a difficult concept
> to explain, never mind to implement. I noticed that previous students who
> were interested in this field, were looking to implement a handful of AI
> algorithms without any particular framework or design. I wanted to look at a
> general AI construct, suitable for almost any game or simulation. I believe
> that the algorithm that carries out the AI's behaviour is less important to
> the game designer than the behaviour itself. AI algorithms are often very
> complicated and since one of PyGame's focuses is simplicity, I think it
> would be best if the various algorithms are kept out of the way of the
> PyGame users (unless users really want to play with them).
>
> Since PyGame is a game/multimedia framework, I started by brainstorming the
> aspects and attributes that game AIs have in common. During my
> investigation, I realised that there are many types of computer game and
> therefore, many types of game AI. I did, on the other hand, still manage to
> find a small collection of attributes that most Game AI constructs have in
> common.
>
> Most modern game AIs:
>
> are simulcra of a human player's behaviour â whether in the form of hard
> hitting FPS bot, a General in an RTS or a Sim, happily bobbing through their
> daily life (Ok so they might be called NPCs but they take cover, use medkits
> and kill each other too).
>
> have a set of conditions that they strive to meet â to kill other
> players/bots, to heal the player magically in an RPG, to maintain a very
> important strategic structure by defending it with their lives. From herein,
> I refer to these as Success Conditions (SCs).
>
> give priority to their SCs, making some more important than others - for
> example it might be preferable for a Bot to heal and prevent their own death
> than to attempt to kill the player if the bot's health is low.
>
> have an assigned action for improving their performance against each SC.
> E.g. if the dinosaur is limping badly, it should run (or hobble) away from
> the player to avoid death.
>
> I believe that over the course of a couple of months, it would be possible
> to knock up a general purpose AI construct (suggestions for names and
> humorous acronyms welcome) that integrated into an end user's game model.
> The construct would subscribe to some aspect of the game model, running in a
> loop that compares it's performance to it's SCs and reacts relevantly. I
> also plan on implementing path finding in a 2D (and perhaps ultimately a 3D)
> environment.
>
> When a user wants to use the AI, they would:
>
> Derive from the AIConstruct class, writing actions for their SCs. e.g.
> locate a health machine on the map, find a path to it, travel the path and
> use the machine.
>
> Map a dict of SCs against a 2 element tuple of how close the AI is to
> achieving/failing as a percentage and the relevant action implemented in
> step 1.
>
> Run the AIConstruct loop which would repeatedly carry out comparisons with
> the SCs and perform the most relevant action.
>
> My proposal still needs some refining, however, I think that this
> AIConstruct framework would be a convenient way for developers of varying
> types of game to include artificial intelligence in their code.
>
> Please write back with any thoughts and feedback on my idea.
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> --
>
> James Ravenscroft
>