Topics

1

AI War / When are the Hunter/Killers supposed to come?

« on: July 14, 2012, 07:50:58 PM »

I was just playing a game on difficulty 8 with Hard Golumns turned on.  I had about 250 when the AI said "GG" and including a Mark II Hunter/Killer in the Exo-wave.

Is this normal?

2

AI War / No, it's not OK that the game crashes.

« on: April 04, 2012, 07:08:03 PM »

AI War has always been very stable for me, but in a recent game AI War suddenly minimized and I was presented with a dialog box stating that the game had crashed.  And yet... I could still hear the game running in the background, so I just left the dialog open and switched back to the game, played for a few more minutes (the game was still working fine).  Then I made a backup save, tabbed back to the crash dialog, clicked OK, then the game "crashed."

I wish more applications were so polite.
App: "May I please crash?"
User: "Just give me a few more minutes to finish this fight and make a backup save."
App: "Ok, no problem."

3

Game Development / Terraria, a better Minecraft?

« on: May 17, 2011, 11:23:14 AM »

Minecraft was such an awesome idea (I know it's not the first of such games, but it's the first I saw) that I had to buy it, but after 2 weeks I had my fill and returned to more challenging games.

Now I see this new game called Terraria and it looks interesting, very similar to Minecraft but looks to offer a more refined experience and probably more challenging.  I say "more refined" mainly because I'm guessing you can at least play Terraria without using a Wiki.  In Minecraft if you just start to play, you'll probably end up digging rocks out with your hands and never learn to make even a work bench.

The Minecraft community seemed filled with little kids, not too intelligent.  It only takes a few, once 10% of the community is incapable of making posts longer than a sentence, any worth while discussion gets pushed aside.  Especially in contrast to communities like Arcen has built.  Hopefully Terraria doesn't suffer from the same inept community, but it's not looking good from my initial peruse of their forum.

Any one played this game?  What did you think?

4

AI War / The release cycle is unusual.

« on: March 25, 2011, 01:03:16 PM »

It seems that there are new experimental ideas added, followed by an official release, and then followed by several beta releases to polish things before the next round of new features.  Thus, the betas often end up more polished than the official releases.

5

AI War / What are zombie bots and how are they different?

« on: March 23, 2011, 07:18:04 PM »

I've gathered that human zombies just wander around randomly not controllable by the player.  What behaviors do they follow?  Do they act the same as minor faction ships basically?

How is an AI zombie different than a regular AI unit?  Do AI zombies show in the threat count?

6

AI War / Would playing Vanilla AI's forever allow you to experience every unit/building?

« on: March 14, 2011, 02:57:28 PM »

Some AI types use more specialised buildings or units.  I'm thinking AI's like the gravity driller or counter-spy which favor a certain special unit type.

I kind of like the simplicity of the Vanilla AI - I like knowing what the rules of the game are going to be rather than have a surprise like a back-door hacker or warp jumper.  If I chose to play with Vanilla AI's exclusively what might I miss out on in the game?  Will the be certain units or building which a Vanilla AI will never build?

7

A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Wasn't this going to be a tower defense game?

« on: March 12, 2011, 07:12:41 PM »

I thought AVWW was originally said to be a tower defense game with lost of tower types and semi-intelligent enemies?

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AI War / Rebuilding is a big part of the "grind."

« on: March 10, 2011, 11:12:21 AM »

I'll skip right to my proposal.

Human controlled command stations should have a "scrap" form when they are destroyed, and after the system is idle for a period of time (perhaps 2 minutes) they would then rebuild themselves, which would then trigger the construction of automated remains rebuilders and engineers.

I enjoy defending and it's fun to have a wave crush planet after planet as you work at stopping it before it reaches your homeworld, but this is also very frustrating to me because I know I'm in for a annoyingly long period of click-click-click in order to rebuild my planets.  It would be nice if after an AI attack failed, I could just clean up my planets and then have all my command stations auto-rebuild.

Rebuilding a remote planet isn't so trivial (although with transports it's still probably pretty easy), so perhaps you should require supply in order for the command station to auto-rebuild.  This way there would be a chain of auto-rebuilding command stations.  If you have supply on the planet anyways, it's trivial to build a constructor on your planet and send it one planet over to manually start rebuilding - but again, I dislike having to manually rebuild where there are so many other interesting things to think about in this game.

9

AI War / Is installing beta updates without an internet connection still possible?

« on: March 07, 2011, 01:52:21 PM »

A friend always appreciated the ability to install updates without needing an internet connection, but you no longer give instructions on how to do this since the Unity update.  My friend is a bit eccentric and worries about the ability to back up his data and programs and refuses to connect to the internet for many things (like game updates).  I try to remind him that a world without internet is most likely a world without electricity, but he wont hear it.  Although, I can respect his appreciation for non-intrusive DRM and games which don't require online activation.

I'm guessing you could just zip up the AIWar folder to archive the game at any particular beta version, but is there another way I should be aware of?  Thanks.

10

AI War / Tell me about the Spire campaign.

« on: March 07, 2011, 12:32:15 PM »

When it comes to AI War I enjoy knowing the rules of the game before I start playing, so I'm hoping to learn the nature of the Spire campaign before playing it further.  I've done some investigation, so I'll say what I know.

It sounds like you simply gather shards from various planets to your home world, and as you gather more you unlock powerful spire ships and other aids.  Any surprises besides the AI aggression when capturing a shard?  Also, when capturing a shard do the aggressive AI ships come from nowhere (IE, the "exo-galaxy") or are they freed ships from adjacent planets?

Also, when playing with the Hard variant of Spire or Golems is there any special warning of approaching Golems or Spire ships, like a countdown, or do they just show up in a random wave and surprise you?

11

Game Development / Chess (or other board game) AI. How to implement difficulty levels?

« on: February 21, 2011, 12:30:13 PM »

I've made an AI for the board game Pentago (not popular, but I really like it), and there are other abstract games I'm considering creating an AI for.  I use a simple minmax algorithm to find the best move, and then I store it in a transposition table.  I need to dumb down the AI, but I can't truly dumb it down because it stores it's moves in a database which is referred to in future games -- I can't allow stupid moves into this database, lest the AI make stupid moves when it should be playing at full strength.

Having created the program to play it's best at all times, it beats me every time.  I'm now considering how to implement difficulty levels.  I know X has some good blog posts about AI design, but his techniques don't apply to board games of perfect knowledge IMO.

12

AI War / I don't like the Unity interface.

« on: November 02, 2010, 10:31:33 PM »

I gave the unity port some time, and tried to give it a chance but I finally decided I prefer the old SlimDX interface.

A few things I specifically dislike:

1) Round buttons.  Every interface element is rounded on the corners and has a huge boarder/outline.  It all takes up too much space.  In many places these bubble buttons have been used poorly, for example on the galaxy view these bubble buttons are used to present the player totals next to planets, upon mousing over these bubble buttons they disappear.  And generally speaking the screen just feels much smaller with all these large interface elements filling the screen.

2) Why are there no colors in the planet summary?  Previously if a train station was owned by the yellow AI, it would be yellow, but now it is gray just like every other structure, friend or foe.

 
In general the whole game seems to be more strenuous on my eyes.  I play a lot of game, but I have a hard time with AI War and fear it may trigger migraines.  I'm not sure all the reasons I feel this way; probably just the color contrasts.  I love the new gameplay mechanics, but the interface just make it very inaccessible for me.


I haven't seen much discussion about this, although I wasn't around when the Unity version was first released, but I'm wondering what others think of the new interface as well.  From what I've seen it seems mostly positive.  Am I the only one unhappy with these things I've mentioned?

13

AI War / What is the eye mechanic?

« on: October 22, 2010, 11:17:20 PM »

I've only checked this forum a few times per week, and thus have missed the majority of the updates and their details.  (With what other game developer can that be said?)

But I did see mention of the eye mechanic which discourages giant blobs, and I'm wondering what that is exactly?

I haven't had time to play for awhile, but I'm really looking forward to spending more time with the game soon, and hope to contribute through bug reports and such once again.

Thanks.

14

Game Development / Idea: Random scenario generation for tactical games.

« on: October 04, 2010, 04:27:41 PM »

This forum seems to attract a thoughtful bunch, so let me propose an idea I imagine would be great fun in a FPS, RTS, and maybe other genres as well?

You take your players, (humans are ideal, but an AI could work) and divide them into various team.  There can be any number of teams, and the teams don't always have to be equal in size.  Give each team a random objective, and these objectives should usually force some conflict or competition between the various teams.  Give each team information about their objective, but do not always reveal the opposing teams objectives or the complete scenario.  Award points based on success (including partial success) of objectives.


Consider a few of the possible scenarios which might occur:

Team 1 is given the objective to defend an object ("the football", I'll call it).  Full points are given if the football is kept safe the entire game.  Partial points are given if the football is captured, but not destroyed.
Team 2 is given the objective to capture the football.  Full points are given if the football is captured.  Partial points are given if the football is not destroyed.
Team 1 and team 2 are both aware of each other and are aware they will be in competition over the football - yet neither team is aware of the third team....
Team 3 is given the objective to destroy the football.

So now we have both team 1 and team 2 who are fighting over the football, but neither team is willing to destroy the football (as they can obtain at least partial points so long as the football is not destroyed).  Then a surprise third team shows up during the actual game which is attempting to destroy the football.  Team 1 and team 2, although competing against each other, might do well to cooperate against team 3.


A simpler example:

Team 1 and team 2 are both large teams with infinite respawns, and they are pitted against each other in a team death match (FPS game).  Team 3 is a smaller team with no respawns and must escort a specific player though the chaos.


Another:

Team 1 defends a target team 2 is attacking.
Team 3 defends a target team 4 is attacking.
Team 1 and team 3 are unaware of each other, how will they react?


When the scenarios are finished teams are awarded their score and there is full discloser of all teams and their objectives.  About the objective information given before the game:  You would have to be completely honest about some things, namely the scoring objectives, people need to know the real objective of the game, even if they don't know the entire situation surrounding the objective.  All players would understand in advance that they may not be aware of the entire situation; they may not know about all teams or objectives.

I have played around with some proof of concept code which generates these sceneries and it works.  What I'm still trying to balance (and it would depend on the details of the game it was actually implemented in) would be how to balance the scoring based on the difficulty of your task.


Now that I've explained and demonstrated the idea I'll share my source of inspiration:  In COD4, in the sniper level, you sneak through an apartment complex which is empty, but it was really tense the first time because you never know whether you might run into someone or not.  You get setup and wait for a meeting between two terrorist groups (whatever?), you then have to snipe a specific target during this meeting.  I loved the feeling of being alone and hidden during this level, and the tensity of wondering if anyone is in the building with you (the first time at least, the level always plays out the same).  Could such a situation ever be created in a multiplayer environment?  It could - maybe.  

Pit two teams against each other in a tense situation with a 3rd unknown team set to sabotage the situation.  Of course, sometimes you'll have to allow the "meeting" to go peacefully (that is, instruct both team 1 and team 2 to not engage each other, and do NOT have a secret 3rd team), but then you end up with a scenario without any action.  Some may consider that boring, but you would always be suspecting a conflict, and perhaps this alone would be enough to keep things interesting?

Maybe the online community, especially the FPS crowd, would never go for something so complex.  What was suppose to be a tense situation would be running by people jumping up and down on top of cars while others are off in the corner trying to glitch their way out of the map.  Maybe the whole thing is too complicated?  Would people get frustrated and abandon objectives, turn to team killing or other greifing?


Again, this seems to be a fairly thoughtful group and open to new game ideas, so I'm interested in any comments or questions anyone has.  Thanks.  (Also, have I posted this on these forums before?  I thought I had, but can't find the old post.)

15

AI War / Build snipper turrets inside or outside of force field?

« on: August 28, 2010, 01:47:05 PM »

Sniper turrets can fire through force fields, but do they suffer a damage reduction when they are physically located within a force field?

Is there any reason NOT to build them inside a force field?