I've been looking into a topic of interest for myself, and the real issue I've had the past couple months are keywords. I don't always know exactly what to search, to find the results I want. So here I am, looking to see if I can get some help looking for resources.
What I'm making is a voxel-destructible sandbox RPG adventure game that, for enemies, I want to evolve against the user. Not just a neural-network sort of thing, but evolve in a Darwin sort of way. Not just their strategy and path-finding, but also their physical structure, their weapons, and everything else. These special enemies will be bosses/droves that come in waves; where between each wave, the game can spend a substantial amount of time allocating a little time each frame to stepping up the evolution of these enemies, based on the previous wave's battles against the user.
These enemies will not be building themselves from the ground up. They will start out with an easy-leveled, predefined behavior and animated physical structure, defined in a way that they can then modify between each wave thereafter the first wave. One thing I've thought about is if I absolutely have to settle on something less procedural, I can make my enemy system more modular, where body parts, animations, and strategies can be interchanged based on some simpler AI. I'd rather go the procedural route, however, as it is far more interesting and fun
Two issues, really.
(1) Does this sound feasible / doable with today's close-to-top-end computers? I don't want to pursue down this road too far if this is not reasonable. If this is not reasonable, are there ways to make it reasonable? I don't have a time limit or person limit on this project, so being able to implement the system is a short amount of time is not a solution; this is educational for me too. I just want to know, on a reasonable scale, how doable this is with the right software practices and computer restraints. I can use openCL, and other languages to run things on the GPU, as well.
(2) If it is doable, what types of research paths should I head down? I'm looking mainly for keywords or topics to research, as finding the right things to research is taking it out of me. If you have anything more detailed to say, or even want to discuss this topic further, I'd be glad to; I haven't completely fleshed out the idea 100% yet.
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If I haven't been too clear, just ask. I mean for this to be a way of discussing this idea, as well as getting some ideas of what steps to take next.
NOTE: I have experience with neural networks, most AI algorithms you'd find in a book or in-depth class on AI, and topics in game theory and machine learning. I'm not starting from scratch with this idea or AI in general. My main areas of naivety are mainly in the evolutionary side of things, mostly biological and chemical influences on the way to computerize evolution.
Thanks for taking the time to help me out!