Mr. Ferretman,

Is there anything in the book that I could use for AI in my wargame ? I''m suppose to get the book either today or tomorrow.

Thanks...

peter

quote:Original post by Peter Fisla

Mr. Ferretman,

Is there anything in the book that I could use for AI in my wargame ? I''m suppose to get the book either today or tomorrow.

Thanks...

peter

I''m jumping in here with my 2 cents. The articles on Finite State Machines, Pathfinding and Flocking definitely could be useful to look at in preparation for designing a wargame AI. Also, a look at the Fuzzy Logic article would be beneficial.

Good luck and enjoy!

Eric

> I''m jumping in here with my 2 cents. The articles on Finite
> State Machines, Pathfinding and Flocking definitely could be
> useful to look at in preparation for designing a wargame AI.
> Also, a look at the Fuzzy Logic article would be beneficial.

> Good luck and enjoy!

> Eric

Thanks Eric for your reply, I will take a close look at the topics you mentioned. Does the pathfinding chapter have some algorithms for hexes ? What exactly is Flocking ?

Peter

PS: Weekend coming up hopefully I will get my book today so I can do some "damage" this weekend

Just bought the book today so I have not been able to study it very thoroughly yet. I do know that it has a very nice article on wavelet theory and one about 3d pathfinding optimizations. Other than the AI chapter the book also seems to cover areas such as general software engineering principles and 3d programming quite nicely. I doubt you will be disappointed if you are looking for articles on AI and 3d techniques.

I was mainly disappointed with the lack of network programming articles. It contained one that showed some lame techniques that are supposed to make it harder for cheaters to manipulate and study the network traffic. Unfortunately there were no articles that dealt with the much more crucial issues of handling lag, packetloss, latency and other ''network phenomena''. You will not get any clues to building a protocol for a networked game from the text in this book (haven''t checked the CD yet so don''t know if there''s any code on it that is relevant to network games). The title of the article was ''A network protocol for online games'' and I felt really cheated after understanding what it was really about.

Anyway, I will look into the book further and maybe register a handle and post a thorough review or something.

Henry

quote:Original post by Peter Fisla

> I''m jumping in here with my 2 cents. The articles on Finite
> State Machines, Pathfinding and Flocking definitely could be
> useful to look at in preparation for designing a wargame AI.
> Also, a look at the Fuzzy Logic article would be beneficial.

> Good luck and enjoy!

> Eric

Thanks Eric for your reply, I will take a close look at the topics you mentioned. Does the pathfinding chapter have some algorithms for hexes ? What exactly is Flocking ?

Peter

PS: Weekend coming up hopefully I will get my book today so I can do some "damage" this weekend

The pathfinding chapter does not address hexes specifically, although it would not be all that hard to adapt what is there to using hexes. When a node gets expanded, instead of expanding it into to 4 orthogonal and 4 diagnol neighbors, just expand it into 6 adjacent neighbors (all the same cost).

Flocking. Steve, this was your article. Please answer the man.

Until Ferretman gets an answer to you, think of flocking as a means to control multiple moving NPCs as a single unit. Look up in the sky when you see a flock of birds go by, and notice how they move in unison. Flocking movement does the same thing.

Good Luck,

Eric

Hi guys,

I got the book last night and I must say so far I'm satisfied with the quality of text. The book is well written and well done.
Since I'm working on a WW2 operational wargame with hexes I find that sections: 1,2,3,6 are usefull to me. I red the whole AI chapter last night (finished at 3:00am) and I learned a few simple things about fuzzy logic, FSM and Neural networks. Hopefully I can use NN for my game as it is turn based and should not be a problem with CPU and memory. What I would like to see however in the next book (yes I plan on getting next book when it comes out) go a bit deeper into AI and spend some time on turn based game design and bit of stuff on hexes as well. I know that 3D and real-time are the main topics but turn based games are not gonna dissapear from my point of view.

Again, great work...

Peter

PS: A bit more on the following topics:

FSM
Fuzzy Logic (+ source)
Nerual Nets (more info)
Turn based games design
Genetic Algorithms (path finding ?)
Isometric and hex tiles (design, possibly some code)

Edited by - Peter Fisla on October 4, 2000 9:40:42 AM