[MUD-Dev] Combat intelligence

[J C Lawrence <claw#under,engr.sgi.com>]

A while ago we discussed making NPC's more intelligent combat
opponents.  Many good ideas were sucked out of thumbs.  I don't recall
any structured or rigorously duplicable techniques comeing up
however.  I've long suspect that the makers of DOOM-esque bloodbaths
weren't so undisciplined.

Look at the top graphic at the following page:

  URL:http://crack.crack.com/games/golgotha/screenshots/

Screenshot of tactical map

The caption reads:

  "This shows our strategy test program for computer AI. The blue
  circles are areas the computer tries to defend/take over. The
  colored regions represent areas near the strategy points. Lines show
  which points can defend/attack other points. This is used for long
  term strategy planning, rather than immediate path solving. Some
  paths are one-way because you can go down a hill, but not
  necessarily up it, making hill tops more advantageous.

Have you ever thought of mapping the topology of your MUD world and
analysing it against any of a number of the standard tactical metrics
and *then* pumping that into the combat brains for your Midgarrd FIDO?

Per the screen shots it also seems that Golgotha has also handled much
of the problem of handling large unbounded spaces in a DOOM-style
game, tho I also note that most of the timestamps seem to be in
September of last year.

-- 
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw#null,net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder#ibm,net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw#under,engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...