Warp wrote:
>   I never talked about multiple AIs. I talked about tuning the AI strength
> according to the difficulty level.

Actually, I saw a research paper where they did focus group tests, and when 
all they did is turn up the number of HP the computer opponents had, players 
thought the AI was smarter, even tho it was exactly the same code shrugging 
off more bullets.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Darren New escreveu:
> To anyone who has written a game...
> 
> Question: Did you enjoy playing it yourself?

I never did, but I guess being Sid Meier, Kojima, Miyamoto or Peter 
Molyneaux would suck too much wasn't it for the vast amounts of money 
they get.  I mean, not being able to enjoy such masterpieces because you 
are too spoiled already??!

> Premise: Infinite spawning of enemies on a level leads to less 
> replayability in a complex shooter game with lots of ways to win. This 
> is because the player cannot set arbitrary goals such as "clear the 
> level using nothing but the wrench/crowbar/whatever".   How fun would 
> Thief be if the loot spawned randomly when you weren't in the room?

How about people who just enjoy mindless shooting carnage for the sake 
of it rather than specific goals? :P

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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I mean, I never did MAKE a game... :P

nemesis escreveu:
> Darren New escreveu:
>> To anyone who has written a game...
>>
>> Question: Did you enjoy playing it yourself?
> 
> I never did, but I guess being Sid Meier, Kojima, Miyamoto or Peter 
> Molyneaux would suck too much wasn't it for the vast amounts of money 
> they get.  I mean, not being able to enjoy such masterpieces because you 
> are too spoiled already??!
> 
>> Premise: Infinite spawning of enemies on a level leads to less 
>> replayability in a complex shooter game with lots of ways to win. This 
>> is because the player cannot set arbitrary goals such as "clear the 
>> level using nothing but the wrench/crowbar/whatever".   How fun would 
>> Thief be if the loot spawned randomly when you weren't in the room?
> 
> How about people who just enjoy mindless shooting carnage for the sake 
> of it rather than specific goals? :P
> 


-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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nemesis wrote:
> How about people who just enjoy mindless shooting carnage for the sake 
> of it rather than specific goals? :P

Well, sure. And Serious Sam is still one of my favorite speed-runs to 
exercise to. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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Warp wrote:
>   About the only game type where difficulty level directly correlates to
>   AI
> strength are board game programs, chess programs being the most prominent
> example. (There might be other examples in some sports and strategy games.
> I don't play many of those, so I really don't know.)

In chess, adjusting the difficulty may mean adjusting the depth used in
the 'tree' of possible decisions. That is, not looking too far into the
future.

I have also seen algorithms that take exponential time or similar, and the
program sets a time limit. When the time limit is reached,
the 'best-so-far' move is performed. Increasing the time limit may let the
computer make better moves.

(Disclaimer: I don't know how to play chess. I know the rules, I know how
each piece can be moved, but that's not the same as "knowing how to play")

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   There are a few chess engines out there which at easiest difficulty
> levels will make deliberate mistakes. In other words, rather than blindly
> choosing the best move it has seen so far, it deliberately at times chooses
> a slightly worse one, just to lower the difficulty level. This is also
> adjusting the AI (in a way that it sometimes ignores better moves as if it
> had never even seen them).

When I was working on my triangular chess game, I experimented with different
methods of "rating" a given board, and using those ratings to come up with
compound ratings for the different possible moves.

At that point, though, I used fuzzy logic to pick the move the computer would
use.  Adjusting the "fuzziness" made for a similar effect, where sometimes you
would see the PC make a move that just made you go, "Wha?"

Overall, it wasn't as effective as traditional brute-forcing (I only went about
ten levels deep on the highest difficulty setting), but it also felt more
satisfying to program.

....Chambers

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> (Disclaimer: I don't know how to play chess. I know the rules, I know how
> each piece can be moved, but that's not the same as "knowing how to play")

Knowing the rules doesn't really help. Trust me.

Exhibit A: Go.

The rules are trivial, and yet it is impossible to win.

(Disclaimer: By "impossible" I obviously mean "so absurdly difficult 
that the difference between this and geniunely impossible is so minute 
as to be insignificant".)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>
> > (Disclaimer: I don't know how to play chess. I know the rules, I know how
> > each piece can be moved, but that's not the same as "knowing how to play")
>
> Knowing the rules doesn't really help. Trust me.
>
> Exhibit A: Go.
>
> The rules are trivial, and yet it is impossible to win.
>
> (Disclaimer: By "impossible" I obviously mean "so absurdly difficult
> that the difference between this and geniunely impossible is so minute
> as to be insignificant".)

You should play me.  You'd probably win ;)

....Chambers

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> Question: Did you enjoy playing it yourself? Games I wrote, I knew too 
> much about to enjoy playing them myself, other than testing they were 
> right. Indeed, sometimes the more I knew about a game, the less fun it 
> was. (Like, once I learned the production rules in detail for M.U.L.E., it 
> was less exciting.)

I spent quite a long time enjoying playing against some basic AI I wrote for 
a racing game once.  The AI was quite basic, essentially following a set 
path "roughly", and having other input from the location of other people 
nearby.  After I had tweaked the power that the AI had, it was quite fun to 
race against them.  In the same game, usually when I was meant to be testing 
out some other feature, I usually ended up doing lap after lap trying to 
beat my best lap time :-)

I also made a very simple 2D game a long time ago where you had to maneuver 
an articulated lorry (semi truck) to make deliveries at various stops 
without hitting the scenery.  That was pretty fun to play, and taught me 
that it's far easier to reverse with longer trailers than shorter ones :-)

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>  The most blatant fake difficulty I have seen is in Doom 3.

In FarCry it's pretty poor too.  I usually played it on one of the easier 
levels, but then one day decided to do it on the hardest.  I gave up after 
about 1 minute, because I shot a guy in the head from about 1 metre away 3 
or 4 times and he just stood there preparing to shoot me.  Eventually he got 
round to shooting me and I died instantly.  Firstly, if I shoot someone in 
the head I at least expect them to move a bit, and secondly if a "hard" AI 
is standing right in front of me, I expect him to shoot me almost instantly, 
not take 2 seconds to realise I am there.

>  About the only game type where difficulty level directly correlates to AI
> strength are board game programs, chess programs being the most prominent
> example. (There might be other examples in some sports and strategy games.
> I don't play many of those, so I really don't know.)

In most car racing games it's really hard to get the AI correct.  In most 
games they just give the cars lower power to simulate worse drivers, but 
that just makes them really easy to overtake on the straight parts of the 
track.  Some games make the easy AI brake earlier than the hard AI, but 
again once you know this they are easy to beat.  AFAIK no racing game 
actually simulates very well how real drivers are better than others.  There 
is a quote from some racing driver, which states that anybody can drive a 
car fast in a straight line, and anybody can drive a car fast in a curve, 
the skilful bit is the transition between the two.

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