This idea came to me in the shower the other day. A bunch of spaceships,
each programmed to shoot at it's enemies and avoid being shot at or crashed
into.

This is the most successful fight so far. I'm sure I'll be changing the AI a
little bit, and certainly making the graphics cooler once I have enough
control over battles.

Comments? Questions?

 - Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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Attachments:
Download 'spacefight.mpg' (381 KB)

Looks pretty good, though the animation jerks at a few
moments... And I'd like to see a ship explode, or cameras
attached to ships... That'd be nice.

I was thinking about doing something similiar myself, but
more particle-particle interaction instead of ships. I like
the swarming behaviour of birds, and wanted something
more like that... More alive and vivid, and even more
unpredictable.
And, above all, something I can play around with (changing
weights on different direction-choices, speeding and
stopping, vision etc).

Sort of a tool to populate a little given area for animations to
add some interesting detail. Perhaps I could have a go for
objects moving across a heightfield and avoiding too steep
areas and themselves (to get those battlefield of Lord of the
Rings, Braveheart, Star Wars, you name it... All with POV!!!)

<-unlikely mode off>

Well, at least something to strive for...


--
Tim Nikias
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights/index.html
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde
"Slime" <slm### [at] slimelandcom> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3d91ec0f@news.povray.org...
> This idea came to me in the shower the other day. A bunch of spaceships,
> each programmed to shoot at it's enemies and avoid being shot at or
crashed
> into.
>
> This is the most successful fight so far. I'm sure I'll be changing the AI
a
> little bit, and certainly making the graphics cooler once I have enough
> control over battles.
>
> Comments? Questions?
>
>  - Slime
> [ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]
>
>
>

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Interesting!

Reminds me of that time when I tried to make such simulations myself.
Never was a big success though - it was too difficult to make the bots
intelligent enough to make the matches interesting, and if they worked
well, the resulting animations would be huge, which, especially back
then when I had a weaker computer, was a problem.

Anyway, in case you're interested:

http://news.povray.org/search/?s=push

http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/12368/

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
rune|vision:  http://runevision.com (updated Sep 8)
POV-Ray Ring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

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"Tim Nikias" <tim### [at] gmxde> wrote in message
news:3d91fe0b$1@news.povray.org...
>
> I was thinking about doing something similiar myself, but
> more particle-particle interaction instead of ships. I like
> the swarming behaviour of birds, and wanted something
> more like that... More alive and vivid, and even more
> unpredictable.


I'd like to try something like that too. And have the ability to use it.
Those kinds of things get pretty complex I'd guess. Unless there's plenty of
automation.

I tried to determine if the green ships only fire at red and vice versa but
there's a couple places it looks like they try for any ship in front of
them. They scatter so fast at the beginning it isn't easy to follow. Sure
seem to have some good following behavior anyhow.
--
Farewell,
Bob

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> Looks pretty good, though the animation jerks at a few
> moments... And I'd like to see a ship explode, or cameras
> attached to ships... That'd be nice.

I've added explosions in the more recent version (though at the moment they
look as fake as the ships. =) )

The camera jerks were due to the fact that the camera is looking_at the
average of all the ships' positions, and when one ship dies, that averaged
vector changes significantly. This has been fixed for future versions. I
should be posting an updated version soon (with 3 times as many ships!),
once I get some explosion position problems worked out.

Cameras attached to ships will come later =)

 - Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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> I tried to determine if the green ships only fire at red and vice versa
but
> there's a couple places it looks like they try for any ship in front of
> them. They scatter so fast at the beginning it isn't easy to follow. Sure
> seem to have some good following behavior anyhow.

They only purposely fire at their enemies, though it's possible that a
friend would fly inbetween and get hit. Sometimes they fly into each other.
=)

They're programmed to watch out for incoming obstacles (including lasers)
and dodge them, and if there's nothing to dodge, then to pick an enemy ship
in front of them and follow and shoot at it.

 - Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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> Reminds me of that time when I tried to make such simulations myself.
> Never was a big success though - it was too difficult to make the bots
> intelligent enough to make the matches interesting, and if they worked
> well, the resulting animations would be huge, which, especially back
> then when I had a weaker computer, was a problem.


Ah, I had seen that one animation a long time ago on your site. Looked
interesting.

The only boringness problems I'm having right now is that they spread out a
lot , so the action isn't concentrated. I'll have to see how I can fix that.

 - Slime
[ http://www.slimeland.com/ ]

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