NGAI Features Quesion??

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TheMightyDude
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NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by TheMightyDude » Mon Jul 14, 2014 17:16 UTC

Hello All

NGAI = Next Generation Artificial Intelligence.
So it will probable be crap due to I am coding it from the ground up LOL.

I am soon to start work on a very basic AI Plugin and what features would you like them to have.
Please also note these will be for the version in the SVN Codebase and not our current Live Game, so once we get the game code to a state where its playable I will open up a game which will hopefully have these in there.

The Basic Option so far will be:
Movement, Scan, Attack, Flee, Patrol.

[Movement]
Movement will be supported by all types of AI apart from the AI Patrolling their own Home Sectors.

[Scanning]
All AI will support a form of Scan whether its to scan a Ship, Planet or just a scan to see what's in current sector.

[Attacking]
AI that are flagged as Combat AI can and will attack players ships or their planets if provoked, normally they will only attack the players ship.
Also if an AI see's a player stronger than them (determined by a scan to two) they will ignore them and continue on with what they was doing.

[Fleeing]
All AI wile Flee using one of their EWD's if they are weaker than the player that have attacked them.

[Patrolling]
AI can and will have a group of ships that patrol their own home sectors and anyone entering their sector will be fine if they do nothing to provoke them.
You will provoke them if you Scan either their ships or their planets in their home sectors, and you will be hunted by them until "THEY HAVE KILLED YOU" Self-Destructing or getting killed by a friend or other players doesn't count.

[AI Home Sectors and Planets]
Yes the AI will have Home Sectors, which may "ONLY" have their planets in them and cannot be attacked by players.

[AI Ship Types]
Well at this stage I am thinking of following types of ships:
Scouts, Fighters, Spies, Cruisers, Battle Ships, Freighters etc.

[Scouts]
These types of ships just go from sector to sector scanning stuff, just to learn what's about in the universe.
And nothing more, if scanned or attacked these will flee using their EWD.

[Fighters]
These are generic combat ships that can range in level up to a set level.
These cannot jump that far due to their engines and computers are low level.

[Spies]
These are low combat level but have very high Cloaks, Sensors and are fast, sadly these cannot jump that far.
Also like the Scout, these will EWD as soon as they are scanned or attacked and are very sneaky in getting out of combat.

[Cruisers and Battle Ships]
These are High Level ships that patrol their Home Sectors.
These are also used to attack planets and strong players that are on their hit/hunted list, so beware.
These ships can upgrade their tech when they need to before battle, so if you have pissed them off prepare to die :P

[Freighters]
Here is the fun part...
These are very slow transporter ships due to their large size which fly about the universe with "possibly" large amounts of cargo on board.
These can be attacked by players, but be warned there will be different types of Freighters, ones that are generic and ones owned by the Faction (i.e. the big buggers with the Cruisers and Battle Ships, so you will need to deterring this when you scan them, scanning these ships will not put you on the hit list, however it will make them scared and they may try and flee.
Scanning these ships will give you a rough idea of their cargo and also what faction controls them.

I am also tempted of have multi-faction AI which can in fact hate each other.
Also I may have the AI attack current team mates of players that have pissed them off so be warned.

I will try and add bits at a time every reset of the game.

So what you all think so far.
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Alberto
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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by Alberto » Wed Jul 16, 2014 04:06 UTC

Sounds awesome, now for my 2cents let's incorporate the good/evil rating of a player. It's no secret you guys don't like the aggressive player that goes around attacking people. Here's an opportunity to use the ai as a consequence toward negative rating. How about a special ai that can sofa the planets of negative players and make them virtually defenceless so that amother real player could easily capture it. It kinda returns the favor to the negative player n will force them to stay on their toes.

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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by TheMightyDude » Wed Jul 16, 2014 12:26 UTC

Well that could be something that we can think about later on, at this stage we want them to be sort of like the old AI (Xenobe) but with some more Oomph to it.
At the start of their development they will be just there flying around and that's it, they cannot be attacked, scanning may be enabled not sure yet, but once I have them moving about I will then see how it handles with more of them and once I get my Magic Number I will reduce them and add a feature to them one at a time.

The NGAI will be event driven which is already in the game code (may need some tweaking) i.e. update ticks will update them every X minutes which may reduce their realism so I my have them do small updates every page load behind the scenes not too sure yet.
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Alberto
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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by Alberto » Wed Jul 16, 2014 18:02 UTC

TheMightyDude wrote: At the start of their development they will be just there flying around and that's it, they cannot be attacked,
Hopefully you'll make them attackable relatively soon after implementing them in game. Otherwise its torture to see all these flying hens and not being able to pluck them :) In anycase its good to hear that xenobes will be a part of the game, thanks for your effort

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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by TheMightyDude » Wed Jul 16, 2014 19:13 UTC

Yeah, they will all become attackable later on, its just so that I can see what they are doing and how long they are doing it before any issues arise, and having players kill them at that stage would make it rather difficult.

Well they won't be Xenobe's I will be giving them different Races that can attack each other as well as players (later on).

I may also add another zone called "The Void" these are where only these AI can populate with Planets.
This would require the universe to be reset so that it can create the sectors with the new zone in it.
Players will be able to trade with those planets, but before you can trade you need to be friends with one of them and to be friends with them you have to attack the others if you understand that.

I just need to work out how this would work in BNT, and where to put the Event Hooks in the game code.
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Ron
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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by Ron » Sat Sep 05, 2015 15:28 UTC

Did you ever implement? Have the code snippets, etc.? I'm very interested in this idea and think it may well be the thing for BNTs next step up.

thx

Ron
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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by Ron » Mon Sep 14, 2015 00:14 UTC

Again,
Did you ever implement? Have the code snippets, etc.? I'm very interested in this idea and think it may well be the thing for BNTs next step up.

thx

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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by TheMightyDude » Mon Sep 14, 2015 02:30 UTC

Ron wrote:Again,
Did you ever implement? Have the code snippets, etc.? I'm very interested in this idea and think it may well be the thing for BNTs next step up.

thx
I did start work on them, but sadly it wasn't much i.e. just the framework for them that did basically nothing, and it used my new plugin feature that also didn't make the codebase I'm afraid.

The new plugin code that I was starting to move over to which was WIP and used the normal scheduler as normal and the new micro-pseudo scheduler which is a smart scheduler that gets called on every page load.
This was intended for plugins that needed to be updated more often than the minimum limit of every 60 seconds, this would be mainly for the new AI Players, so that they move about and are more player like than just sitting there waiting for the next update.

These are some place on one of my hard drives and finding several files totalling 20 odd KB on drives combined totalling 50TB is like finding a needle in a haystack with your eyes shut and wearing chainmail gloves.

So no it wasn't implemented, it was just an idea that I was working on at the time before I become ill, and where it was using the new version of my plugin code that was changing every few minutes would be pointless to keep submitting that into the codebase and also where the plugin code is hooked into the main code it would be breaking all over the place while I was coding it, breaking the code for any other person that was unlucky to checkout the codebase.

That is why I normally wait until the feature is finished before I submit it into the code base.

Your not missing much all that was done for the separation of the different features of the AI, like Movement, Scanning, Combat and so on.
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Ron
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Re: NGAI Features Quesion??

Post by Ron » Mon Sep 14, 2015 03:12 UTC

Ok, well it looks like the database is running ok and the Xenobe are cruising the universe fine. I came up on one and attacked it to see how that would go. Got my butt kicked! Ship destroyed, lost my cargo and the Xenobe finished me off. Cool...

Hope you're feeling better...

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