Defining Awesome

This bot is relatively easy. His main weakness is his aim which I dumbed down a lot. You’ll see he needs a couple shots to get an accurate shot. I think this simulates pretty good a noob player (which is a quite difficult task in AI).

What the bot has:
- pathfinding to enemy
- human aim simulation (slow and innacurate, becomes more accurate after initial shots)
- decides when it is good to duck for cover after shot or reload

What it lacks still:
- decision whether to engage target or retreat
- taking advantage of enemies weaknesses (enemies worse position, health, shooting obstructed when climbing)
-sometimes he miscalculates if he is visible to the enemy

Big remark:
The bot is not an enemy in a 2d platformer. The bot in Link-Dead is actually a simulation of the player in front of the computer. So he sees what a player sees and does things a player would do.

Anyone have good tips on speeding up compile time in Visual 2008?

The bots will do amazing things if I pull this off. Btw. its a real – GEM more devs should appreciate it.

Any human-like behavior must take into account making mistakes. I’m thinking about this today and how to make a self-correcting system.

Today was one of those beautiful game development moments were the result of days of work shows perfectly. The Bot figured on its own (no hard-coded if-thens) that to survive it’s better to duck behind cover before reloading.

A* is a brilliant algorithm because I think it emulates the exact way human brains make fast plans and best decisions. Nodes of the algorithm are created on the fly based on our current situation and predictable outcomes of given actions. All of these actions and situational outcomes are drawn out from memory and the best ones are picked based on a heuristic that guesses how far the outcome of that action is away from achieving our goal. This is exactly how I’m making my bots think.

Made a new Link-Dead map and recorded the process (click for HD quality)

This is how maps are currently made in Link-Dead. You simply draw a sketch in any paint program. The rest in-game is procedurally generated.

I’m writing new brain code which will be uber flexible allowing for the bot to choose from a variety of tactics including user made tactics.

Greatest & most underrated productivity tip ever: Write or Draw Everything Down. Get ideas out of your head on paper and watch them get done

Video of bots playing Artifact Collecting gamemode. Demonstrates fast path-finding, AI decision making & combat.

I won’t be releasing this tomorrow cause there’s a lot of collision bugs which I need to remove and I definitely need to make a new more fun map.