Re: Game customization

[Hans Ronne <hronne at 2 dot sbbs dot se>]

>Independent units are more like barbarians in Civilization or the
>animals in africa-1850.  They are scattered randomly throughout the
>world, have no notion of a territory, cannot communicate or coordinate
>with each other, and may not even know of each other's existence.
>This is reflected in GDL, where the game rules for independent units
>can be quite different from those for units belonging to a side.

The comparison to the barbarians in Civ is a good one - they have
exactly the knee-jerk responding, but not very persistent behaviour
I am striving for in the independent side. I also agree that lack of
coordination is important for the independents - as opposed to any
neutral side. Therefore, I doubt that they should do research or have
a common treasury, at least not by default.

>So while I'd like to see independent units be able to act on their
>own, I think we have to be careful to ensure that the behavior is
>handled in the kernel in a network-friendly way, rather than relying
>on all the AIs to know and follow the rules for independent units.
>I'd also like to see the mplayer extended to handle neutral sides, so
>that it keeps its country uninvolved (but well-prepared) until
>threatened.

I think coding this stuff into the kernel might be possible, but it would
mean a lot more work. By using the mplayer and cutting out parts of
its brain for the independent side, you achieve the same thing without
having to write a lot of new code. Of course, the independent side must
run on only one machine (the master) in networked games if it is to
be treated as an AI, as opposed to kernel code. In the new code, it is a
true side like any other ai side, with all the necessary structures and
its own player assignment. Treating it as yet another AI side in the
network game should therefore not be too difficult.

I don't think it will be that big a problem to lobotomize the mplayer in
a suitable way. My plan is to cut out the strategy code and keep the action-
reaction stuff. I bet this will produce the desired effect. But only testing
can tell, and I have just started on this part. Took some work just to get
the independents to run under AI control.

I like the notion of neutral sides, also to be handled by the AI. Perhaps
this should be yet another option in the setup dialog, available for all
sides? Of course, ww2-europe with a neutral Germany would be kind
of dull :-).

Hans

Hans Ronne

hronne@2.sbbs.se