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RTS And AI Creation Tutorials...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Nightman, Mar 17, 2008.

  1. Nightman

    Nightman

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2008
    Posts:
    6
    As the topic says, does anyone has some rts and more specifically ai creation tutorials or even packs? Cause i'd really like to see some things about ai, so i caould stsart creating something on my own effectively

    Thanks
     
  2. podperson

    podperson

    Joined:
    Jun 6, 2006
    Posts:
    1,371
    The closest thing to working examples of AI are probably the enemies in the FPS tutorial.

    Someone was selling a package of RTS code a while back (for $50 or so if I recall correctly). I played with the demo and it looked quite good, although personally I'd write my own code and treat it as an educational experience.

    In my opinion, the key to good gameplay is Artificial Stupidity (tm). It's easy to write "AI" code that gives enemies incredibly good pathfinding, perfect aim, and even anticipation. What's much harder is programming interesting enemies that are FUN to fight against.

    The classic example of this, for me, was Elevator Action, which featured "AI"s that would fall down elevator shafts, or pace up and down impatiently when they were bored.
     
  3. jeremyace

    jeremyace

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    Oct 12, 2005
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    1,661
    Nightman: your remotely-hosted image pops an ad window here. Please find a place to host your image without pop-ups.

    As for AI, it's such a wide and difficult subject that you really just need to search the web and find snippets of as many tutorials, bits of source code and anything else you can find.

    There are a few good books out as well which cover the basics, and move up from there. "Programming Game AI by Example" is a good one.

    For the rest, you really need to just work at it, but you really want to become proficient at programming first (if you aren't already) before you want to tackle anything complex (path finding, decision trees, etc)

    The biggest thing is to understand the concept of AI, how you fake intelligence with more simple systems and emergent behaviour. Learning that doesn't require a lot of programming experience (although, it really really helps), and you need to understand that before you can write useful code too.

    It is well worth the work IMHO however. AI is my favorite subject. ;-)

    Hope that helps,
    -Jeremy
     
  4. AngryAnt

    AngryAnt

    Keyboard Operator

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  5. jashan

    jashan

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2007
    Posts:
    3,307
    Hi Nightman,

    one book I can recommend is "AI Game Engine Programming" by Brian Schwab. I haven't read the whole of it, yet, but as far as I got, it was very enlightening and promising ;-)

    It really gives you the overview you need to have "the big picture" but also has quite a few nice code examples in it (C++, of course... which is the reason why I personally try to avoid books full of code, I have enough of that at my work and hobbies... this one's "just right" in my opinion ;-) ).

    The book has overviews of pretty much all the different genres, including RTS; and it introduces you to the various AI techniques used in games (it also lets you know that AI in games has not much in common with the field of AI outside of games and explains why it is that way ;-) ). Stuff like Finite-State Machines, Fuzzy-State Machines, Message Based Systems, Scripting Systems, Location-Based Information Systems and more advanced (but for most cases probaly less useful) stuff like genetic algorithms and neural networks are also included.

    My feeling is that AI for RTS is one of the more challenging ones where you really need a solid background if you don't want to get your nose bleeding by running against one wall after the other ;-)

    A little sample from p. 97, about Real-Time Strategy (RTS) Games:

    Sunny regards,
    Jashan
     
  6. dirkk0

    dirkk0

    Joined:
    Nov 29, 2007
    Posts:
    16
  7. Nightman

    Nightman

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2008
    Posts:
    6
    ThAnks a lot for replies!
    I think I'll stick for a bit more on trying to create something more simple... And maybe before An rts game I could try to create an RPG... Simplier things...
    But I will try to read something 'bout this in the meanwhile... Thanks guys

    "unfortunately" I am going skying during Easter holidays so I will be back in a week (/cry)

    Cya all
    and happy easter everyone


    P.s. Fixing the avatar (and changing it) as soon as I get back home