Artificial Intelligence

[Chaos-Shaman]

i need it in the programming though, like when the knight has stolen an item, i want my programming to kill him, doesn't matter where in the dungeon, as long as he dies into something else, like back to the deth stalker mode. he'll cycle through. i can't even control a monster who has stolen an item unless he is killed, even monster attractors don't work on a thief. it's been puzzling me for some time, since April. just can't order a thief around, i guess i'll just have to except that

so the next step with this endeavor is to impliment monster attractors, integrate that into the ai, so under a certain command at the correct place we can have the monster perform tasks specific to them. i have already begun the testing, getting very good results in the test dungeon i sent you. what i don't know very well is what people want in the ai, what is it the player wants the ai to do? Ameena has done a pretty good job of examples, beo specified what he would like to see, i'd like to know (being feasible of course) what others would like, maybe a certain action that that type of character\monster does, i dunno.

i am open to ideas

[Clodius_one]

You mentioned something about monsters performing task. I would like to see some of them bulding something like tools. Meaby weapons or even bigger like setting up bobby trap or some kind of machinery and the adventurers need to interupt their tasks before its too late.

[Seriously Unserious]

What I'd like to see is monsters that will stalk the party while attempting to stay out of sight of the party, then when the party's asleep or fighting other monsters, the stalker attacks.

[Chaos-Shaman]

You mentioned something about monsters performing task. I would like to see some of them bulding something like tools. Meaby weapons or even bigger like setting up bobby trap or some kind of machinery and the adventurers need to interupt their tasks before its too late.

yup yup, in the ai test i sent you, there was an example of removing the champion Equus from party to open door, he leaves, activates attractor and teleporter, he heads to the attractor and apon arriving, triggers teleporter to turn champion to face the keyhole correctly, performs a deactivate, opens the door (then deactivate everything) and then turns back into champion peace mode if chosen, that can be called back to party if permitted. so it's a matter of cycling through in the correct sequence. so if we wanted to have a champion\monster set a trap, we'd just have to place a monster attractor with a trigger activated at a specific time with a specific monster.

[Chaos-Shaman]

What I'd like to see is monsters that will stalk the party while attempting to stay out of sight of the party, then when the party's asleep or fighting other monsters, the stalker attacks.

the first deth stalker one i made in ai 2 before over overwritting it with the wrong one (lesson learned, never overwrite work, give it a new name) worked just like that, the problem was nobody could tell he was there, so they did not think it was working. it is easy to fix though SU, just make view and attack 3 4, instead of 2 3, this will also allow the stalker to run away, since it has the extra tile to perform the run attack, this is how i had it originally. maybe someone has it still, who didn't overwrite theres like i did mine.

you're asking the right questins SU, this is how i'd like to build the ai, what people want.

[Seriously Unserious]

[quote="Chaos-Shaman"(lesson learned, never overwrite work, give it a new name) [/quote]

Yeah. I've learned that one the hard way myself too. In my case it was having a program crash right in the middle of a save that was overwriting the original file -- in the end, the file became corrupt because of that crash, so the work was lost... I did have an earlier backup though so it wasn't a total loss at least, and that's another lesson I've leaned the hard way, back up whatever your doing from time to time. Speaking of which, it's about time for me to back up my progress on Castle Lynchgate... backups can be as simple as copying your work into a zipped folder, or going as far as burning it onto a DVD or CD. Typically I do both, the zipped file is a simple working back up and the disk is a more secure back up, in case my HD crashes, and I've had that one happen too!

So there's 2 lessons here, don't overwrite, and make backups of your files.

you're asking the right questins SU, this is how i'd like to build the ai, what people want

For some reason that statement reminds me of a line from the movie I, Robot...

[Chaos-Shaman]

heh, i try and back up stuff, often i am a little tipsy (most likely what happened) when i do it, that's why i have to stop working

so there should be no problems adding any kind of action to this demo deth spy stalker, we can make em jump, crawl, walk, flea, talk, stand, guard, inspect party, fly, follow, fight, protect, cast spells, roll over, pretty much anything EXCEPT steal, or pick up items (we can do this as you know, but the only way to get him to drop them is to click on em or attract him to death), this one is all on its own, there is no way to put it into a loop, impossible. too bad , i'm not sure GG made that possible anyway. i think he may have come forward if we could.

so we've made it so that if the party throws, punches, cast spells etc, that the monster can know every move the party does (except those with stolen items or carrying items). we are able to command monster friendly and foe. it's a matter of creating what people want now.

[Clodius_one]

Would it be possible to activate the GOR rune that had not been used and it would be fantastic if you could create new spells.

[Chaos-Shaman]

of course we can Clodius, yes... you can make any spell you want. i still have my GOR coin, and i am keeping it handy for the right time. it sits beside an ulexite rock and 4 leaf clover with one eyebrow hair on top. it's a shaman thing

[Seriously Unserious]

I thought the 4-leaf clover was an Irish thing...

Anyhow, there is a section in RTC where you can edit existing spells and add new spells. Yeah, for some reason Gor was never really used, and I felt that rune was perfectly suited for the lightning spell, yet for some reason, Kath was used instead.

[Chaos-Shaman]

I thought the 4-leaf clover was an Irish thing...

Anyhow, there is a section in RTC where you can edit existing spells and add new spells. Yeah, for some reason Gor was never really used, and I felt that rune was perfectly suited for the lightning spell, yet for some reason, Kath was used instead.

Shamans don't have rules for what they use. they can use anything they feel works in with tradition and it supports the view of Chaos Shamans. an Irish shaman with a shillelagh, or is that shilleighleigh, damn that is a tough one to spell or to cast a spell that is

i think GOR works as it's suppose to, it is a form of currency. so any spell using GOR should involve some sort of value in riches or purchasing. perhaps a special spell that involves the luck of the Irish with leprecons, a rainbow and a pot of gold. we can come up with some great ideas i'm sure. behind a GOR door is Solomons treasures or some other lost treasure like a goose that lays golden eggs
maybe a GOR spell can influence the NPC traders price and at the shops as well, like 60% chance for a better price, and 40% chance for a worse price for a medium spell level and a high spell costs a lot of mana to cast but can be a higher reward. i think we can do something with it.

[Seriously Unserious]

i think GOR works as it's suppose to, it is a form of currency. so any spell using GOR should involve some sort of value in riches or purchasing. perhaps a special spell that involves the luck of the Irish with leprecons, a rainbow and a pot of gold. we can come up with some great ideas i'm sure. behind a GOR door is Solomons treasures or some other lost treasure like a goose that lays golden eggs

Or one of the legendary 7 cities of Cibola.

Actually, that would make an interesting game, themed around the native civilizations like the Inca, Aztec and Maya people.

Hmm, an Irish Shaman... sounds more like a Druid to me, that's the per-Christian Irish equivalent.

[Chaos-Shaman]

yes, i have at least a hundred shots of the Maya and tribes of the South and Central American buildings, then i saw sketchup that had everything i was looking for so i stopped my research, i'm grabbing sketchup 8 this week, last one my son grabbed was not the one, it was just a help file. i must have spent a half of a year researching that stuff in around 2010. i've read a lot of materials on South American tribes, their shamans and rituals, beliefs, early expeditions of the region. sketchup also has a cool DM level 0 and 1 done up already. looks fantastic. i posted it for Sophia but she paid no mind to it. i started playing chess after that.

doesn't matter where one lives to be a shaman, look up neo shamans as well as the newer chaos shamans. they're all witch doctors, all around classified as witches or shamans, subclassed from other names such as druids etc. witches are male and female classed, if you're a female you'll have that lovely pole between the legs, and the story behind that is a little perverted, some liked them thick but it comes down to it that many of the plants used by withes they put in that special cavity they have, nothing has changed because modern women still do it so now you know why they have a pole between their legs.
tell that to Walt Disney and all those hallowe'en candy logos. ooh, crows are back, i plastered some bacon fat on to some bread for them, it's weird hearing them yap down the chimney, i love nature man, 100%

[Seriously Unserious]

i love nature man, 100%

As do I. Nature is beautiful in all it's diversity.

[Clodius_one]

One kind of nature's beauty is also the evolution of a specimen, its transformation. See a species metamorphosing on something different. My sugestion is: Is it possible to create a transformation of some of our monsters? For is own survive, the monster would evolve to protect itself from a kind of attack in particular. So far, our monster's resistance goes higher as we walk down the levels of the dungeon. They became more resistant from our attacks. It was just set a little more time has to eliminate them. It would be rather surprising if we could transform one of our monster. i.e. down in the dungeon, the purple worm turn his skin in grey like rock and be immunized against fireballs. It would disorientate the player. Its just an exemple, we chose any other monster.

[Seriously Unserious]

that should be doable by using swapping, which is the core strength of the RTC engine.

[Chaos-Shaman]

yeah, that's easy enough Clodius. it kinda already is like that. when a champion picks up certain objects it changes their attributes.

it is no problem changing the way the character or monster looks like. i was thinking on making the monsters look hurt or bleeding when in battle, giving a hint to how badly the monster is hurt so you know when you're taking him down. SU can rig up a relay to check the health values, we can then use the values to change what the monster looks like. we could also rig the monster to heal itself. i have been thinking about this for a while. it is all doable.

this task requires the combined efforts of all three of us.

[Clodius_one]

@ CS & SU,
Another wild idea:
If I create a mirror to put in a room, is it possible to see the reflection of the champion standing in front of it? I understand it could be complex to program. The way I can imagine is when you select the champion's name on top of the screen, it will show his portrait in the mirror.

[Chaos-Shaman]

interesting, so you want a relay that checks what character clicks on the mirror to perform correct portrait. you'd have to remove the character from the party, i'd have to look into that one. i think this one is tough to try and do.
i tried this method and found once gone to two mirrors or changed two different champions, the mirrors even though they are specified mirrors seem to switch, so a zed mirror could hold a syra character.

maybe a non mirror that looks like a mirror, swap about using pressure pads that check party leader in front of mirror.

[Seriously Unserious]

@ CS & SU,
Another wild idea:
If I create a mirror to put in a room, is it possible to see the reflection of the champion standing in front of it? I understand it could be complex to program. The way I can imagine is when you select the champion's name on top of the screen, it will show his portrait in the mirror.

If you're referring to having a regular mirror that shows a reflection of whitewater's in front of it, that should be doable, but you'd need to have custom graphics for it for every area that you're using it in. If you want the mirror to just show the reflection of the party leader in it, that should be doable, you'd need to have a copy of that mirror with the portrait of each character in the game. You would have to have a trigger right in front of the mirror that's operated by the party and activates some relays, how many it activates depends on how many characters you have in your game. If there's 24 you'd need to have it activate 24/8=3 relays, and have each of those 3 relays in turn activate the 8 relays each (total of 24) that get the Name of the party leader and check for the name of the character who's portrait that relay swaps in for the blank mirror.

So, for example, if you had a game with Syra, Alex, Azzizi, and Nabi available in it, you'd have 1 blank version of your mirror, and 4 versions each with the reflection of 1 of the 4 characters for a total of 5 mirrors. You'd place the blank mirror on the wall where you want it to go, put a trigger on the floor directly in front of it, and have that trigger activate 4 relays.

The first relay could then get the name of the party leader and check if that name = "SYRA", if so, it activates an action that swaps the blank mirror for 1 that has Syra's reflection in it, if not it does nothing, then the next relay checks if party leader = "ALEX", if yes, then it swaps for the mirror bearing Alex's reflection, then the next relay would do the same procedure for AZZIZI and finally check for NABI. You'd also need a way to swap the mirror back to the blank one when the party steps away from the mirror.

If you need any part of this explained in more detail just let me know and I'll be happy to get more detailed for you.

[Chaos-Shaman]

i fooled with it a bit today, the swap part works well enough, but i could not find a way to check for party leader, just checks for the name in the party.
how do i check for party leader? and if a character gets removed in front of the mirror how to activate the trigger with the other characters left.

[Clodius_one]

interesting, so you want a relay that checks what character clicks on the mirror to perform correct portrait.

Me! I want nothing. Did you looked at me. You saw the look which I have? Do I look like has somebody who wishes something?

The mirror could be use to distract the champions too as to show an illusion of someone ore something behind the party.
...I create the challenge only to help you has to surpass you and so to create the most fascinating game.

P.S. Now, if you really want to satisfy one of my requests. My old bath towel which serves me has to hide my private parts is a little gone out of fashion.

[Seriously Unserious]

i fooled with it a bit today, the swap part works well enough, but i could not find a way to check for party leader, just checks for the name in the party.
how do i check for party leader? and if a character gets removed in front of the mirror how to activate the trigger with the other characters left.

That's all you need, is to retrieve the name of the party leader to compare it with one character at a time until a relay gets a match, and that's the relay that will activate, so the leader's reflection would be shown in the mirror. I'm already planning on implementing something like this for my dialoge system in Castle Lynchgate to insert the portrait of the party leader into info screens showing the party speaking to an NPC.

@Claudius: What's with all this Unseriousness? I'M supposed to be the Unserious one here!

[Chaos-Shaman]

can't check for the party leader it has no way of checking.
ok, well if you have 4 in the party, it will only swap to the last relay it finds is true leaving the other 3 as i found out yesterday. unless the relay can look for specific leader it won't work. i can remove a character down to one only and it will work, but once there is more than one the relays can't tell who to show in the mirror, it will only show the relay that was last. what i did was created a mirror that showed both of them standing together as a solution, but it would be very hard to get that to work with all the characters. unless there is only one in the party, this is too difficult to do.

removing the character instead into the mirror works, the party steps in front of the mirror and is removed to the mirror, just fooled with it. but unless it can check for the partys leader again the same problem pops up, only works on last relay hit.

SU, try and tell me your results, i was hoping i could check who the leader was in some way. i hope you find the answer.

[Clodius_one]

One thing I don't know if it was mentioned already but I always tough some monsters are too easy to beat; I mean some time their attacks are a bit soft for the situation. Example: In DM level 3, if we count Hall of champions as level 1, the blue monsters equipped with club should be more efficient due to the lack of protection for the party. At that level, with insufficient armor the party should feels dizzy when the party received a big hit from a strong enemy. The attack's reply should be delayed for a second and have trouble with their vision for a while. It's feels like if the champions have their bells rung. The big guy can repetitively hit the party until you move your champions away.

[Chaos-Shaman]

I've learned a bit since then. you're as confused as me Claude
how you remember is what I'm interested in. the way you remember. the reaction from any character, their toughness, their what ever, can all be adjusted. that is up to programmmmmer. you need to spill out your thoughts more, be free with explanatory thoughts, be outside the box. we are paying attention. the next update is due, you'll be able to express your DM thoughts with it you're work will be highlighted. main goal is to keep at it, results form with patience, endurance, love for DM. to help others tell their DM stories is top priority! with ya man

[Clodius_one]

Welcome back CS, I know some of us miss you.
I got a question for you. I understand that in DM games we can pick an object anywhere in front of us in the picture but we are restrained when we put someting like the floor have only left and right position. Can we reprogram RTC to chose a specific place to put an object? It could be good if we could assemble pieces together. We could use alchemist's articles to create potions or play with puzzles etc.

[Chaos-Shaman]

thank you Clodius_one for your kind words.
you can place items as far as I know on four places, it does appear as two, you should be able to move the object around. what objects are you referring to?

[Chaos-Shaman]

just to keep in touch with DM fanatics, the AI project is moving along well. it has been a challenge to find all the bugs and how to work around them but it is progressing. it is still too soon to put out the example, not until it is tested and time is hard to find as life keeps us so busy. I am asking for the community for help, this being telling me what they'd like to see in a dungeon, this would help me immensely. after reading the HEROES forum remarks I was hoping that I could get that help. with all the knowledge needed I feel it will take some time to complete. it has already been two years of figuring everything out and at this pace it will take another 2 years because of the graphics needed, and the storyline which also takes quite a bit of time. help with this project will help everyone who is serious enough to create a dungeon, and I do believe that's what we all want. I need some help to speed it up, and I don't mind sharing methods and ideas. I guess it's a matter of who has enough time, I am ready to do my best to make good of this forum, it can be fun if we try. I'd be heart broken if this place died out due to lack of interest.

[Wizard Zedd]

I liked what you did with Banville - is there an update to that? I have not played much DM (just the first one and working on the second) and I have no knowledge of this type of programming, but I don't mind doing some testing and feed back if that will help.