Matrix Games Forums

Skanvak, you're joking about Storytron, yes?

Storyplay (also known as interactive storytelling) is an art form that combines the strengths of games with those of traditional narrative. Storyworlds, which realize this new art form, are highly interactive, like games. Like stories, though, events center on the people. The computer-generated characters whom the player meets are emotionally aware, each with their own personalities, relationships, moods, and personal agendas. They are in essence primitive “AIs.”

Maybe the term AI is confusing in the context of a computer game? If you're thinking about advanced AI that is emotionally aware, has a personality and psycological profile, has voice recognition software and speech capability, etc., then you've got a very unrealistically high expectation. A decent programmable (or scripted) computer opponent is more reasonable for a $60 game. I speak of reasonable AI enhancements and improvements; you seem to speak of unattainable SciFi. We are talking about two different things.

They are machines, they think like machines. It is not a question of probability.

Machines do not think. They are programmed with fuzzy logic and probabilities to produce variance. Rulesets and national objectives can be programmed to produce reasonable outcomes, with some variance for replayability. Personalities can be introduced to cause the computer opponent to be more aggressive or more passive when probablities are used to generate a decision. Ultimately a game decision is a decision and, as I said, the end result is the same whether your opponent is human or AI-controlled.

I see that you have seen the project but misunderstood it. The program is quite simple and has been used for a game called "Balance of power 2". The emotionnaly aware AI has a language (written one is enough...sometime I wonder if your irony is not offensice...) So I think this engine is fine for a 60$ game. That why I think if we want to have AI player conducting diplomacy, we should enlist M. Crawford on this project to use its existing engine.

Otherwise, we should focus on an improve UMP and nothing more.

You should understand that negociation is about telling the AI to do thing together, building trust, planning stratégy. All those thing require a common language. Other wise we return to the improved UMP rule.

we should focus on an improve UMP

Skanvak, it's nice to see that you now support some continued AI development as worthwhile. I'm optimistic that the computer opponent can become a tad bit more feisty than just a bare-bones UMP, so we shall see. [:)]

Just implement the UMP rules from Empires in Arms.

I do tend to like those rules. They have good controls against abuse and allow an ally to really be helpful.