Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!cf-cm!cybaswan!iiitac
From: iiitac@swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: IF complexity
Message-ID: <1993Oct19.100236.10668@swan.pyr>
Organization: Swansea University College
References: <29s3hm$eai@Notwerk.mcs.com> <1993Oct18.061330.974@labtam.labtam.oz.au> <CF4009.L93@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1993 10:02:36 GMT
Lines: 46

In article <CF4009.L93@acsu.buffalo.edu> goetz@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz) writes:
>In article <1993Oct18.061330.974@labtam.labtam.oz.au> philip@labtam.oz.au writes:
>>  Personally, I find IF games which have large sprawling maps to be a bit
>>of a pain, because if there's one thing I hate, it's having to single-step
>>through a dozen rooms to get to where I want to go.  I suppose that can be
>>solved by having an intelligent game that can plot a path to rooms you've
>>visited before when you type "go to such-and-such a room"...
>
>I may start working (read: am trying to figure out how to use the system
>and whether I can get a dissertation topic out of the work) on an IF
>platform that would automatically address problems like that.
The Level 9 game knight orc did this. It even went further and anywhere you
had seen you could go to. Thus you could climb the tower see a place and go to
it. The algorithms were fairly trivial from memory and non optimal. Basically
it was the standard treewalk technique. You traverse the tree 'upwards' -
here meaning up the tree not up vertically until you find the top or the room
you are in. If you find the top then you move the player 'upwards'. If you
find the room you move the player to the room that you passed through last
going 'upwards'. This works very well especially when you tailor the tree so
that people tend to collect onto paths then follow the paths to the top of
the tree.

An extension to this I implemented when bored once was a stacking goal system
whereby if you got stuck (eg river flooded/bridge down/door locked) monsters
wandering the game would stack their current target location and head for
a new place indicated by the game and when they got there pop a target and
go on. Thus an orc finding the front door locked would stop aiming at the toilet
in the house and go to the back door. When it got to the back door it would then
try and go to the toilet. If that failed it might go to try the window and
so on. It's a very simple system but looks suprisingly good. Especially if
a few tweaks like knocking on doors, knowing what items are needed to open doors
and so on are given to the monsters (who switch their target to where the item
should be or they last saw it - each creature remembers the last few items it
passes - get the key or whatever then come back).

I never did do anything useful other that prove it worked.. and add footprint
trails to the game and scents so you could track people accurately once you
got close to them.


It's fun to play with and a lot of players are very suprised when hiding in
a house and the monster tries all the doors then comes in through a window 8-)

Alan
iiitac@pyr.swan.ac.uk

