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Derek, will there be walls and siege battles in FE?

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Derek, will there be walls and siege battles in FE?

from Elemental Forums

Will there be?  I think a lot of people would be very interested if in fact you have implemented this.

Best regards,
Steven.

elemental
505,456 views 105 replies
Reply #101 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Tridus, reply 98
Honestly, it doesn't. Speed matters in the graphics engine because a 2FPS game is unplayable. If the AI is good, people will tolerate waiting for it until a patch later has some optimization. It's far more important that the AI is intelligent then that it's fast. A great, slow AI is great. A bad, fast AI is bad. Speed is a requirement in an RTS because the AI has to react instantly to whatever the player does. It's a "nice to have" in a TBS.

Secondly, the task is straightforward enough on computers today that the bare metal access C++ gives you doesn't matter. You could do it in Python and get perfectly acceptable speed out of it.

At the end of the day the problem with the WoM AI is that it's not very good, not that it's slow. If a higher level language trades some speed in exchange for more developer productivity it's a no-brainer to go with that because that's what we really need.

You may want to read John Shafer's posts at: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=63821

I am not talking about Elemental but TBS games in general. Speed is a bottle neck on the quality of the AI. While not so much in TC, it still applies or they would just use a brute force algorithm which is the most effective and one of the easiest to write.

While quality is Elemental's problem right now and the amount of time that can be spent on it is the limiting factor, I do not think the langauge* it is written in would make much difference to that if we are talking about starting from scratch.

* Exception being Domain Specific Langauges created specifically for creating AI, because if that does not make it easier then it has no reason to exist.

Reply #102 from Stardock Forums Top

Quoting Campaigner, reply 81



Quoting NTJedi,
reply 80

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with all those questions, I suggest examining games from the past which do have this working in a fun way.  Play a few games of Age of Wonders:Shadow Magic and you'll not only have fun, but you'll learn what works.  The developers from Triumph Studios have always been friendly... you should try contacting them with your AI questions.


 

Triumph Studios are above average at making games but A.I is NOT their strength. I remember you from the AoW Heavengames forums. You're a veteran of AoW just like me and then you know how bad the AoW A.I has always been.

But it was still fun and not anywhere near as bad as WOM.  And it was not the worst AI in this Genra.

 

Siege of Centauri
Reply #103 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gwenio1, reply 96

Quoting tanafres, reply 93As Tridus mentioned, we were talking about AI, not the graphics.  My point was that while similar logic has been written before, since the AI is very engine-specific in what it has to deal with, my impression is that you still start more or less from scratch each time with a new engine (or your first game on a licensed engine).  So to duplicate the AI of that game, would take about as much time from a standing start, since they probably only had 1 AI coder, and FE seems to have 1 also.  The developments that have advanced other areas seem not to apply well to the AI.

"Parts" of the AI can be reused if written properly; however that requires more work (the big diffrence in writing code in C++ and Basic as I know it is C++ focuses more on making it possible to reuse old code rather than make it easy to write new code*). However since AI has to wait till the game is pretty much finished I would suppose that making the code reusable is of low priority compared to finishing it on time and having it work.

* Or so it is intended. Oppinions may vary on which is easier to write in.

 

There has been a big drift in the (sub-)discussion here - the post I replied to gave the impression of 'omg, they managed to write a good AI for a game with many of these features way back then in BASIC!  It should be so easy now!'.  Specifically:

Quoting Toadkiller_Dog, reply 87
Did I mention that it was programmed with QuickBasic over 22 years ago?     It can't possible be that hard to program and have the AI handle it well. Now. 

 

That's simply not true. The fact that someone managed something a long time ago doesn't automatically make it any easier today, regardless of speed of execution benefits of one language over another.  Or even (theoretical) reuse capabilities, since game AI is going to always (for the forseeable future, anyway) be very game-specific and engine-specific.

Reply #105 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting LightofAbraxas, reply 2
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