Re: [glob2-devel] Creature AI

[Andrew Sayers]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply - I've had some time to think and talk things over,
and your post sort of capped that all off.  Going into this, I was
rather worried it would be a case of the blind leading the blind - I'm
glad to hear there's someone who knows what he's talking about here!

To be clear, I have some knowledge of and interest in AI techniques, but
it's been a long time since they were a significant research interest of
mine.  Genetic techniques do strike me as a good way of making this
particular game more enjoyable, but I'm in it for the game, not the GA.

Yes, the system I was suggesting was rather a re-engineering of the way
things worked.  To my mind, it was an attempt to round off some of the
sharp edges in gameplay and improve the feel of the game.  I hadn't
realised you were in the run-up to a 1.0 release, so now really isn't
the time to be thinking about such things.  Later on, I would hope there
is some interest in adding actions that globs can take.  I may have just
brainwashed myself, but I genuinely believe the system I proposed would
make for a significantly more enjoyable game, whether or not GAs go in.

You're right that I had been thinking of some sort of binary
representation for genes, as there was this thought in the back of my
head "they're never gonna let me stick LISP into a game like this just
for the sake of some crazy GA idea".  Then TMM mentioned he was thinking
about replacing SGSL with Lua once the 1.0 version comes out, and I was
happy :)

If Lua does go into the game some day (and I realise this isn't
certain), I would be very interested in adding hooks into the game to
make glob behaviour programmable.  I would assume that time-consuming
functions will always need to be implemented in C++, but giving even a
little control over to players would open up some interesting
possibilities in the game.  In the long-term, my intention would be to
make the system of hooks complete enough that you could write a genetic
algorithm (or do I have to call it a genetic program now?) purely in
Lua.

In the short-term, I've got rather into cleaning up the website (wikis
are good :) and trying to make sense of the source code.  Since
documentation is the major thing that seems to be lacking in Glob2 right
now, I figure I'm best sticking to mundane details like that until after
the 1.0 release.

Finally, is there a book or article somewhere about for non-AI
programmers interested in implementing genetic techniques?  Something
explaining common tricks, problems and pitfalls without spending too
much time on general principles.  Everything I've been able to find
online is aimed either at explaining the theory to undergraduates or
discussing advanced ideas with professionals.

        - Andrew