[WF-Scripting] AI scripting

[RaFaL Pocztarski]

Bryce Harrington wrote:

> Welcome to the project.  :-)

Great. I've been observing the WorldForge for some time. I'm sure that
very
soon, the commercial games, like UO, will have no chances for cometition
with
WF. The WF will evolve constantly and when there will be couple of fully
playable WF products, people would have no reason to spend money on
other
games, wich will of course have to be less complex and realistic.

> You'll want to be looking into Cyphesis, which is our AI server.  You
> can create AI scripts for whatever you feel the urge to do.  There are
> already several AI scripts there that you can use as samples.  I think
> we've even got some code for operating a squirrel.  ;-)  Cyphesis has
> some very cool goal-based AI capabilities in it, that you can use to
> make fairly sophisticated bots (*MUCH* more sophisticated than your
> typical MUD mob.)

Simulating animals is very interresting for me and the coolest thing
here is
that these scripts in action will actually look like those animals, will
live
in very realistic enviroment and interact with other animals, humans and
everything else. It will be nice to observe them living and facing
"real" problems.

> You will want to get a Linux box, install python, SDL, Atlas-C++,
> UClient, and Cyphesis, and once you've got that up and running, you can
> see the scripts we've got so far in action.

OK, I need some time to figure out how to install and run all of them. I
use
Debian but I can't use the .deb files because of many dependency
problems.
Now I'm trying to make them up from the sources, I have some problems
and I'm
pretty busy now so it could take me some time.

> There is a soldier that
> patrols the town, pigs that eat acorns, wolves, crabs, and a skeleton.
> IIRC, there is also a farmer who is programmed to grow crops, respond to
> having his house burned down, chop trees, etc.  I think you'll have lots
> of fun fiddling with these scripts.  :-)

I think so. I will propably start learning Cyphesis AI scripting, and
Python
in general, experimenting with already existing scripts.

> I think you might enjoy asking around if there are perhaps some others
> that would also like to learn AI scripting, so you can help each other
> learn and bounce ideas off of each other.

Sure, it's always easier and faster to learn in a group.

> Once you've learned how to create the AI scripts, it would be *great* if
> you could help us create some of the AI that we will need for Mason.

I would love to. I've read everything about Mason and I think it will be
a
great game, when players start to build houses and whole cities. There
should
be many different profesions around building, so at the beginning the
game
would need many NPC's. How do you think, when approximately could it be
playable for normal players?

> You'll want to talk to Zzorn some day, and keep an eye out for the Mason
> meetings (they occur bi-weekly).  I think there is still a lot of
> flexibility in what kinds of creatures to put into the game, and so the
> opportunity to define the Mason AI needs is still open if you're
> interested.  Once those requirements are in hand, there's nothing to get
> in the way of making prototype implementations of them in Cyphesis.

First I have to learn the way it is functioning now and understand the
whole
idea, but later I'm sure I will be glad to have as much contribution to
the
project as possible.

> 'Fraid the only good direction I can point you is to the Cyphesis source
> code.

Well, it's not so simple to understand for me, at least now. I think it
will
take me some time.

> I would *love* to see someone generate some simple docs to assist
> other potential AI developers in learning how to start scripting.  We
> certainly have enough examples and experience doing it that it's worth
> writing some guidelines down.  I know it can be frustrating for new
> developers to obtain enough information to be able to even start work on
> AI scripting, so anyone who can work to mitigate that will be doing a
> lot of long-term good for our project.  Once you feel you've got a grasp
> on AI, would you mind spending a few days helping us with writing down
> what you've learned?

I could write some simple tutorial while starting to understand the
idea. It
wouldn't take me much time to just add few lines when I get something
new.
But I don't know when I would start, I don't have much free time lately.
I think that the WF Project is very interresting and I'll try to use for
it
most of my free time. When I finally figure out how to install, run and
use
the software, learning the scripting itself should go fast, as I can see
Python is pretty easy to read for beginners so I will learn from
existing
code.

Thanks.

  -- RaFaL Pocztarski -- mailto:admin at rfl.pl -- http://rfl.pl/ --