I am currently working on a multiplayer project in which there would be a set number of players, some of whom would be controlled by the game AI routines. In an effort to simulate different personalities and coherent strategies for the computer players, I got the following idea, and would like to hear opinions about it''s feasibility... Starting with a collection of pre-defined personalities (possibly as few as 5 or 6), each of which would contain rules about how certain game events will effect the player''s judgement (i.e. this personality get''s angry and aggressive when he gets hit, that one likes to press his luck and gets more daring when things are going his way, etc.) Then, a seperate collection of strategies that would define the player''s goals and tactics (this one tries to disable all visible enemies, then kill after, that one is sneaky, avoiding enemy fire zones, etc.) I think by interfacing a random personality with a random strategy, I could create a set of rules that would limit a player''s choices in any given situation to only a few, instead of the dozens that the game allows the human players, and a simple random selection could be implemented. I''m not sure how difficult or feasible this approach will turn out to be, and I don''t know if this multi-layered approach has been tried yet, so I''d love to hear from anyone who has an opinion. Thanks in advance, Lash

Sounds cool, just be sure and enable all the agents with a base set of "survival skills" they can fall back on. What you are basically talking about is specialization of your agents, which is a naturally occuring trait of sentient creatures. I like it. But unless they have a base of necessary abilities throughout then a crafty player could really take advantage of a specialist by taking him out of his element.

Dreddnafious Maelstrom

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