In a real-time RPG or Adventure game (by real-time I mean that the map is 1:1 scale and time passes at some perceptible rate), would it be worthwhile to program in a behavioral model for animals beyond reacting to the hero and having a higher probability of being in the forest than in the field? I was doing a little research on artificial life, and I got to thinking about ambient wildlife in games. Remember that old Halo trailer where the team of marines ran through the wilderness for like ten minutes? There were all kinds of crazy animals there. I think it would be neat to have creatures, be they dangerous or no, fly past in a flock, or graze in a field. It would lend a great deal to the credibility of the world, especially if combined with a similar model for NPC humans. Shepherds that actually flock their sheep, and if you chase the sheep around, the poor guy has to go round them up. Hunters who stalk deer through the forest. Packs of wolves that prowl around at night, and actually kill and eat other animals, maybe even people. You could track wild beasts through fresh snow, or follow seabirds to the ocean. Vultures and coyotes could indicate the location of recently deceased animals or people. These features could add depth, especially if tracking and killing/capturing these animals had some value to the game. I remember chasing Big Poes around in Zelda 64, and shooting them with my bow. Combine that sort of thing with the hunting feature from the Breath of Fire games and it could provide some terrific replay value. Can anyone think of instances where this sort of thing has been successfully implemented?

interesting that you just mentioned Artificial Life, as i just finished a 20page paper on the subject for an A.I class at University.

"The Sims" have been the biggest contributors to raising awareness on A-Life, id say, and by looking at how "Black & White" implements their creatures, its safe to say that they use A-Life w/ reinforcement learning as a model.

A-Life is being looked at recently by game developers and movie execs as it can automate the process of creating dozens of belivable creatures in a virtual world (the clone army in SW:EP2, the herd of bison in The Lion King) ..as you dont have to ''script'' each and every frame of an agent to make it believable, even tho key-frame interpolation and inverse kinematics do help..its not enough

id recommend looking up published articles by Dr. Bruce Blumberg, Dr. John Funge, Dr. Xiaoyuan, Dr. Terzopoulus, and Dr. Sutton on their work on Cognitive and Behavioral Models, to get you started..then i guess you can visit gameai.com and check out their a-life section for links to others that are implementing a-life in some simple java applets or what have you

Thanks, I''ll look those guys up.

Holy Smokes! Dr. Xiaoyuan''s dissertation is an absolute gold mine. Thanks a lot for all your help.

Got a link?

[ MSVC Fixes | STL | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost | Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff ]

Dr. Funge's website (www.jfunge.com) has a few excellent links on the first page to pop up, as well as some great content in and of itself. For the links, scroll down past the names of the projects, you'll find the names of collaborators listed as links.

[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on December 12, 2002 6:32:54 PM]