I''m trying to work out whether it would be possible to write a new version of a game I used to play on my Atari ST, Legends of Valour. It was like a 3d city with people going about, and u could interact with them to a certain extent, while u tried to track down your missing brother. In terms of controlling the city inhabitents, what sort of general ai should I be looking at? Ben

Not being familiar with the game, I''m just pulling things out of my AIss...

Simple Finite State Machine for the people (wander, converse, stand still, etc.)
Directional control for the wander state so they mill about in realistic ways.
Some sort of rule based conversation system whether it be as simple as a menu driven conversation tree or content detection.
A series of flags for thing such as "spoken to player before".


Dave Mark - President and Lead Designer
Intrinsic Algorithm - "Reducing the world to mathematical equations!"

READ UP ON CHRIS CRAWFORD

This guy is really big on this kindda thing, and you might be able to pick up some ideas from his Emastraz engine.

http://www.erasmatazz.com/