Hey, as my first non-trivial game, I am thinking about a Speedball II styled game. For those who havnt played it, its basically a top-down football game, with the goals at the top and bottem of the screen. I know enough programming to get the screen drawn and handle some collision detections, but when it comes to getting the rest of the team to make decisions and move around, im beginning to struggle. maybe you nice people could give me some suggestions towards managing how the team plays, its necessary for the computer to move the players even in two player teams... I have done some basic pathfinding algorithms but none seem very appropriate for this style of game.... Any suggestions, tips or pointers to info would be greatly appreciated... - dach

Well first of all I doubt there would be many obstacles on the field so advanced path finding isn''t that nesceccery. Just of the top of my head, maybe you could assign each player a position like left half or right inner or center forward and then have them act accordingly.

Try to break up what each position does, and simplify it so that you can write simple routines based on where the ball is / who is in possesion.

For fullbacks:
if an enemy player comes towards goals with the ball, move towards him and try to hurt him. Then when you have the ball, pass to a half or an inner.

For Inners:
Try to run ball down the field, looking for spare players on the wings (ie. no enemy player within 100 pixels). If enemy has ball chase directly and tackle.

You can work out what action to do based on possession and where the ball is. Hope that gives you some ideas.

Just realised that football is not the same as hockey, but you get the idea