Hello together. Well, some words to my project. I am working on a swarm AI that can be used as an opponent AI in a strategy game.I am pretty much through with research and my Agent design is in its final stages. (think of it in terms of military usage, u drop a view AI agents in a hostile environment, they reproduce, gather resources, scout and finally destroy any enemy force that can be found) Next stage, implementation and evaluation. For this project I don't want to create a playable game but a simulation that shows how my strategy game swarm AI works and of course that it works. Creating the framework to test the AI would be very time-consuming which is why I started looking for packages that can be used to implement my system. First choice seems to be the Swarm Development Package by the Swarm Development Group (swarm.org). One disadvantage is, that it is using Objective C, which I have not worked in yet. I am fine with Cplusplus and a bit of C to some extend but have never worked with objC. Since I intend to finish implementation in 1 1/2 month, I don't know if it is wise or realistic within that time to start using this package. I found a view other packages that are again quite limited in possibilities. If anyone has an idea or knows about decent environments that could be used to implement such an AI, I would be glad for any ideas.

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Original post by darkwolf79 think of it in terms of military usage [...] u drop a view AI agents in a hostile environment, they reproduce,[...])

LOL!

Ok, getting to your question, Ive used Torque Game Engine as a testbed for my own AI development with great success. If you dont need 3D, Torque Game Builder looks even simpler.

I did some further research and found some more Agent simulators which I could use to test my swarm AI system.


- Swarm Group Package ( http://www.swarm.org/wiki/Main_Page )
- Repast Agent Sim Toolkit ( http://repast.sourceforge.net )
this is pretty much the same system then the first one mentioned, but works in Dotnet (u can use C# as well as managed Cplusplus)
- Starlogo ( http://education.mit.edu/starlogo/ )
- Agentsheets ( http://www.agentsheets.com/products/index.html )

I think I'll go for the Repast System since it gives me many possibilities of observing the behaviour of the swarm and every single agent.
That way I can test the efficiency of my swarm and see if it behaves properly. That way I hope I get a proper AI done that could act as a strong enemy in a strategy game. :)

Lets see... I think I will be able to post some results by end of december or january if anyones interested...

cheers,
darkwolf