This is the third and final part of a series in which I explain how the artificial intelligence works in my latest game, Twistago. In case you missed the first or second part, you can catch up on them here and here. With the Normal AI able to hold its...
Continue reading
This is the second part of a three-part series in which I explain how the artificial intelligence works in my latest game, Twistago. In case you missed the first part, you can catch up on it here. As you may recall, the Easy AI works by applying a value function...
Continue reading
This is the first part of a three-part series in which I explain how the artificial intelligence works in my latest game, Twistago. The AI has three different levels: easy, normal and hard. This is also the order in which I developed them, each level building upon the lessons and...
Continue reading
Pickomino (known as Regenwormen in Dutch, Heckmeck in German) is a dice game in which players try to get as many worms as possible. It is largely a game of chance, but there are some tactics involved, which always leaves me wondering: did I make the optimal choice? Only one...
Continue reading
The manager is the third and final part of the game’s AI. He is responsible for the high-level strategic decisions. The core of the manager is very simple. He searches the surroundings for potential objectives, divides the benefit of each objective by the cost, then instructs the Navigator to head...
Continue reading
The Navigator is the part of the AI that is responsible for pathfinding. Actually, his algorithm is fairly straightforward. Given an objective by the Manager, the Navigator determines the shortest path through a series of waypoints that are defined in the level file, then hands each waypoint in turn to...
Continue reading
The new AI is making good progress; I’d say it’s about 90% finished. (The other 90% remains to be done.) After writing the code, it cleanly fell apart into three largely independent modules. I like to name my classes after corresponding real-world things, so these are called the Driver, the...
Continue reading
There are a handful of racing games that let you race purely against your own best time, but the majority of them let you race against others. It adds an element of competition that you don’t get when racing alone. The solitary racer is someone who spends hours trying to...
Continue reading