was the background really white?

Edit: Ashley, this one might be good for a futuristic look! Immagine scirra's logo in the corner there! http://demo.phpbb3styles.net/Prototype?phpbb=3.0.1

It's clear and nice to look at too, and i really like the symbols for sticky, announcement etc.

Definitely to go in a behavior! That'd be tricky to event.

Wait a minute... are you seriously going to put this into a behavior

My offer still stands to tweak Czar Orange back to Czar Green though.

I think that sounds great! And when you do, be soure to take away the plain white background! Do you have somewhere we can look at the old forum Ashley? I don't really remember exactly how it looked.

The point of this is not to find the quickest way. It is that the helper is actually preforming each jump with the same platform movement engine as the enemy. If then the enemy does exactly the same in the same position he will be guaranteed to make it. The helpers would have their detectors positions calculated from the enemies jump strenght and speed, to be sure the jump is preformed successfully.

Hmm.. the other one was cosier...

Well.. That's a little pessimistic i think. Her's what i'm thinking.

When I first encountered the problem I didn�t really knew how I should think. I had seen examples before, but they all looked so complicated and illogical. I thought �How would I do in that situation�? I imagined myself In a room with ledges and obstacles, and a goal I had to reach. Well, I would start looking for a way to get up on one of the ledges. If I saw somewhere where I could climb up I would look if it was possible to continue from that position. I would keep exploring the environment with my eyes until I found a path leading all the way, then I would try to make it through that path.

Ok, to make the computer do this we would need something that is the computers "Imaginary self" running through the level searching for paths. So every second or so the computer spit out two of these:

<img src="http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/1319/imagiss6.png">

The purple things are what's going to be detectors, carefully placed and stretched depending on the players jump strenght, max speed and current speed, checking for every posibility to jump up on something, down to something, or over something. This little dude is run with the same platform movement engine as the actual enemy, only it is run by loops, in infinite speed.

So what happends now. Take a look at this picture.

<img src="http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/8349/pathsandnumbersdj9.jpg">

At first, the enemy send one helper in each direction. The helper to the left run straight into the wall, and is destroyed (1). The second one is looped forward until its detectors tell him there is a ledge in front of him, low enough to reach (2). Now the helper clone himself, and the new helper jump up on the ledge. The second one keeps running forward and is destroyed by the wall.

The only helper left now is the one on the top of the first little hill (3). He's now detecting one ledge on each side of him, and he duplicates himself two times sending one in each direction. He keeps running forward, and crashes into the wall (4). The helper going left finds another platform to the right of him, clones himself and runs forward (5). All helpers leave a trace behind them, so when When he comes close to the ground (6) he finds the trace of another helper. That means someone has allready been there, so the helper is destroyed. The one who survived by going right finds a new ledge to the left and sends one of his clones up there (7). As he continue going forward he will collide with a helper who's parents went right at number 3 (8). They will both be destroyed since they know both paths have been explored by the other one. One thing i can't really imagine though is how it would be possible to detect situations like the one at number 9. maybe he could like "throw " detectors in diferent speeds and see if anyone of them collide with something. In this situation he would find him anyways by just running forward.

Well, we finally found him!

For this to work, this whole process of finding the player should be one big loop that should run once every second or so without ever being noticed, allways updating the best path to the player. The information about which path is best should be stored somewhere, and the enemy should just have to take the exact same way as the one succesfull helper.

It would be one hell of a challange, but it has never been done before, so it would be an absolute revolusion to the platform games!

Well, that's a small step in the right direction, but what i'm thinking of is something far more complex.

Imagine a scenario like this:

<img src="http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/4953/ajnfkigwu1.png">

The enemy (red) should be able to find it's way to the player, not just running in the direction of the player. Also, the computer should be able to figure out that the blue path is not the best way, since it not the shortest.

I've tried that already, with very poor results. The physics simulation gets hung up on the corners where objects overlap and causes unexpected behavior. Play around with it yourself, you'll see what I mean.

But i meant more like something built in to construct in the future. You place a few physics objects in the shape you want, and then you click "merge" and they all fuse together into one object. They would still be separate objects thoug, just stuck together perfectly.

Hi! In the planning of my adventure platformer i've been looking around for various types of plattformer AI methods. I've learned one thing all really good plattformer AI's have in common. They don't exsist. Let me explain futurer.

What is a really good platformer AI to me? Well, the ultimate AI is an enemy with editable running speed and jump strength that you can put into a level, tell it where to go, and it will find the fastest way to get there. If you can acomplish that it will be easy to expand the AI to whatever you want it to be.

An AI usually works with different "routines". One routine would for example be "Idle" Where the enemy is just standing still. Common in platformers is to have an Idle routine, and when the player is in the line of sight you activate the Walking routine to chase the player. Well, if this ultimate AI was created we could have routines like

ON GUARD: The enemy is searching for clues of where the player might be (for example the sount of the player landing on the ground with a certain speed) and when he get one the "go-to spot" is set to that position!

SEARCHING: The go-to spot is set at random positions close to where the AI saw/heard the person for the last time.

HUNTING: The enemy is hunting the player, allways setting the Go-to to where he last time saw the player. If the player disappears behind something, the enemy moves to that spot and then switch to searching to explore the area futhurer.

It would also be possible to for example make the enemies able to call for backup. The go-to points of all enemies in a large area would be set to where the first enemy is. Or instead of calling for help the enemie could run to the closest friend before he tries to attack you. It's lika a clich� in "Game-making-idea-talk" but THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS!!!

I've looked arount for different methods, and the closest one so far was using nodes. Little clues that are spread around the level to help the AI's to find it's way. That however is not really what i'm looking for, since it requires lots and lots of time, and whenever you change anything in the level you have to replace the nodes.

I have some ideas that theoreticaly should be possible, but before i start my explanation i would like to hear your thoughts about this. Does anybody know a good method to create the ultimate platformer AI? Have you seen any articles/tutorials on the subject (not just AI, but this kind of AI)? Do you have any ideas how to solve it?

Every help in the hunt for the ultimate platformer AI is appreciated!

Attan

If you can stick objects together you could do this...

<img src="http://img183.imageshack.us/img183/6965/ajnfkigtd3.png">

How sad...

Hmm.. I think it uses Newton Game Dynamics, so.. probably not since it's an engine for 3D originaly. Well.. We'll have to wait for ash for a final statement.