Author Topic: 0.5 in 2012?  (Read 36186 times)

Offline michal

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0.5 in 2012?
« on: August 17, 2012, 08:09:27 am »
Hello,

0.4 is released. To keep our programmers motivated, lets write how many of us want 0.5 ;)

0.5 plans:
Code: [Select]
    Geoscape AI (missions, UFO spawning, bases, scoring, funding, interceptions, etc.)
    Graphs
    Victory/Defeat

Battlescape:

    More alien units
    Alien base and X-Com base missions
    AI Phase 2 (grenades, blaster launcher, taking cover)

So basically, 0.5 should be first playable (from beggining to end) version. It will be important step in OpenXcom development.

Offline moriarty

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2012, 10:09:46 am »
complete geoscape AI? wow, that's really an important step :)

needless to say, that's also a very interesting field for modding... because it changes the fundamental mechanics of the storyline, and can lead to completely different spin-offs...

go, go, go!

Offline kkmic

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2012, 10:32:28 am »
Yeah, most of the essential stuff is already done, 0.5 will be a complete game (component-wise).

I bet that by the time 0.5 will be finished, most bugs will be already fixed.

Volutar

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2012, 11:08:32 am »
There is no geoscape AI.
There is a probability table of missions/ship_types/races appearence for each geo zone, hardcoded by months. Plus huge geolocation chart (for each zone and each trajectory stage), plus alien ship crew variations/missions, plus alien race/rank stats/inventory list.
And I don't know how SupSuper will make it anyhow moddable or extendable.
Though it will be relatively easy to replicate it without any chance of modding.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2012, 11:30:42 am by Volutar »

Offline moriarty

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2012, 11:46:34 am »
I know that there is no true AI, but there is a more-or-less logical sequence of stuff happening: small ships appearing before large ships do, lots of intercepted UFOs leading to alien retaliation missions, alien bases being "constructed" and "supplied"...
a lot of stuff that pretends to be an AI acting and reacting :)

I guess no one would be angry if the openxcom geoscape "AI" would end up a bit "smarter" than the original, right?

Volutar

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2012, 12:07:31 pm »
Smarter? Of course. But before making it "smarter" it should walk through "the same" area, which is I believe quite difficult to make if "moddability" is a "must".

Offline Amunak

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #6 on: August 17, 2012, 02:42:46 pm »
Smarter? Of course. But before making it "smarter" it should walk through "the same" area, which is I believe quite difficult to make if "moddability" is a "must".
Making it the same could also mean either throwing that code to a bin later or limiting yourself. I think that the original approach is completly wrong. Why can't we just have a "real AI" which generates ufos really smart - you can easily count how the player is doing, take into account difficulty and the stage of the game (based on game time, research done, ...) and deliver ufos and missions adequately.

eg. in the beginning (on lower difficulties) make the ufos fly near the players base, don't hardcode low mission count for lower difficulties (it might actually be harder, because you have nothing to savage, therefore resulting in no money), make the retaliation take place where the previous mission was unsuccessfull, do terror missions where xcom has low activity (so it's like a "surprise" attack), the same with alien bases (so they can't be detected so easily), etc. The aliens have so much technology, but are stupid enough to build own base near xcom base? That's how the original works :)

Offline Daiky

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #7 on: August 17, 2012, 06:03:29 pm »
AI is just a bunch of rules you make, so agents appear to have intelligence, because they make decisions based on these rules, their state and the state of the world around them.
I don't see what you mean with "real AI". There is no such thing: real <> artificial. Even modern games uses tricks to make people think the AI is more advanced, but it just uses the same old "tricks".

I'm sure the original approach can be tweaked a bit to fix those issues you mention, but it doesn't mean everything has to be thrown in the bin.

If the geoscape AI in the original game didn't do anything right, why did you ever play it? Or didn't you like it at all?
« Last Edit: August 17, 2012, 06:32:28 pm by Daiky »

Offline Amunak

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #8 on: August 17, 2012, 09:28:30 pm »
...

That's why I wrote it in quotes. Basically I just suggest to throw out the "fixed missions"  that are chosen randomly and make completly random and fitting missions instead.

Volutar

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #9 on: August 17, 2012, 10:39:15 pm »
Amunak, you must be wishing this project unsuccess? If game won't make any challenge and only react to player's actions, it may stuck on low player level and at zero progress. There always must be "hurrying up" events which can make player fail.. otherwise it won't be any interesting. I will hate this game if it will be a cakewalk to beat aliens, in this case it will simply become piece of crap, you know. It's not casual game for naive time-spending, it must present real challenge, and I want to believe - much more challenging than original.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2012, 10:42:04 pm by Volutar »

Offline Amunak

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #10 on: August 18, 2012, 09:04:53 am »
Oh no, misunderstood again. You are right of course, but my idea doesn't exclude challenges and hard gameplay. That's why I'd like to see better geoscape AI that's dependant on the difficulty more than in the original. On harder difficulties you can make aliens smarter, maybe even so that they try to avoid the player, or that they do unexpected things (like draw the player from a base to get very large UFO and when he leaves attack the base). However, on lower difficulties, you have less missions in the original. That sometimes leads to very hard gameplay because you need money from savaged ufos, and since they sometimes completly avoid your base and land on the other side of Earth, I suggest making beggining on lower difficulties easier by helping the player.

But these are just few ideas, I'm simply trying to take out the almost total randomness from the original x-com and make player feel like that the aliens know what they are doing.

Volutar

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #11 on: August 18, 2012, 10:54:11 am »
There aren't "total randomness" in original xcom. It includes Earth attack scenario: from scouts to battlesheep fleet. The only randomness it have - appearence time and order of attacks... Of cource instead of random choises it could use some evauation functions which will include player bases positions, tech level and craft/crew armament... But actually it will look like a cheat from AI. The only thing that AI can use without being a cheater - is XCOM base position, but with one notice - those bases shouldn't have "anti-detection" facilities.
So in short - randomness is not very "stupid" choice, considering there is a attack scenario.

Offline luke83

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #12 on: August 19, 2012, 11:50:58 pm »
Hello,

0.4 is released. To keep our programmers motivated, lets write how many of us want 0.5 ;)

0.5 plans:
Code: [Select]
    Geoscape AI (missions, UFO spawning, bases, scoring, funding, interceptions, etc.)
    Graphs
    Victory/Defeat

Battlescape:

    More alien units
    Alien base and X-Com base missions
    AI Phase 2 (grenades, blaster launcher, taking cover)

So basically, 0.5 should be first playable (from beggining to end) version. It will be important step in OpenXcom development.


So going back to the original topic of this post, yes i want version 0.5 this year :P

Offline j6cubic

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #13 on: September 09, 2012, 02:47:17 pm »
Wasn't there a plan to add scripting to OpenXcom? This seems like the perfect place for it. If the aliens' Geoscape AI is implemented as a script then the default ruleset could come with one that just replicates the original game's lookup tables while custom rulesets could use arbitrarily complex implementations – all the way up to "real AI" techniques like HTN planners and the like.

(Come to think of it, this would be very relevant to my thesis paper...)

Offline michal

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Re: 0.5 in 2012?
« Reply #14 on: September 09, 2012, 08:33:10 pm »
gchevallereau experimented with python

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,360.0.html

So, what about such topic of thesis "Scripted AI in OpenXcom" ? ;)