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"Battle Droids"
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Owner:
| ghost dancer
| | Showcase Entry:
| None | |
| Total Entries: 2 | ghost dancer
Entry: 2
12/05/2004
05:01 PM
| The project is well under way. The design & programming screens are complete, including an integrated text editor and language parser.
The build screen is almost complete too. Once this is done I can start on the really interesting stuff...
Some screen shots are available on my website:
http://www.aurora-soft.co.uk/games/battleDroids.asp | ghost dancer
Entry: 1
11/22/2004
03:57 PM
| Battle Droids is as much an experiment as it is a game (perhaps more so).
I have recently become interested in the subject of emergent intelligence (aka emergent behaviour or swarm intelligence). To understand what Battle Droids is about I need to first give a quick overview of emergence.
EMERGENT INTELLIGENCE
Emergence works by lots of 'agents' obeying simple rules. The way in which they interact (wth each other and their environment) creates a global (emergent) intelligence which is greater than the sum of it's parts.
A good example is ants. Contrary to popular opinion, ant colonies are not ruled by the queen ant. In fact no one ant plans, instructs or commands any of the other ants - they each go about their business operating on their own simple rules and use pheromone trails to communicate with other ants (e.g. food this way, or big nasty ants over there - avoid them!).
Since no ant is in charge and there is no command structure of any kind. Therefore it is both amazing and facinating to see the colonies they create - this is the emergent intelligence.
Okay, hopefully that gives you an idea about emergence. I have become so fascinated by this subject that I wanted to have a go myself. And so the concept of Battle Droids was born.
THE GAME
The basic idea is that 2 players both design, program and build a lots of droids. For each game there will be a budget that both players have available to them. Different droid designs will allow for different weapons, armour etc. The better the design, the more each unit will cost.
The next stage is the programming, which is is the fun bit ;-) I have developed a simple but effective programming language. Each player can write several programs to put in their various droid designs.
Some example programs:
* Swarm - droids cluster together before they attack so force of numbers win the day!
* Bully - attacks any weaker droid.
So a player may have lots of cheap droids with a swarm program, and a few expensive (and powerful) droids using a bully program.
Obviously, there are many possibilities of programs, these are just 2 general examples. The idea when writing the programs is to think "more is different", so the more units you have the different the effect will be.
Then, depending on the budget and driod costs, each player can build a number of droids with their different programs. I looking to have about 100 droids on each side. Then, all the droids are put in an arena and left to their programming to fight it out.
Initially I will be keeping it quite simple. But once I have a working prototype, I hope to expand it so that the droids have the ability to learn, adapt, and interact with the environment. |
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