Video Game AI

[Cyllya]

There's something I was wondering about game AI (for the uninformed, that's artificial intelligence, the programming that makes computer-controlled charas do stuff), so I'll pose a hypothetical situation to see what people think.

Let's say they up and made a Narikiri Dungeon 4, and it has ToS/ToA-style strategy menu for controlling the AI. They recycled Frio and Calo again, so we have Calo on auto in a Wind Mage costume, set by the player to target flying enemies and attack with spells. All of her skills are spells that do wind-elemental damage. You get in a battle against a group of enemies that contains one flying enemy... and that flying enemy is strong against wind.

What do you think Calo should do in this situation?

[bungiefan]

Well, if that is thier only way to do damage without getting themselves kiled trying to be a mage doing melee, and the spell will do at least some damage, they should still cast. Anything that can end the battle faster should be done. Granted, so much of this can be player-preference, and thus it's hard for the programmers to please everyone. AI is a difficult thing to get right unless you have a lot of power and memory to handle all the options, and maybe have a place to write data for it so you can train it to your tastes.

[Kajitani-Eizan]

i'd say, as long as the resistance isn't too great (pick a value... say, >50%), it should still target the flying enemy... unless doing so results in a grade penalty. in that case, she should avoid targetting that enemy and target other enemies, because if you REALLY don't want her hitting other enemies, you could then tell her to stop using magic at all. (i assume you could use a convenient command, or something, instead of having to screw with her AI.)

truthfully, it would be better to have the AI be more tweakable... for example, you should be able to specify whether you "prefer" her to target flying enemies, or you "only" want her to target flying enemies. possibly even multiple values in between Prefer and Only. if it's set to "prefer", in this case, she'd target the other guys. if it's set to "only", she'd target the flying enemy if there's no grade penalty and if her TP use is set high enough. if not, she'd just defend. the in-between selections would split these results percentage-wise.

hope that helps in some way