Musings on AI and Events

As I work on getting some placeholder assets in, I'm brainstorming just how I want gameplay to go.  As far as 'enemy' AI is concerned, I'm leaning towards a memetic, event-driven, scalable system.  That's a lot of buzzwords.

A 'memetic' AI is comprised of a series of memes.  A meme is a transferrable behavior (also a funny cat picture).  Memetic AI works wonders for instinct-driven, or mindless actors.  Memes are self-contained, encapsulated behaviors.  Things like:  Forage, Patrol, Chase, Flee.  Actors can pick up behaviors from their neighbors.  In practice, it is likely that each AI actor in the system will use a weighted decision system, and the memes its neighbors are performing will weigh more heavily than others.  In other words, in a group of bimbos, if one flees the others are slightly more likely to also flee.  If half of them flee, then the remaining are very likely to also flee.

What do I mean by event-driven?  At certain points through the game, things will happen, of course.  Dead Rising is actually a fairly good analog of what I'm planning.  At certain points throughout playing either game you get a call to tell you something's going on in some part of the game world.  These are events, of course.  In Bimbpocalypse, an event might be a busted water main in the main corridor, or another survivor shows up holed up in a shop.  Each event will be more-or-less self-contained, and should show up at semi-random points in time to keep the game dynamic.  Events will have a set of criteria dictating when they are able to show up, however, so that their contents can be more tailored to the current state of the game.  Is your character female, and dealing with a bit of a lactation problem?  Perhaps there's some sort of milk farm event that might fire in such a situation.  This ties into my next point.

Scalable AI?  Inspired by the 'AI Director' Valve used in the Left 4 Dead games, a scalable AI is simply one that alters the difficulty of what's going on based on metrics used to determine how well you're doing.  These metrics will likely be rather broad -- if you're low on health, high on lust/arousal, getting pretty far along in one or more transformations, low on food/water, then you are doing poorly.  At this point, the game should decrease the chances of spawning a bimbo horde to come terrorize you, and increase the chances of you finding edible or potable things.  Alternatively, if you are doing well then maybe it's time to knock you off your high horse.

Mixing the scalable AI director with a system of events lets us do some interesting things.  Because then our events can react to how well the player is doing as well as the state of the game.  HOOLAY.