From: poirier@ellerbe.rtp.dg.com (Charles Poirier)
Newsgroups: rec.games.design
Subject: Re: State of Mind
Keywords: AI personality attitude automated opponent
Date: 8 Apr 92 23:48:29 GMT
Organization: Data General Corporation, RTP, NC.

In article <1992Apr6.193304.285@ncsu.edu> bjbisset@eos.ncsu.edu (BILLY JOE BISSETTE) writes:
>In article <1992Apr1.004317.8102@dg-rtp.dg.com>, poirier@ellerbe.rtp.dg.com (Charles Poirier) writes:
>|> In article <1992Mar27.122755.22246@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> junkin@turing.toronto.edu (Mike Junkin) writes:
>|> >- such as the player's state of mind, or, more importantly, his
>|> >idea of his opponent's state of mind...
>|> 
>|> Wouldn't it be great if the automated opponent(s) *did* have a discernable
>|> "state of mind", and if likewise the computer modeled a state of mind...
...
>|> "attitude axis".  The whole set of attitudes comprising a "personality"
>|> could be saved to disk and given a name!  Some interesting predesigned
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>|> personalities would come packaged with the game.
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Wouldn't you rather have the slider's set without your aid.  You could make
>an entire cast of opponents, and would have to discern or guess from their
>style, instead of saying, his <whatever> slider is <whereever>.  I mean,
>learning about your opponents is part of the fun!

Absolutely.  I meant to imply such a thing, sorry if I was unclear.  I think
you also want a customizable opponent.  You could set up contests purely
between the automated opponents (AOs?  Like AIs only different?) designed
by their human mentors, a la "crobots" or "core wars".

>|>     The threshold probability for rejecting a move as "too risky" might be
>|>     a variable set by the Cautious-Reckless axis.

>Threshold probabilty?

Bad choice of words, BS actually.  I don't have a clear model yet for risk
assessment.  Something like: computer evaluates possible results of a move.
The expected result may be favorable, but unlikely outcomes may be extremely
bad.  You would want one or more sliders on the tradeoffs between taking a
safe, mundane move versus a usually-profitable but occasionally disastrous
move.

>Sounds like you want the computer opponents to learn, too.  A good idea.

Not what I meant.  Maybe.  Learning is another whole can of worms.  You
have to be careful about results-based learning if you don't have a handle
on the quality of the opposition used for training.  For example, I (as an
AO) might think I have sufficient forces at a location to deter any attack.
The opponent attacks anyway.  What I can't do is immediately remodel my
deterrence algorithm.  What I perhaps can do immediately is remodel my
opponent's aggression slider.  But maybe that's not it, maybe I just have
undervalued the goal I'm defending, or maybe my opponent has overvalued it,
or maybe my opponent doesn't know the game very well and this attack is
experimental.  Hard to say.

>It wouldn't have to be a full blown AI system, just have the opponent change
>his slider occasionally, based on its opponent, or mood or anything.

Hmm... the "moody" slider: how often does the opponent arbitrarily change
his (its? his/her?) own sliders?  (Spooky!)

>|> The computer deserves to get a model of the human opponent's personality.
>|> It's only fair, right?

>Well, if the human doesn't see the computer opponents slider, you don't have
>that much of a problem.

Aside from "fairness" considerations, I'd like (in a multi-player game) for
an automated opponent's (AO's) interaction with *other AOs* to be basically
symmetrical to its human interactions.  So there *will* be a human model of
some kind, even if it's hardwired, because you have to obtain the goals and
motives of the AO's opponents from somewhere to analyze their likely moves.

	Cheers,
	Charles Poirier
Newsgroups: rec.games.design