Game Design and Artificial Intelligence - Bournemouth University

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Game Design and Artificial Intelligence David Hopkins Fig 2.5 – an experiment with Qt working with OpenGL. Learning QT The game required quite a complex HUD, originally the method for this was going to be through creating textures for each ASCII character. However, further research into the QT software revealed another potential solution. QT offers a host of functions for creating some simple looking but effective HUD tools, including push buttons, radio buttons and tick boxes. It works quite simply through a slot and signal algorithm [macey01]. Whenever a message needs to be sent from an item, like a push button, it calls its signal function which is sent to one or more slots of other objects. The most useful element is that it can display opengl scenes in a window, with a frame of buttons on the outside. The only setback is that it does slow down the opengl program, but it would be a useful for small programs so would have worked quite nicely with the demo. In the end I decided to use the glText to display the information, though it is still my intention to use qt for a HUD which the player can interact with. Problems Encountered I originally setup the game to be able to switch between levels easily based on a selected global levelNumber using the following code: Switch(levelNumber) { case (1): { draw all objects level_1; } break; } The program had a strange bug when I attempted to start on a different level number and attempted to switch to the current level. The enemy ship speed seem to rocket for some unknown reason. I originally thought it could be to do with the timer, but as I disabled this at the beginning of the level Page 18 of 22
Game Design and Artificial Intelligence David Hopkins loading, this was ruled out. When I switched machine I realized that all the starships were moving at a much faster speed. I realized later on that this was due to the ship update function not incorporating a timer amount when calculating the velocity. This was easily fixed by editing the speed values and multiplying the velocity by the timer to get the new ship position. Once I had discovered about casting down inherited objects into a global list of the base class, I had an issue with occasionally needing to be able to access items only in the inherited classes. By including a function called getType, which returns the name of the object type, I could cast a new pointer of the inherited type to the same data as the base class pointer. I have Leigh Mcloughlin to thank for this! if(gunman>getType() == "crewAI") { crewAI *NPC = (crewAI*) gunman; ... } The main problem involved with this project was purely the time limit. I ended up being so distracted by the space combat side of the program, and left only a small amount of time on the crew AI. This is a huge shame as I had done a lot of research into this, but have little to show for it. Further Development On a personal note on this project, there is so much more that I would like to achieve with this game, as the current demo does not do the concept justice and I intend to continue this work at a later stage. I have already mentioned that I would like to take this game into the third dimension at some point (properly! not just pseudo 3d), but for the moment I'mlooking to continue developing the twodimensional version. Space Combat • Develop FSM for ships, give the enemy better AI. Have different styles of attack runs for the enemy ships and evasion manoeuvres (eg. 3 point turn, barrel rolls, ship banking) • Have specific areas to target, allowing ships to be disabled through damaging specific areas, rather than simply being destroyed. Shields could also be implemented • Capital ships. Having giant sized ships would be quite an interesting feature, although this is more of a chrome feature at the moment (ie. It would be nice, but not necessary) • Group AI tactics for enemies and allies alike. This would involve having formations, and enemies can judge on attacking and retreating based on a group strength. • Radar. Either having a small radar on the screen, or an option to switch to an overview of all the ships in the area (similar to “ Homeworld” ) The Crew • Allow movement for the crew, using the A* path finding system. They would then be able to move and switch between jobs and in the case of the engineer, he would be able to move to repair the damage around the ship. • Create more emotions for the characters. Currently only a few are implemented, more emotional Page 19 of 22
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Game Design and Artificial Intelligence - Bournemouth University

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