CODEWITHSUNDEEP
artificial-intelligencesimulationgame-enginestate-machine
Narcis
Narcis

Reputation: 5918

Cricket as a state machine

I'm creating a cricket manager stats game. I need to create a ball-by-ball simulation of the game. The game/ball outcome will be influenced by player stats and other external factors like weather or chosen tactics.

I've been reading around that most of the games can be implemented as a state machine, which sounds appealing to me, but because I'm a newbie at cricket I'm failing to envision this game as a state machine.

Should the Ball be a state machine or the match or the player or all 3. I'm also not sure how will i orchestrate this state machines (through events).

I'm also having hard time identifying the States and transitions. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Upvotes: -2

Views: 556

Answers (2)

FeignMan
FeignMan

Reputation: 1216

So here's what I understand from your question - Your cricket manager game will simulate a match ball by ball depending on player stats (bowler's skill/experience, batsman's skill/exp, fielding/wicketkeeping stats, so on...) and other related variables. From my understanding this will be more of an algorithmic engine rather than a visual representation of a cricket game.

Now answering your question, first of all, I don't believe you're looking at FSMs the right way. An FSM is a piece of code designed such that at any point in it's lifetime, it is in one of many possible states of execution. Each state can and usually has (that's the point of it) a different update routine. Also, each state can transition to another state upon predefined triggers/events. What you need to understand is that states implement different behaviour for the same entity.

Now, "most of the games can be implemented as a state machine" - Not "a" state machine but rather a whole nest of state machines. Several manager classes in a game, the renderer, gameplay objects, menu systems, more or less everything works off a state machine of its own. Imagine a game character, say a boxer, for the purpose of this example. Some states you'll find in the 'CBoxer'(?) class will be 'Blocking', 'TakingHit', 'Dodge', RightUpper', 'LeftHook' and so on.

Keep in mind though, that FSMs are more of a design construct - a way to envision the solution to the problem at hand. You don't HAVE to necessarily use them. You could make a complete game without a state machine(I think :) ). But FSMs make your code design really intuitive and straightforward, and it's frankly difficult to not find one in any decent sized project.

I suggest you take a look at some code samples of FSMs at work. Once you get the idea behind it, you'll find yourself using them everywhere :)

Upvotes: 3

Khaur
Khaur

Reputation: 770

As a first step you should go through the rules of cricket and your model for the ball outcome to summarise how previous balls affect a given ball.

Then identify what you need to keep track of, and whether it is convenient to use a state machine to represent it. For example, statistics are usually not very convenient to keep track of as FSMs.

With that information in mind, you should be able to build a model. Information you need to keep track of might be either state machines or an internal value of a particular state. The interactions between balls will dictate the transitions and the events circulating from one machine to another.

Upvotes: 1

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