CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaartificial-intelligencelogic
AaronDS
AaronDS

Reputation: 861

Basic game logic/ai design

I'm currently working on my 2D game project (Java), but so far any kind of game logic or AI has been crudely implemented. For instance, say I need to randomly position a bunch of sprites a long the top of the screen, I'd be using the Random class to do this. I'd simply use Random.nextInt( size of x axis on which to spawn ); Although this does work I'd be interested to hear how I should really be going about this kind of thing.

As a second scenario (this is why I put AI in the title, although it's not really AI), say I want to have my characters randomly blink in a life-like fashion. What I'd do here is use the Random class to calculate a % (say 20% chance) of blinking and call it every second.

Any suggestions on how I should really be going about this would be greatly appreciated.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 743

Answers (2)

Marc H
Marc H

Reputation: 1248

Google for a paper titled "Steering Behaviors" by Craig Reynolds. It address just this and you'll find great ideas to start with specifically some nice ideas for giving groups of sprites the appearance of 'intelligent' movement. The key for him in his different behaviors, i.e. flocking, etc. is making properties of any given sprite dependent on those of some other sprite. You could even go so far as to say, like -- any given sprite will blink only if it's two neighbors just have blinked. Something or other along those lines.

Hope this helps!

Upvotes: 2

Denzil
Denzil

Reputation: 704

Are you using an OOP (Object-Oriented approach)? If not, you should definitely look into it. It's really simple with java and can speed up your development time and neaten your code.

I would make a sprite class, and give them a function, say actionSpawn, or actionMove (I like to start my "action" functions with the word action so they are easily identifiable). In this function you would encapsulate the Random.nextInt function, to set the sprite's x and/or y position.

You could use the same approach to make them blink.

Upvotes: 1

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