Burried Houses is currently a simple AI simulation I've been building,
but it will eventually be an interactive "experience" involving puzzling, diplomacy, and survival.
Debug list of short term memories:
(http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/6920/burriedhouses.jpg)
Running in ultimate debug mode:
(http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/7120/burriedhousesdebugdemo.jpg)
Current features:
- Long term memory of rooms, doors, and items
- AI Motivated by goal/action trees
- AI will create procedural goals to enter new doors found
- AI will create procedural goals to collect useful items found
- AI will wander to random rooms when there is nothing left to do
- AI creates short term memories of events
- AI can observe rooms through open doorways
- AI can create prerequisite goal relationships
- AI can unlock portals with keys
- AI can keep track of key/lock relationships
Next planned changes:
- ???
I've been working on prerequisite goals.
Now things can be done in proper order for situations that don't make sense otherwise.
I've also added these pictures to the original post:
Debug list of short term memories:
(http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/6920/burriedhouses.jpg)
Running in ultimate debug mode:
(http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/7120/burriedhousesdebugdemo.jpg)
So I've added a ton of framework for item collection and key/lock relationships.
Here is a test scenario where the player is presented with some things that might be keys,
and the AI decides what to pick up:
(http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/553/burriedhousespotatodemo.jpg)
The AI will pick up the rusted key, and the key-shaped potato, as they both resemble keys.
The AI will ignore the potato though.
Later (after more programming) the AI will probably decide to leave the key-shaped potato due to uselessness.
And later still they might take it after all, as it might provide them with nourishment.
Which would mean all three items would be collected.
The cool thing is that the key-shaped potato is identified as a key, but doesn't actually function as one.
/silly shenanigans
This is going to be primarily text.
I think there will be some ambient sound / illustrations eventually,
but for the greater part of its life this will be text only.
I'd love to do some simple 2D representations with sprites if it ever gets into a finished state.
Like a 2D stylized view of the current room complete with furniture and characters.
(http://fusedfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/clue-game.jpg)
Alfie and I worked out that the previous issues occurred on XP computers,
and were caused by uninitialized variables.
I've since added forced declarations for all of them.
I've added a bunch of supporting code,
and the AI can now identify previously known items as possible objectives for goals.
Here's a screenshot of the first successful test:
(http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/9387/burriedhouseskeyobjecti.jpg)
So with the addition of a couple more functions, they should be trying to unlock doors with keys.
Also this framework supports future expansion such as switches or other mechanisms.
I've finally finished the plethora of support functions required to handle all of the special cases
involved in finding keys and unlocking doors.
Here is what a week of toiling has produced:
(http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/5176/burriedhousesunlocksucc.jpg)
So now that locks and keys work, I'm not entirely sure what to do.
I think i'll add in buttons and levers next.
Remote devices will utilize short term memory
and I'll probably need to add in a system for the creation of hypothesis.
Which means I'll probably have to rework some of the key/lock structure to make use of them.