Nekojin Posted Feb 2, 2010, 4:12 pm

I had a weird dream last night. I dreamed I was playing a game called Dwarf Tycoon, where you manage mines by building mine cart "rides" for Dwarves to go into the mountain to do mining. The dream ended when I had a Goblin with a bow riding a cart, wiping out my workers; I had to get a Dwarf to get on the cart behind him, hit him with a Paralyze spell, and then shoot him with a bow of his own. It's a fairly typical dream, I suspect - merging two things you like to do. But while thinking about the dream while going through my morning routine, I had an epiphany about AI design. Dwarf Fortress and Roller Coaster Tycoon operate in a very similar manner. The Dwarves and Peeps don't actually have desires of their own - that would take far, far too much computational power to even be remotely workable. What they have is a laundry list of "Magnet" traits - things that they're drawn to. Correspondingly, the rides (in Roller Coaster Tycoon) and buildings (in Dwarf Fortress) have similar magnet traits, that draw the Dwarves/Peeps to them. It's just a matter of what things have the strongest pull at the moment. That's all. I just thought it was an interesting realization, brought about by a strange dream. =^_^=