Ok, so when multiplayer survival comes out people will be able to grief enemy castles or whatever without it being griefing because their just enemies attacking. If you are not there to repel the invader then there is really no way that the castle can defend itself. So i thought it might be a good idea to have NPC allies that defend the castle for you like archers that fire on enemies in range or soldiers that patrol the castle. you could type commands to drop an archer to guard the area he was spawned much like mobs in single player or somehow set a patrol path for a guard to follow. To put a limit on the amount of soldiers however you would have to make beds and or shelters for your soldiers so the size of the castle has some affect on the amount of soldiers. Also when a creeper gets destroyed by an archer or soldier the wall could get repaired by builders who are programed to rebuild any block you placed if it gets destroyed BY AN ENEMY ONLY. Also they could only rebuild blocks that they find in their line of sight and they would rebuild much slower then you would. Also when crafting comes out you could outfit your army with armor and weapons. You could also have your allies distinguish friend from foe by designating certain people as allies. Another thing is that you could type in a command so that a portion of your soldiers would follow you to protect you or attack an enemy base with you. Also an admid could turn off any of these commands for rules of the server or limit army sizes.
I dont know if this might make the game too complicated, maybe it could be simplified, maybe it could be a later expansion on the game I dont know I just wanted to get the idea out there. Comments? Questions?
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grant me the serenity to accept the things i can not change, the courage to change the things i can, and the wisdom to know the difference
For instance, your builders. If a chunk is taken out of a wall, they'd have to figure out how to repair each block without getting themselves trapped and without leaving any holes. You'd need an incredibly complex algorithm to deal with an awkward and possibly impossible problem. (Impossible: You leave one block floating in the air, unattached to any surrounding tiles. A Creeper explodes it. How does the AI replace it?)
Archers would demand a patrol route... but they'd need pathfinding to get between two points on that route, or for any deviations during combat - for instance, being knocked off a wall by an attack, and having to climb back up. Dynamic pathfinding in an unrestricted and malleable 3D environment for an arbitrarily large number of simultaneous entities is a pain, especially when a valid path may not even exist. For a close parallel, look at DF - pathfinding is the single largest drain on CPU resources in that game, and several of the limitations of the engine (multi-tile creatures, proper flying units) are a result of restrictive pathfinding techniques that are required for the game to perform decently in real-time.
Archers would also need some serious intelligence, since they'd be dealing with human opponents. If a human stands behind a tree, fires an arrow at the archer, and then takes cover, what does the archer do? Most AIs are easily outsmarted by even the slowest of humans, especially in first-person games. (I'd hate to face a decent Chess AI, but that's a whole different ballgame. :biggrin.gif: )
Sadly, I think that AI assistants in particular, and a more advanced and capable AI in general, are probably pipe dreams, at least for this stage in Minecraft's development.
(And PS: Any technical jargon in this post was made up off the top of my head.)
I dont know if this might make the game too complicated, maybe it could be simplified, maybe it could be a later expansion on the game I dont know I just wanted to get the idea out there. Comments? Questions?
For instance, your builders. If a chunk is taken out of a wall, they'd have to figure out how to repair each block without getting themselves trapped and without leaving any holes. You'd need an incredibly complex algorithm to deal with an awkward and possibly impossible problem. (Impossible: You leave one block floating in the air, unattached to any surrounding tiles. A Creeper explodes it. How does the AI replace it?)
Archers would demand a patrol route... but they'd need pathfinding to get between two points on that route, or for any deviations during combat - for instance, being knocked off a wall by an attack, and having to climb back up. Dynamic pathfinding in an unrestricted and malleable 3D environment for an arbitrarily large number of simultaneous entities is a pain, especially when a valid path may not even exist. For a close parallel, look at DF - pathfinding is the single largest drain on CPU resources in that game, and several of the limitations of the engine (multi-tile creatures, proper flying units) are a result of restrictive pathfinding techniques that are required for the game to perform decently in real-time.
Archers would also need some serious intelligence, since they'd be dealing with human opponents. If a human stands behind a tree, fires an arrow at the archer, and then takes cover, what does the archer do? Most AIs are easily outsmarted by even the slowest of humans, especially in first-person games. (I'd hate to face a decent Chess AI, but that's a whole different ballgame. :biggrin.gif: )
Sadly, I think that AI assistants in particular, and a more advanced and capable AI in general, are probably pipe dreams, at least for this stage in Minecraft's development.
(And PS: Any technical jargon in this post was made up off the top of my head.)
Sounds to me like
On the construction of painful defenses