I have to disagree with you there Andrew. While it may be perfectly fine for a TGC competition or getting started quickly (in other words, getting something working quickly) it, in a sense, decreases one's programming skills (they fail to learn from experience in writing their own AI, which can be 'harmful' to their ability to generate their own code directly from thought instead of another person's code or framework). The use of DarkAI makes use of something very specific. AI should be specific to a game engine perhaps (For example, FPS Creator (if you call that an engine, really)), but not sold as a plugin, IMHO. In the context of a WW2 game I don't want to be able to predict that by turning a corner my enemy will always shoot at me or that if I throw a bomb my enemy will run away from it. I want the enemy to be more intelligent based on a specific situation aimed towards the game - such AI is only achieved efficiently when written yourself. For example, you can check if the player's health is low, if the enemy's health is high or if the enemy is (for example) a terrorist who is willing to give his life in an attack, the ability to check difficulty, etc. In the situation where a grenade is thrown at an enemy, if the enemy is in fact a suicidal terrorist then the enemy would run towards the grenade and continuously shoot at the player, which _might_ add a bit of surprise since most other enemies might back away from the grenade and conserve their bullets since they cannot see the player.
Things like that are much more difficult to achieve with a general AI system, such as Dark AI.
BUT, path finding algorithms and the like are perfectly fine as a plugin, but for that there's a free path finding plugin somewhere in the program announcements.
Cheers,
-naota
I'm not a dictator to those that do stuff for me by will. Only those who don't.
