Position Search
Right, suggestions...
- In full-screen, scale the playing area to fit... I had a little black area all around the view. There's so much going on that you need the game as visible as possible.
- A help menu, with the keys. I found ENTER nearly straight away, but it took me a while to find Z/X combo.
- Some bonus items are similar to small projectiles. Make them glow or something.
- How come some enemies can stop and rotate when the player can't?
Ideally, the zones would be 1x1 pixels. That would give the best results for the AI. The search should also be very deep, looking into about 10-20 positions ahead. This won't be possible, however: too expensive. So you'll probably end up having a 4x4 grid, and 4-8 position look ahead. If you're really interested, there are plenty of ways to improve this once you've got the basics working.
Dynamics is a branch of physics that deals with applying computing the position of a body given its velocity and acceleration. So it's stuff you're already doing! Just make sure it's really efficient, so you can do some good motion prediction. If the acceleration does not change, you can solve the equations of motions without having to simulate them.
> You mean telling it to keep values that make it survive vs. values that make it die? :)
Essentially, yes. The AI would learn how to evaluate properties of the position:
Characteristic / Desirability
Collision / 0
Position: Middle-Side / 70-20
Below Enemy / 90
And to combine them together, just add them up, and you get the total desirability. But as I said, you can set those coefficients manually pretty well, since you have a good knowledge of the game itself.
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