Programmable Ai - CODING

[DeathDeity]

@opmrcrab
I don\'t mind have mutliple machines / blocks that only have specific capabilities. In fact I love it, but that wouldn\'t mean it would be bad to be able to program these yourselves as well. It would be up to each person to have their idea of what is best, some people would prefer different personality programs than other people (such as different methods of locating and hitting the target accurately while it is moving)
But thats not to say that the programs have to always be controlling weapons, I don\'t see why they wouldn\'t be able to use other features as well such as unlock / lock and open / close doors, and if it was desired you could limit it to 1 program at a time, then you have to manually go and switch it or find another way.

It is a simple matter of each player having their own play style and movement patterns, hence no single program would ever be better than all others in that respect.

@MatthewSimpson
I haven\'t done and research on the language myself but I was able to successfully teach my self what I needed to know about the language to create a vast variety of different programs to fulfill each of my desires in MC, and that was using only the 6 or so pre-built programs they had their. For some more difficult ideas I did use the CC website to find out specific functions I could use from the API, but that was as hard as it got for me.

@D-Car
I believe it was you, but if your that worried about lagging the server out, it would be easily fixed by requiring that a pilot be in the ship for any programs to work, so if this did DC them, then the server would be able to start again normally, and crash when someone tries to run the program again. That could be fixed if the server was smart enough to know what block was causing the issue, (draining that many resources or whatever you want) and then removing the program, which it was running

 

[D-Car]

Assuming that freely-programmable computer things are implemented, then I\'d ideally want to see program-creator and who-activated-the-program tags being listed in some kind of log or database just to catch griefers who manage to find a processing exploit. That way the admins can do something along the lines of insta-kicking or banning players who run specific programs flagged as screw-that-program.

 

[Zxaber]

I can certainly get behind this. Should a crash occur, a log showing all programs that were running at the time isn\'t a bad idea. While I\'m not against auto-kicking or auto-banning people using known crash code, another solution might be simply allowing server admins to set chunks of code as automatically inert. A program, when first started, would be checked against this code list, and if a chunk fully matches, the program would run with that chunk removed. A popup would show for the player that ran the program, and a log would be made with who ran the program, who created it, and what code was blocked. The choice to auto-kick, auto-ban or simply block code should be up to the server owner.

 

[Dolgaris]

Bump.

I highly concur with the stated ideas, this would allow for much more flexibility and convenience in creating drones. At the moment, I want to model a ship around the deployment of attack drones, but with the AI in it\'s current state, it\'s a rather painful process of recovering ships. I was also thinking of a type of script function that would allow information to travel from Master to Slave type AI modules, kind of like switching and routing. This way you can relay what certain drones should do what based on conditions stated.

 

[Noutay]

I like the idea, but not many people have the time or are too lazy to learn to program (me) so i think that the programing idea should still be there, but more like the program scratch or gamemaker to make it visual and easy for anyone to understand but more cancentrated on game elements rather than full flexability giving spammers and hakers a chance to screw stuff up. Also much like blueprints, you should be able to save \"programs\" and use them later or give them to a friend.

 

[Zxaber]

The problem with \'easier\' programming languages is that they often remove or limit a lot of what is possible otherwise. While I would see no problem in having both systems in the game, I\'d rather see an attempt at solving these \'spammers and hackers\' issues than just outright not allowing anyone to use Lua. A few ideas have already been mentioned earlier, such as a capping the number of processes that can run per second. This system is how both Garrysmod\'s WireMod and Minecraft\'s ComputerCraft deal with possible griefers.

I do agree with the idea of saving the programs, though.

 

[Waterphoenix]

The problem is that people new to the game or who can\'t program will struggle GREATLY with this. There should be at least some preset programs. Also, don\'t know if this Is the right topic but im really annoyed at how you can\'t make a fleet of ai SHIPS so they should make it so they follow you if not docked and mabye have a home they can retreat to after victory?

 

[deepwinter]

Server crashes possible with the game still new the servers are unstable as it is adding this would put exta load on it. A simple point A to point B AI wouldn\'t be as over tasking but now that I think about it AI BOBBY does targeting/shooting and flying rolled in to one why not unroll it and use one or the other. And why not bring a target finding one in to it.

 

[Nootau]

Petty Greifer, says \'Wait, I could make a vessel move itself to (2,2,2) before terminating the program and turn the Bobby AI on? Sweet!\'

Said greifer sets his faction to be an enemy of neutrals and begins googling a \'Go To\' script.

*5 minutes later*


Bobby controled Dis-Intigrator vessels begin flying from deep space out to (2,2,2) with 450% thrust to mass ratio, armed with 22+ Dis-Intigrators(more than enough to destroy a lightly shield vessel, aka newbies).

 

[Apollo848]

I like what everyone is suggesting so far. While having to use a programming language would cause troubles for what is likely the majority of the player base, being able to use pre-made scripts by other players would be great, allowing for even people with little or know knowledge of programming to choose from a variety of tasks to have the AI fulfil. I think it would actually be cool if Stores sold different chips or disks that contained code with various functions, or that would add options to the GUI of the AI, so the more tasks you wanted your AI to do, the more money you would need to spend. This would only be useful after the games economy/loot system is fixed, because after one pirate station raid you can end up with billions of credits.

 

[TerrorSoul]

Great idea.

 

[Draeke_Forther]

How about an event based system? It could have a similar interface to the ai module and would respond to events with certain actions, like toggling a door or light. A controller block could be linked different systems, and if there were some form of radio transmissions, you could set up a hangar door to open and close remotely.

 

[Nootau]

The ability to have a step over writing code but having modular options to set AI patterns would be best. It will allow non coders to use it freely(I am a CC user and I hate being bugged constantly to check someone else\'s bugged code) while also giving a lot of freedom.

 

[Ciber]

I disagree with having the ai programing utility be a strait up text editor or consol of any time.

In keeping with the blocky theme of this game, the programming interface should work like the one for lego mindstorms where you can place blocks and connect them with wires. This would also let you have more control over the balance of such things while making it easier to enter into the programming stuff.

 

[utrack]

++ to the idea!

This would make game much more interesting, as tactics would prevail the ship size in combat finally. For anyone who cries that it would be too difficult: you can write crappy program and it will work as you wrote it, but you can learn and win fight against those who just built a 300x300x300 metres cube of AMCs and shields, duh.



UPD: Also, some kind of Laser Painter would be great to have too.

 

[vernes]

I would like to see this.

Please also take a look at this scripting language.
It is used in an 3D invironment as well: link

 

[Twinchicky]

Any kind of ability to write scripts to control ship AIs would be extremely valuable in StarMade. It would allow AI ships to be deployed from a carrier vessel or mothership, and carry out coordinated attack patterns against a target ship.

Another idea for this is for players to have the ability to, from the carrier where the AI ships are docked, give orders to the AI fighters - for example, \"Attack XShip Alpha\" would make all of the AI ships attack a ship named XShip while carrying out attack pattern Alpha (A custom attack pattern, programmed by the player). This would add so many new elements to the game!

 

[Puck]

\"controller block\" which would open an interface where you could script your input/output based on inputs & outputs of other blocks connected to the controller block (expression 2 from Gmod)

that is all we need

 

[Stakhanov]

It should stay on the front page of this forum before more people incapable of using the search function post similar suggestions.

 

[Baralabite]

I think this is a fantastic idea - I had it myself :P

Being a programmer in several languages, including embedded systems, I love the idea of any kind of scripting and automation!

As for server crashing goodness, there is risk in any kind of fancy feature, perhaps scripting more than ever, but as mentioned before, you can limit the number of tasks / second, etc. You could say, 4 (or whatever) operations / second.

As for the argument of \"One AI to rule them all\", yes, I can see that very much being a problem, but if there\'s a really good AI, someone else needs to make a better one! No program is unbeatable.

What I\'m trying to say is, you can solve almost any problem, and problems and vunuribilities will occur, but that\'s part of life. You could even have it a configurable server setting.

It comes back to whether Schema wants to implement it or not. Does he want the game to eventually turn into a more \"code oriented\" game, or not.