Cogmind + Battle Royale = ???

Remember last year when I was talking about my repeated interest in creating a bot to play Cogmind? Well, it's sorta happening.

Not nearly to the extent I was discussing there, mind you, but these things are best approached one step at a time anyway, and my latest work revolves around a somewhat different project:  Cogmind: Battle Royale.

That's the current concept for AFD2020, i.e. a new special mode, and for this purpose I'll "just" need an AI that can behave like Cogmind in terms of going around attaching parts and trying to maintain a semi-balanced sort of build.

Why now?

So yeah I should be working on Beta 10 proper, but that's going to be a big one and I didn't want to go too long without any releases, plus it's clear that Beta 10 will take longer than the next April Fools Day. It makes sense to build this new mode now, then not release it until then, mainly so that I don't have to stop in the middle of having a half-completed Beta 10 to build something else entirely, and do so when then game is in shambles (which would also make it much more difficult to keep the special mode as part of the game permanently--it would end up being a temporary thing by necessity).

Yes this means the next release is actually Beta 9.5 :P (the furthest a single major release has ever been taken!)

Battle Royale

In case you don't know, Battle Royale is basically free-for-all survival of the fittest gameplay across a shrinking play area filled with random gear. So here you'd basically be up against a bunch of other Cogmind-like bots trying to survive. Some details as per the current design:

• Everyone will start with higher core integrity, around 12-15 slots, and some random gear (although not with full slots)
• Automatic core damage transfer will work similarly to RPGLIKE mode, although the rate will be somewhat lower
• Protomatter from RPGLIKE mode will be a thing, and all bots will drop both some of that and regular matter
• The play area shrinking effect will likely be handled by increasingly deadly amounts of heat outside a given area 
• Both these other bots and Cogmind will have similar susceptibility to EM, somewhere between that of Cogmind and other bots in the regular game (tweaks to other specific mechanics will likely also be necessary, anything that gives Cogmind a significant advantage over other bots, for example)

New AI

I'm sure I'll be doing a blog post about this stuff eventually, and I haven't even quite completed it yet, but the AI is coming along fairly nicely. It's about halfway done now and (differently from the usual AI) can already

• use core hover
• switch to different faster forms of propulsion if more efficient
• collect matter
• collect parts to fill slots and also upgrade existing attached parts (technically Abominations could do this, too, but it was a much less complex task because it was not a multistep process--they could just teleport the parts over, and they didn't have to worry about mass, or retaining viable propulsion or weapons since they had their own backups)
• manage mass vs. support
• continue to do its thing, improving a build without fleeing under fire

Witness literally the first-ever BR AI to pick up its own parts, when I first started the project:

A slightly less stupid (but still very stupid) later version:

Not great, but certainly a force to be reckoned with at Materials depth, anyway.

I don't have any newer shots of what it's doing now since I've put a pause on AI dev to work on the BR map itself, because the AI is getting complex enough that it's really annoying working on it in regular 0b10 maps where there are too many distractions.

Note that the regular game itself could perhaps one day benefit from this new AI, since having a bot that can do this is something I've always wanted to add for certain... plot-related reasons, but it was too complex to bother with during earlier development. Not that it definitely will happen now, but it's at least more likely :P

The map!

The entire game is just one map--survive to win. It's probably about 200x200 (same size as Factory/Research), though I'm not sure yet because it'll depend on exactly how many of these AIs the game can actually power without slowing down (since the speed of the AI will determine the number that can be in the map at once, and that will indirectly determine the size of the map because we want to aim for a certain density of enemies).

The initial concept was to have it be like an 0b10 map with a final central room where of course the last living bots will have to converge on. Here I was just starting out in the map generator...

As I was fooling around with trying to get it to do what I wanted, another idea popped into my head: What if instead of using the normal subterranean-style maps we "converted" this to a sort of overland map where rooms are instead structures? Just open it all up...

This was an initial failed attempt to get the generator to do a proper post-processing run to achieve that goal:

But at least that looks cool, so I thought I'd share it :)

Anyway, then I got it doing what it was supposed to be doing and the results are like this:

Some of the strategy implications:

• makes it much easier to navigate and reach the center (can mostly chop through everything once you have orientation)
• makes it easier to escape if you're faster than a pursuer, harder if you're slower (and harder to give chase if you're slower)
• easier to spot enemies and be spotted because generally more open
• less likely to get unnecessarily trapped by the closing circle of heat death

Plus it's also kinda neat just to have a different kind of map to play around with.

What you think about having it be open instead of rooms-and-corridors? Probably more exciting this way?

Reminder

Don't forget that if you're interested in having a say in which optional Beta 10 feature gets implemented, voting is still in progress!