[Freeciv-Dev] Re: ai development

[Thue <thue@xxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 17 April 2001 10:59, Tuomas Airaksinen wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 10:40:54PM -0400, Alex Smith wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >     I'm interested in contributing in the area of AI development.
> >Could you please let me know more specifically what needs to be done,
>
> I'm not the best possible person to tell you this, but they have said
> that the whole AI code should be rewritten.

That is correct.

There are some discussion about moving the whole AI to the client, as it 
would have some advantages:
-The old AI could stay unaffected untill the new one was good enough.
-The AI automate functions could easily be used by a human player (client 
goto is a good example - moving the goto to the client allowed a human player 
to determine a goto route interactively.)
-It would make the AI's run in a seperate process from the server.
-It is an easy way to make sure the AI doesn't cheat unintentially by looking 
at the server datastruktures.

Of course there is the catch that developing the AI client side is a bit 
harder at some points.
Raimar Falke has done some work on client side city managment, but it hasn't 
gone into CVS as none of the people with CVS access have had the 
time/motivation to get around to it.

If you want a less highflying goal I have already added a number of items to 
the TODO file in CVS. Some of them are pretty specific.
Since checking especially an AI patch can be hard work there is no garantie 
that your patches will go into CVS unless they are well made && documented && 
tested && short.
This is not made better by the fact that nobody really maintains the AI. As 
mentioned it needs a rewrite.

-Thue