[Freeciv-Dev] Re: FreeCiv and Soar

["Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 4 Jan 2003, Thomas L. Packer at home wrote:
>   You say: "Some people are in favour of running the AI as a client-like
> program; this is more modular but also less efficient."And a friend of
> mine suggests the following: "Integrating a general purpose AI interface
> would require writing a binding layer so that all Freeciv state variables
> are visible, enumeratable, and controllable as a minimum."

That may not be necessary. I would guess that the easiest approach would
be to write an AI client which communicates with a freeciv server over
TCP/IP. A bare-bones client can be found in client/gui-stub/ in the source
code, which can be used as a starting point.

The bigger question is whether your project would need more information
from the server than a normal client would get. For example, the current
freeciv AI is omniscient so that it can see where the enemy is and where
it can expand.

>   What is the likelihood of this kind of thing happening to the FreeCiv
> source code?

I am not clear on what you mean by "this". If you mean an API for a
general plugin architecture for the sever, then nobody is working on that
as far as I know, and to be honest I don't quite see the point. Some
people are working on interfacing Python with the server, however.

> >   2.  If I did integrate Soar with FreeCiv, would that force Soar to be
> GPLed?Right now I think it is in the public domain.

Soar would have to be in a compatible license, but not necessarily GPL.
Public domain is compatible.

> I'm not an AI person - I'd suggest you send mail to
> freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx about this

What is Soar, anyway? Hard to come up with any recommendations without
knowing what you are attempting to do.

  - Per