[Freeciv] Re: Technology

[Mark Metson <markm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, Christian Knoke wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 04:19:32PM +0200, Thomas Strub wrote:
> > 
> > When Raimar presented the CMA at FUADEC is said to him that CMA is
> > rather useless without that triggers, but he said it would be to
> > complicate to have sizedependend rules. 
> > 
> > A production MA like you describe it would be a big help for playing.
> > Hope someone will code it sometime (For a better AI we need it anyway.)
> 
> Triggers for everything (not only CMA) are a good thing, but I want this
> flexible and scriptable, so the UI is the main problem, and I don't think
> a GUI makes much sense.
> 
> I certainly don't want another CMA option.

I would certainly want scripting.

For one thing, fond recollection of various games in which the players are
basically writing robot scripts / programming robots (corewars, some kind
of robotic tanks/cars game and so on) leads me to hope that if players
could "easily" (a relative term ;-) write scripts that could offload some
snippets of AI development onto the players. Also, people could start 
swapping scripts.

I think that it ought to be reasonable to satisfy the GUI types too by
having some kind of menu of such scripts and include a bunch of good
scripts with the basic distribution (at least once some good ones have
been developed). The interface for such users need not mention scripts at
all, the scripts could be presented as persons or personality types along
with little bio or resume type text blurbs. Like "Johan the Vicious:  
peasants claim he tries to starve them to death and denies them
necessities such as silk stockings, chocolate, coffee, opium, and steet
enteratiners but the lords of industry praise his ability to keep workers
productive and eliminate drug dealers and panhandlers from the streets..."

Basically hide the actual scripts from those who don't like such things 
but give them the ability to run them whilst being able to think they 
aren't running a script they're choosing who to place in charge of their 
city...

-MarkM-

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