The Artificial Inteligence is now on an playable state. In free of obstacles maps the AI works ok. It can give an interesting battle, but it can be improve.

As we are in an Alpha version. The testing for the AI,  is made updating manually the database, taking me a lot of time. Also the new users are not going to enjoy the game, they dont have no enemy to fights or they appear in a crowded region.

So Im going to start programming the followings aspects of the game

• Random creation of new regions. Every new player will have a home region as a start point on its empire.
• The random creation of Solar Systems.We are going to create a star acompanied by planets.
• We are going to recreate all the old creatures from all the players (including AI players).Im going to DELETE all older creatures and create new and fresh creatures in their player's homeplanet
• Every human player is going to have in his home region an AI army to have fun with it.
• In the battle view (region view) We are going to put in the CheatBox a new button to recreate the battle. This means that all the units will be put on one of the sides of the maps.

This is the cheatbox, in all its glory.

• Interface improvements in the battle, specially when the AI player has the current turn.

And this will be all the update. I hope this update is going to be programmed fast. Have a good one.

We exposes Xhelos in the Flisol Arequipa del 2011 Event.The focus was talking about the Artificial Inteligence in Xenos and about game mechanics. For all interested I share on Slideshare the exposition (It's in spanish but i will be happy to translate it if people comments this Post ).

Improving the Artificial Inteligence for Xhelos

As part of my undergraduate Thesis on AI Research for Strategic AI using Potential Fields, i have created an Heat Map to better visualize how my AI take decisions. It's a Beta Work, and is not really a part of my game but it help me a lot to understand my AI. For now this AI Heat Map is going to be online. Also i will try to explain the different options it contains.

AI Visualization

In the right upper corner of the region map, I put a IA Panel. This panel allos us to work with the HeatMap. It has currently 5 options that I'm going to explain next:

Part of a Heat Map

Este mapa de calor indica en sus zonas mas rojas, los mejores lugares para posicionarse. 

Types of Visualizations

• Calculo de Accion: This map show us the best location to execute the selected action. The best places have a value of one hundred (100). Then nearby postions decrease their value, as they move away from the higher value positions.
• Calculo de Obstaculos:As we can't put units one in top of each other, we mark those zones with a 0 value. for now only the units count as a 0, but in a future, buildings, mineral and other kind of obstacles are going to be market with a 0 value.
• Calculo de Obstaculos + Accion: This is the sum of the previous heat maps.
• Calculo de Travel: This heatmap is responsible of the speed that the selected unit can move between different types of terrains. A zero means that this terrain is impassable.
• Calculo Full: This is the sum of all previous heatmaps. Zero values are like a black hole, once a zero value is calculated, this zone cannot be use anymore.

Try the Planet Beta on Alpha Centaury Solar System, this is the only planet that have AI units modified to perform ok in my tests.

Also the action 'Moverse' is not currently operative, so you better dont try this. If you want to know how this move perform, then choose the Calculo de Travel Option.

Have a nice one!

This update is about the novelties that will come the next week. For now all my updates are made on my localhost until the work done become stable. 

Now the AI players can recognize their enemies and their units can attack enemies units, but this only apply for melee units, range units will have to wait a little. I have created a new planet called Alpha Prime to develop and test the AI Players.

And by the way, now the battles have an end. Unitl now, all the battles didnt recognize when  it finished. I jsut need to tweake some things a little bit to make a workable version of this.

I have created a new unit called fighter. yes that big Fg is a unit. I created it to test the AI. When to Fg fight between them, they both die. Its help me in my debbuging. (And sure is fun to see death letters stained in blood everywhere in the map)

Althought im not updating too much, im reall working hard every evening to have this version stable for next week. Stay tune!.

More than an update of the game, im here to tell you that this week is going to have goods news to the game. After some vacations and some Drupal on it (i was an exponent, sure i do like Drupal a lot ). Im back for more game development!.

After four days of exhausting writing, i ended the tutorial. You can visit from this link or use the web menu. Remember that you can comment every part of the tutorial. Have a good one.