Training Zone

Having described the important aspects of combat such as the weapons and conditions, we can now define a test bed to develop the AI behaviors. The chosen environment needs to be representative of real in-game situations, because skills developed and learned here should be transferable. By making the training zone a real game level, the chances of this happening successfully are significantly increased.

The focus of the training zone will be medium-range combat, emphasizing aiming skills, weapon handling, and immediate decisions. To improve these conditions, the environment needs to be designed with care:

• Frequent targets— The bots learning to aim need to find cannon fodder as often as possible, which will speed up the training process.

• Variety of weapons— To offer opportunities for more than one weapon, they need to be scattered throughout the training zone.

• Abundance of ammo— In addition, so as not to limit the bot to particular weapons, ammunition needs to be provided at regular intervals in space.

Also, paying attention to such little details will improve the development process and the learning of computer agents. For this, we'll use a fairly small deathmatch level, with good connectivity and plenty of weapons.