Chapter 29. Analysis and Specification

Key Topics

• Objects in the World

• Behavior Enhancements

• Specification

At this stage of the book, the reactive animats are competent enough to perform various tasks such as wandering around and engaging basic combat. To make them more intelligent, we must increase their capabilities by allowing them to perform short sequences of actions (such as using doors or platforms and dodging incoming fire). Although these short plans are still short-term reactive behaviors, they can make the animats appear surprisingly realistic.

The next few pages prepare the development of these behaviors by analyzing the platform, understanding the problem, and specifying the world interfaces. This process is relatively familiar now, with the previous parts covering it in depth, so progression through these phases is much quicker here.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• The objects in the game environment, both items that can be picked up and contraptions that affect the movement. How they affect the player and how they are dealt with by the engine.

• The way human players manage to develop behaviors to use items and contraptions. A case study of each individual behavior for later use during the application phase.

• A specification that extends many of the existing interfaces described throughout this book.

At the end of this chapter, we'll have a code skeleton ready for an implementation of these behaviors.