Artificial Inteligence

In the past few weeks we have been making the most awesome computer card game ever. And what’s more: It’s our biggest project yet!

From a coder’s point of view the most daunting task is to create an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is challenging, not impossible to beat, with different difficulty levels and, most important of all, to be fun to play against. Truth being told, I’ve never coded a single line of anything resembling AI in my entire life, but luckily I’ve always kept an AI book from my college days (yes it’s collecting dust in a closet).

I’d like to summarize the AI basics of the process to create an intelligent agent (something that is capable of resolving some task in an efficient manner). Every agent perceives data through sensors and is capable of taking actions in response to that information. Those actions are aimed to reach a specific goal.

Here’s a list that gathers all the design information of the agent

Percepts

• Cards currently on hand
• Cards already played
• Cards on deck
• Field control (Information on the game board)
• Powerups (awesome, huh?)

Actions

• Play card
• Shoot (yes you can shoot)

Goals

• Win the match
• I can’t think of any other goal the AI should have right now…

I’ll be expanding this post as I find interesting stuff in the AI book.