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[NJW2000]

While taking a constitutional in the country today, I noticed a pair of Jack Russels in someone's garden, barking at me furiously. Nothing odd about that, of course, but one of them was behaving in a very strange way.

It was running around and around and around, in a sort of figure-of-eight - shaped depression. One long looped strip of mud 2-5 inches deep, apparently worn out of the turf by the repetitive action of this one small dog. I watched it for a while, and it didn't stop sprinting around and around along the same path. It even approached an angle of 45 degrees on one end of the loop with its momentum, running up the side it had worn out for itself.

A sheep was watching it, newly lambed. I suspected one of the two was hypnotising the other, but which? Dogs are nearly as strange as cats sometimes.

[Sergarr]

In a different thread, yes.

Nah, I saw that. I assume there's some kind of broader context involving an engine of some kind, which interests me because AI is a subject of some fascination for me.

The broader context is that I'm modding Warcraft 3, as the game I have the most modding experience with and which is probably one of the easiest games to mod effectively, thanks to the powerful internal script engine combined with a large number of useful hardcoded capabilities.

The AI in question is based on a probably simplest implementation model, the main code being simply a large string of "if-then-elseif-elseif-...-elseif-else" statements, with the defensive and situation-specific condition-action pairs at first places, and gradually moving to more offensive and general ones as it goes.

There are some extra procedures for choosing the closest target of a select type, and for doing some miscellaneous things like self-healing on low health, as well as some internal memory stash for keeping track of important ability cooldowns (like the invulnerability shield) but they're just for higher quality of life.

It's quite surprising, even for myself, just how powerful a simple algorithm like this can be.

[Arx]

In a different thread, yes.

Nah, I saw that. I assume there's some kind of broader context involving an engine of some kind, which interests me because AI is a subject of some fascination for me.

The broader context is that I'm modding Warcraft 3, as the game I have the most modding experience with and which is probably one of the easiest games to mod effectively, thanks to the powerful internal script engine combined with a large number of useful hardcoded capabilities.

Aah, I see. Interesting!

[Sonlirain]

https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2016/04/50d69223dde10e47d9f9f9558c883480bea8a7cf.png
Sim City 2000 tried to warn us.

[Putnam]

Yes let's bring back the topic that got two people banned last time it was brought up!! Golly gee!!

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

needs more exclamation marks

[TheBiggerFish]

...
Uncalled for, Putnam.

All the same, it is rather eerie.

[MrRoboto75]

All I remember of SC2000 was the people complaining about me bulldozing trees.

entire town was elves, I tell you.

[Putnam]

...
Uncalled for, Putnam.

i don't like people getting banned??

[Kot]

Let's bring another one.
It's more being annoyed than WTF but I hate those laws against portrayal of Nazism and so on. I mean, if I want to watch an Die Deutsche Wochenschau from 1941 on Youtube that proably means I proably have a reason to, but nooo, instead I either have to go through proxies because Poland doesn't allow this kind of stuff or sometimes I am left on ice because the video is removed all together because it was "inapproppriate".
Same goes for swastika removal in video games - tons of games with Nazis in them don't include swastikas. It's especially annoying when they instead put on something like Tomania crosses (why, just whyyy) or less disgusting Balkenkreuz (I do know that it was the main symbol on most German vehicles but some of them, mainly planes, also sported an Hakenkreuz on tail and so on, and the flags totally did have a swastika on them... I want to fight Nazis, not International Black Cross Organization). I can understand the game devs that they don't want to put them in games even if they aim for complete historical accuracy because that would outright ban the game in serveral European countries, but the laws are sometimes way too strict and in some cases outright retarded.
Let's not even start about the fact that USSR flag and other communist symbols are A-Okay.

I start to see the irony in some random Internet quote that "they're literally Nazis about this whole no-Nazi thing". Forbidding it from being show doesn't make it dissapear.

[BlackFlyme]

The Fourth Reich in the Metro books use a three-pointed version of the swastika. In the games? A black C. Weird.

[GiglameshDespair]

The Metro 2033 book is weird. It's really good, but it's weird.

[Tack]

So I laid open my foot on a tile revently. Only just noticed that along with healing the wound I'm also developing a nice callous, in what has to be evolution's most hilariously empty gesture.

[Kot]

The Metro 2033 book is weird. It's really good, but it's weird.

Huh, why? Is the weirdness coming from the Post-Apo setting or something else? It haven't really struck me as weird.

[GiglameshDespair]

The Metro 2033 book is weird. It's really good, but it's weird.

Huh, why? Is the weirdness coming from the Post-Apo setting or something else? It haven't really struck me as weird.

Spoilered for those who haven't read the book.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Bourbon gets possessed by philosophising spirits and dies.

There's a man thinks he's the last reincarnation of Genghis Khan, who might be magical? Or not? And there's apparently magic maps that show the past, present and future.

The protagonist bets on a rat race, loses, and has to shovel shit, having a long monologue on the nature of humans as things that produce manure.

Artyom also meets what may be philosophers or may be hallucinations and has a discussion with them.

It certainly fits with the supernatural setting of the Metro, but that doesn't stop it being strange.