SCRIPTING BEHAVIOUR – TOWARDS A NEW LANGUAGE FOR MAKING NPCS ACT INTELLIGENTLY
Eike Falk Anderson · 2005
Game-bots, behaviour definition language, scripting language, virtual machine. The advent of programmable shaders for real-time graphical applications in recent years has shown that with relatively little effort, great advances in the graphical quality of computer games can be achieved. The introduction of higher level programming languages for the creation of these shaders (see [Fernando and Kilgard 2003]) has demonstrated that even better graphical quality for games is attainable. It is our belief that to achieve further improvements in the quality of computer games, a similar approach will have to be taken for the creation of the artificially intelligent characters that populate the virtual worlds found in modern computer games. We therefore propose a universally applicable extension programming language (AvDL) for the definition of artificial behaviour for creatures and characters in computer games and possibly in computer animation. The syntax of our language is based on that of the C++ programming language as described by [Stroustrup 1997] and provides for the definition of deterministic, as well as goal directed behaviour for artificial entities. This will make it possible to use our language for different purposes (the definition of NPCs – Non Player Characters – in games of different genres) and with a wide range of programs. 1