sofar / entity_ai

An entity scripting engine for mobs and npcs

NAME

The entity_ai name is kind of lame, so, I likely will want to change the name to something that more appropriately represents it's architecture. There is absolutely nothing AI about this desing, and it's more of a finite state machine than anything. Not that that diminishes the project in any way. But despite it's capability of plugging in a real AI of sorts, it currently doesn't do that.

LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2016-2019 - Auke Kok [email protected]

entity_ai is licensed as follows:

• All code is: LGPL-2.1
• All artwork is: CC-BY-SA-4.0

except:

• sound files in the sounds folder are licensed according to their respective licenses (documented in sounds/readme.md).
• stone_giant.png is identical to default_stone.png from minetest_game and licensed as the original.

["code" means everything in lua files, "artwork" means everything else, including documentation, sounds, textures, 3d models]

SPLITTING UP THIS PROJECT *

In the future, the core API code will be seperated from the monster definitions. Each monster will be it's own mod permitting users to disable/enable monsters as they see fit. This organization will help to keep per-mod specific code out of the core and make core functions better suited to handle all monsters.

entity_ai's Issues

Licensing

• Licensing just the artwork under CC-BY-ND does not disallow derivatives on the code, which isn't distributed under the same license. Only issue is that documentation would have to be rewritten from scratch if the API of a fork was different from the original. However, the licenses are still effective in reducing forking, by limiting the number of people who want to work on the project.
• Even if the licenses worked in the way you described, it would make it a little bit harder to contribute since people could not put their changes in a public repository to make a pull request.
• It's not clear if documentation is meant to include code comments
• Forking this mod would have no significant negative consequences, as long as the forks used a different mod name. It would be even beneficial if they provided modified APIs, since modders would have greater choice in how they make their mobs.
• Mobs would not have to switch to a LGPL-compatible license later on, because of the dynamic linking exception.

Though it looks like the repository might be meant more as just an in-progress preview of something you want to merge into minetest_game instead of a standalone mod, since the CC-BY-ND license would prevent it from getting in the mod releases forum. In that case, most of my non-technical criticisms would not apply.

Pruning causes issues in labyrinths

With pruning mobs stuck on corners in labyrinths.

https://youtu.be/TLjNAaCpDZo

The first part of this video is without pruning, the second part is with pruning. I use my own pathfinder and the dry shrub shows the path

Mob can't flee while punched

If i punch a mob it takes a second until the state changes and it starts to flee. If I punch continuously I can punch the mod to death. The mob can't flee

Tested with MT0.5, MTG and the entity_ai sheep

https://youtu.be/AVS6Strsgjk

Factors don't belong in the state

From looking at the code, it looks like factors give input to states by setting fields in the state. This seems ugly and unnecessarily stateful, and the fact that the factors are nil-ed right in start after being checked suggests that they are not conceptually part of the state.

Why not pass factor parameters into the state as a parameter to start? It would remove the need for the factor = nil boilerplate and leave less room for error.

Spawning

How should mobs spawn? You have no spawn code in the engine. Should this be done in mods or do you want to add this to the engine?