[ODE] OT: virtual creatures in games

[gl]

> Hard coding movement is hard, though. :-)  That's basically what Juice is
> all about, and I was kind of surprised how big a pain in the butt it was
> to make something walk... and even the things that walk have a tendency to
> fall over when faced with things like speed changes, or turning.

Agreed, I don't think it's an option - if you go that way you're really back
to the old canned animation styles (perhaps with some IK?), with ragdolls
dynamics only for freefalls.

> I'm pretty sure that a evolved (or "self-optimizing") control system is
> the way to go for things that walk.  It could be useful to use hard coded
> gaits to begin with, but I actually think that the amount of time spent
> fine-tuning gaits would probably exceed the amount of time it would take
> to write a self-optimizing control system.

I'll need to look up the term.  In general, if you evolve a creature in a
seperate app, and want to 'freeze' its brain (smile) for use in another
application without further learning ability, can you optimize the brain by
stripping out unneeded stuff?

> There's a system called "fuzzy cognitive maps" that I've been looking
> into.  It's sort of fuzzy-logic meets state-machine, and it seems like it
> might be a good candidate for decision making for artifical creatures.
> Here's a link that gives a nice intro, and a relevant application of them:

Thanks for the pointers guys.
--
gl