Reply to Re: AI & Missiles
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Well then, I won't ruin the challenge for you and offer any guidance if you're so keen 
I think there are three things to AI for shooting missiles:
1) Shooting in any direction. There is a script in MouseDink that can do this. It's essentially a superior version of the enemy shoot scripts, as those scripts only shoot in 8 or so directions while mine can shoot in any direction.
2) Missiles with mild homing effects. I *think* I, Kara Gu may have missiles like this, but I remember them being fairly unsophisticated. In MouseDink, I had homing missiles (the ones Dink can shoot) that cannot make drastic changes in direction. Thus, they are homing missiles but they can still be dodged.
3) Prediction. Obviously, shooting directly at Dink is not enough, because if Dink was moving, he would be in a different place by the time the missile reached its destination. I tried to write a prediction script when I wrote MouseDink but didn't achieve any satisfactory results. The equations are easy to derive with simple algrebra but the problem is the exact equations cannot be solved with Dink's fixed point integers. Information is lost. I tried to come up with an approximation equation that could be solved without loss of information with fixed points integers, but didn't achieve anything impressive. There are no scripts that handle prediction in MouseDink. EDIT: actually, thinking about it, coming up with a decent approximation formula may not have been the main problem. Inconsistencies in Dink's timings made predicting the missile speed relative to Dink's speed inexact. I may have concluded good prediction was therefore impossible, but I can't remember.
Good luck with adopting the scripts, and feel free to tackle prediction AI
I think there are three things to AI for shooting missiles:
1) Shooting in any direction. There is a script in MouseDink that can do this. It's essentially a superior version of the enemy shoot scripts, as those scripts only shoot in 8 or so directions while mine can shoot in any direction.
2) Missiles with mild homing effects. I *think* I, Kara Gu may have missiles like this, but I remember them being fairly unsophisticated. In MouseDink, I had homing missiles (the ones Dink can shoot) that cannot make drastic changes in direction. Thus, they are homing missiles but they can still be dodged.
3) Prediction. Obviously, shooting directly at Dink is not enough, because if Dink was moving, he would be in a different place by the time the missile reached its destination. I tried to write a prediction script when I wrote MouseDink but didn't achieve any satisfactory results. The equations are easy to derive with simple algrebra but the problem is the exact equations cannot be solved with Dink's fixed point integers. Information is lost. I tried to come up with an approximation equation that could be solved without loss of information with fixed points integers, but didn't achieve anything impressive. There are no scripts that handle prediction in MouseDink. EDIT: actually, thinking about it, coming up with a decent approximation formula may not have been the main problem. Inconsistencies in Dink's timings made predicting the missile speed relative to Dink's speed inexact. I may have concluded good prediction was therefore impossible, but I can't remember.
Good luck with adopting the scripts, and feel free to tackle prediction AI
