New ai available

[Hans Ronne <hronne at pp dot sbbs dot se>]

Yesterday, I checked in the new lobotomized version of the mplayer on the
CVS repository. It's called "iplayer" (i for independents) and lives in the
new kernel file iplayer.c.

The iplayer is now the default ai for the independent side. You must still
explicitly activate the independent ai during setup by checking the "Indeps
have AI" checkbox if you want to use it. However, you can also use the
setup dialogs, the Side menu, or the command line to assign the iplayer to
real sides, as an alternative to the mplayer.

So how does the iplayer differ from the mplayer? Well, I threw out all the
high level planning and strategy code. The strategy object itself is gone,
as are the theaters, the side goals and all code referring to these
objects. I also deleted all code dealing with transportation etc. In fact,
only 40% of the original mplayer is left.

Now here is the funny part. You would think that this crippled wreck of an
ai would hardly be able to defend itself. In fact, it still puts up a
pretty good fight. Thus, when I ran them against each other, the iplayer
even managed to beat the real mplayer a few times. Not bad for somebody who
just had 60% of his brain removed!

Hans

Hans Ronne

hronne@pp.sbbs.se