MAMEWorld Forums - Programming - Re: Writing code like you work for Atari or how to make a great game better?

> The question is about Cyberball of course, my current passion.
> Fantastic game, wouldn't change a thing, except one thing.
> Single player experience.
>
> Once you can beat the Ai, the game is finished unless you have a friend nearby that
> loves it or better yet, 3 friends.
>
> The computer is terrible as an opponent.
> So, would it be possible given what we know about the game to improve the Ai?
>
> It would be outstanding to be able to do this within the confines of the available
> space on an existing board, or maybe one could use current chips with more space. In
> the meantime just being able to do it within Mame would be fantastic.
>
> What would it take to make this possible? How would someone expand on the existing
> code? Are their people here or out there that can do it for a price? Like adding new
> levels to Donkey Kong.
>
> Can we graft the brains of Madden on to Doc Davis?

This is the same for pretty much any game, once you learn how to beat the AI, things become easy. If anything that's intentional as it makes it possible to master / beat the game, rather than it just feeling cheap.

AI is a complex subject, and can be one of the more demanding tasks in a game. Remember these games had weak CPUs compared to modern systems.

Sure you could reprogram the AI, but again once you worked out how the new AI worked you'd probably find beating it just as easy.

It's also a lot easier to think 'AI could be better' but then when asked to come up with a complete plan of how the AI could be better it's much more difficult.