I had made a quick test behaviour of one actor walking up to another actor and forcing the other actor the face him. The latter was done by plainly choosing a behaviour for this other actor. This type of logic may be useful for objects (to force a rock to fall on the floor, e.g.) but an actor should have more control over its own behaviour.
A better way to achieve this would be for the initiating actor to broadcast a “If I’m close to you, face me” opportunity. Then the other actor can decide whether or not he wants to do this.
However, in this case (walking up to an actor), the request to “face me” is quite urgent. Perhaps instead of telling the other actor what to do, a “shock” should be sent to him, forcing him to stop his current behaviour and pick a new one.
In the current design, the other actor would only choose to face you, if he was very fond of you or if facing you is something that feels comfortable. The risk that the other actor chooses another behaviour, with you or with another object, is too big.
To solve this, a Shock should not only startle the actors and force them to change their behaviour randomly. A Shock should be accompanied by a suggestion (in the form of a behaviour ID), accompanied by a gliding urgency value between appropriate and imperative.
Posted on July 25, 2006 at 12:35 pm
And how will we include Shock in the Decision Filter system?
Currently the Decision Filter system simply removes the opportunities that are least appropriate. It doesn’t rate these opportunities in a way that would allow us to compare them with the urgency of a Shock’s suggestion.
So the Shock evaluation logic, would need to rate the final group of opportunities and then compare these rates to the urgency value of the Shock’s Suggestion.