Modeling Individual Decisions - Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI - page 355

More or Less?
The way around this is for us to decide what our decision is going to entail. One ac-
tion? Two? A whole cluster of them? The more actions we lump into one decision,
the more complex the decision becomes. On the other hand, the fewer actions we
group into one decision, the more actual decisions we need to make. We also need
to be careful not to run into logical pitfalls such as the one illustrated above.
As always, the rationale for any given combination is very context-dependent.
Most of the time, we want to group actions together if they are strongly related. For
example, walking to an object is strongly related to the decision to pick the object
up. We wouldn't separate those two actions. The statements “should I pick up the
box?� and “should I walk to box?� sound odd together. If we connect the answer to
the first question to the second with “therefore,� however, it makes a lot more
sense to us. “Should I pick up the box? Yes. Therefore, I should walk to the box.�
The decision (such as it is) to walk to the box is a necessary component of the decision
to pick up the box. We can't pick it up if we don't walk to it. (You also can't pick
up the box if you can't walk to it.) Of course, we could not have even considered
picking the box up if the assumption wasn't there that we were going to walk to it.
The two actions are almost inextricably linked—which means they should be con-
sidered in one decision.

A NALYZING A S INGLE O PTION

Once we settle on what a decision entails, we need to analyze it. By sifting all of the
relevant information through the tools we've discussed, we can begin to home in on
the right decision.

I NTHE G AME Which Dude to Kill?

As our example throughout this next section, we define Evil Dude and Bad Dude as
types of antagonistic dudes. We will also add a boss type, Arch Dude, to the mix. (If
it helps complete the picture, we can imagine all the Dudes in dark glasses and stu-
pid hats.) There are four types of weapons that we and the Dudes can arm ourselves
with: a pistol, a shotgun, a machine gun, and a rocket launcher. The decision we
need to make is, when confronted by dudes of various types, armed with any of the
available weapons, and at various distances from us, which of the three should we
attack first (Figure 14.3)?