Idea: Allow users to define their own AI drivers by script/plugins/some api. The inputs to each driver would be the same, and it would be up to the programmer to make the fastest AI possible. Of course, being fast is not the only thing that matters, it would need to decide when to race with other cars, pit, deal with crazy circumstances.

Why?:
-The result will be at least as good, if not better AI available
-Fun (for nerds like me)
-Education
-24H BATTLE OF THE AI!!!1
-?

Why Not?:
-Opens a door up for cheating?
-No one cares about making bots
-Dev time that could be better spent on racing stuff, for people
-?

+1

I've always wanted an AI friend who played LFS.

Your "whys" aren't very appealing, I do not see really any purpose of this.

The system now will be changed if you didn't know, we should see vast improvements by S2 final, but user made AIs I can't imagine will be at all helpful, but make things more confusing and useless (useful for the time being, but afterwards completely useless).

I guess I don't really see any reasons to have such a system.

If you've ever heard of an RTS project called Spring, then you'll know what I'm about to talk about.

The project allows users to create their own AI, and being an RTS, this is surely a time consuming and lengthy process. However, the end results are usually quite good, and these have to be some of the best AI I've ever played against for an RTS.

My point is, the same thing could happen for LFS. If there was a system that allowed users to create and program their own AI, we'd be sure to have some of the best AI out of any racing game in a short bit of time. For all of us who actually would like to see decent AI, this would be the best thing to happen to the game for us.

I have already suggested this. It would only work well if it were like the AI in torcs.

Yes, I know the system is due for some work soon. That's why now would be a good time to bring in such a system, before the AI is all done.

Not everyone will see a use for the system of course, because not everyone is interested in designing AI systems. I am, and there is probably more. nfsjunkie91 has the right idea

admission: didn't search :/

I raised the idea a while back, can't find the thread now. It cam back with mixed results. I think it would be fun for many to be able to create AI and would benefit LFS and also take the workload off the devs.

Back in the early Q1 days user generated AI were popular for offline play and some were far higher quality than the supplied AI. Driving is far more complex but I think it should be possible.

The key problem is how far down in the physiccs the hooks for the AI live. Too low and crappy code with have a huge nagative impact on the execution of LFS as its single threaded.

I like this idea, I mean, obviously people would need to be willing to spend the time to work on their AI but with a well designed/implemented API or other interface to the programmers it would be possible to hold championships based purely on AI drivers, this would also allow people complaining of the AI being to easy to stop complaining, well not really because after they will complain about the AI being too hard. AI is really easy to make impossible to beat, and to make to easy to beat, but making it be challenging to all people is difficult without using "AI Cheating" techniques such as catch-up. I know a little off the topic, but I like this idea. +1

I think it would be very hard to provide a good interface for ai-programmers. But I do think we should be provided all the AI parameters (like an AI setup) instead of just learner/quick/etc. (a starter would be to set the consistency from machine to sloppy) That would push the burden of fine tuning the AI to the user giving more time for coding.

We also need a "playlist" so we can set the AI to autolearn some tracks over night.

Now there really isn't any point of this right now because Scawen just said AI is the next thing on his list.

Maybe something along the lines of LFS's ingame engine sound generator could be built to allow customised behaviour of the AI's as well... maybe.

You could then potentially set sliders for..

AI's ability to stay on the racing line
Ability to avoid collisions
Aggressiveness towards other cars
Reaction time slider for changing gears, braking points etc


Can't think of anything else for the moment, but you get the idea.

Anyway, this is probably slightly off the topic suggestion to the OP's/nfsjunkie91, but a user-friendly menu like this would atleast allow customisations and everyone would be able to participate, not just those with the theoretical understanding of what makes AI tick.

Quote from XCNuse :

Now there really isn't any point of this right now because Scawen just said AI is the next thing on his list.

Then its more important to give some ideas now. Saying "you should have done it this way" after the fact is pointless.