My first bout with artificial intelligence (sort of)

Considering that those many years ago, trying to figure out AI in Duke scripting was where I stopped working on modding, it made plenty of sense that AI is where I'd start working on it again.

The landscape of the gaming community was far different for me at the time. The internet was still in its infancy, finding communities of people wasn't all that simple, and my only sources of reference material for Duke modding came from 2 different FAQ's I was able to find. If I couldn't figure everything out from those, I didn't have anyone else I could ask for help. To make matters worse, my only programming language at the time was HTML. I had never dabbled in any kind of dynamic coding before.

Fortunately going back to this game, I now have had far more experience. I've written games from scratch in shockwave, flash, and game maker, and used GUI-based scripting features in other games such as Starcraft. Therefore, a lot of things made far more sense to me this time. In just a couple of days, I had a simple monster chasing me around, one of the monsters that I've had in mind for the game since the beginning. I chose this one because it required minimal artwork to get it to look somewhat like it should.

Once that was taken care of, I decided to move onto the Bit; a neutral character in the game and not critical for anything, but it'd be wrong to not have those little guys in there. They can do everything the bits in the film could do... which... wasn't much really. They can hover, say yes, and say no, say both words in their own emphatic way, and they'll wig out and zip away in random directions if you shoot them.

Both of these creatures are among the simpler ones in the game, but were good learning experiences. I tend to work best by immediately applying what I've learned. It helps keep it ingrained in my mind so I don't forget it later. When I learn a new command, I immediately think up something I can test it on so I can see it in action. Little tricks I picked up from getting these simple-minded creatures to behave properly will surely come in handy later.