Pluggable AI

[uhlersoth]

I truly appreciate the fact that Forge is designed to be a player vs AI game. There are already a number of player vs player games out there, and IMO it's lots harder to program an AI to play Magic than to program for a player to play Magic.

Along those lines. I'd really like to see the capability of dropping in a custom AI. The following use case is how I would see it playing out:

- Provide an API abstracting the AI, such that a developer can create a custom implementation.
- At game or config time, allow the user the option of selecting a jar file containing their custom AI code.

We all play against a number of different personality types. I could see myself designing an AI based on, say, Joe, who is a very conservative player, and doesn't like to put his creatures in harm's way. Or based on, say, George, who will attack at every opportunity. Or even an unpredictable AI, whose decisions are heavily weighted on a random factor.

[Zucan]

I have thought the same exact thing... coming from the chess scene, there are many chess engines that can be plugged into your favourite chess board program and used... you can play against your engine or choice, or you can pit engine against engine for computer only competition.

I would love to see this occur in the Magic community as well. I believe both the AI engine and the graphical UI can be abstracted to an API that be used by Forge, BotArena, etc. Not only can we have a nice selection of engines to play against, but we could also have multiple user interfaces to play the game with.

Anyone else interested in this too?