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stolkon Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters

Indeed. So in GOAP, actions have pre-conditions and post-conditions (effects.)

pickup-item was defined as:

PRECONDITIONS: HANDS_EMPTY==1, NEAR_ITEM==1, HAVE_ITEM==0

POSTCONDITIONS: HAVE_ITEM:=1 HANDS_EMPTY:=0

Which makes it so that agents carry one thing at a time, indeed.

stolkon Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters

I've been using Orkin's Goal-Oriented-Action-Planning (GOAP) in my own game development. Let me tell you an amusing story of how an AI agent outsmarted me, the developer.

So I had set up a test scenario, with an agent that could travel, buy stuff at shops, use axes, cut trees, and so forth. When I ran this test, I had set a goal of procuring timber.

What I expected the agent to do:

1. Go to shop

2. Buy axe

3. Go to forest

4. Cut tree

5. Drop axe

6. Pickup timber.

So I ran my GOAP test, and saw what the agent came up with:

1. Go to forest.

When I saw that step 1, I was disappointed, because the agent clearly should not be going to the forest when he has no axe yet.

But then, as a proud parent of my AI, I saw what the agent had actually planned:

1. Go to forest

2. Pick up firewood

3. Go to store

4. Sell firewood

5. Buy axe

6. Go to forest

7. Cut tree

8. Drop axe

9. Pickup timber

Hooray! I simply forget to give my agent money. But GOAP made him smart enough on how to get some money on his own.

I had of course equipped the agent with 'sell' action, and I had placed firewood in the forest, which I promptly had forgotten about when writing a test scenario.

I was so proud of that smart little agent!

Cool stuff, that GOAP!

stolkon What are you working on?

Developing a bicycle simulator (linux, windows.)

http://stolk.org/tlbtc/

stolkon Vacant Homes Are a Global Epidemic, and Paris Is Fighting It with a 60% Tax

Indeed. And Vancouver seems to have a simpler method too: A tax of 1% of assessed value.

In Paris, they need to come up with a "market rent" figure for each and every property to tax. Do they have those numbers? Using assessment value as Vancouver does, seems a lot easier.

Also, I wonder what's a bigger number: 1% of assessed value, or 60% of market rent. The previous 20% of market rent seems to be a low number, compared to the wealth stored in the property.

stolkon Electronic meters’ false readings up to six times higher than actual consumption

I wish I could compare, but I moved into a (large) new home with a smart meter. I have no measurement that I can compare it to. On top of that, I just replaced all bulbs with LED, and wonder if that has been counterproductive.

stolkon Android permissions and hypocrisy

It doesn't always have to be like this, on Android:

https://twitter.com/BramStolk/status/421750337750327296

stolkon Intel Core i7-7700K Kaby Lake review: Is the desktop CPU dead?

Once the next generation (CannonLake) is out, AVX-512 will be available.

With that, the SIMD width will be doubled, and AVX-512 optimized code could possibly double in performance as well, as long as the memory can keep up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVX-512

stolkon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (January 2017)

SEEKING WORK - Remote from Vancouver, BC.

I develop and publish games for iOS / Android / Steam.

Opus Magnum: The Little Crane That Could (17M downloads)

Shipped many indie titles as sole developer.

Shipped AAA title 'SOCOM:Confrontation'

Author of Open Sourced project: GPGOAP

I am looking for contract work as app/game developer.

Skills include:

C,C++,Python,OpenGL,AI,PhysicsSim,NDK,iOS,UNIX

http://stackoverflow.com/users/story/301166

contact: b.stolk@gmail.com

stolkon Ask HN: How do you choose the programming language for a project?

Step 1: You choose C. Step 2: There is no step 2.

You can keep it simple.

stolkon AMD Gives More Zen Details

Does it have AVX512 support? Or at least AVX2?

stolkon Opendoor Raises $210M to Buy and Sell Even More Homes

"Opendoor charges the seller a fee that is 2% to 4% higher than a traditional real estate broker."

I guess they meant to write: "2 to 4 percentage POINTS higher." Which makes then ridiculously expensive.

stolkon Intel preferentially offers two customers Skylake Xeon CPUs

Meh. If it is lower TOC that you are after, then move your data centre to multi core ARM.

E.g. a 48 core 64 bit ARM processor: http://www.cavium.com/ThunderX_ARM_Processors.html

So, Amazon, Alibaba, you know what to do now.

stolkon Neural Net Trained on Mugshots Predicts Criminals

Let me guess... the NN was trained to spot tattoos? I bet you tattoos and crime correlate.

stolkon If you invested $1 a day, starting when you were born

Sorry, but those calculations are totally wrong. They use the S&P index to calculate capital gains.

They ignore the dividends that are paid on your capital, which is a significant portion of your growth, often even more than the capital gains.

stolkon Without affordable housing, Vancouver risks becoming an economic ghost town

...with blackjack and hookers! As a matter of fact, forget about the city.

stolkon Is Self Hosted Blogging Dead?

What's wrong with blogger.com ?

stolkon The Stock Market Will Rally in December and Then Crash – Here's Why

Technical Analysis is nothing but hogwash. If you want to make predictions, do fundamental analysis.

stolkon First South Americans Were Australian Aborigines (1999)

The dating method sounds very unreliable:

"The style of the art means it is at least 17,000 years old, but it could be up to 50,000 years old."

Art style? Yeah, right..... I call bull. Until carbon dated, I call this false.

If i draw something today in that style, it would not make it 50000 yrs old.