   flocking for soccer
  hi - im currently working on a soccer game ai and im never really pleased with how the team behaves. the game is for cellphones, so i dont have many resources and i started it as FSM. there are many game-states (ball in and out of game e.g.) anyways.the more i think about it, choosing the position does work a bit like flocking: avoiding players of the same team, going for the ball and other players like "prey" and having a formation position which gives the general spot where a player has to be...did anyone here try something similar and do you think that a few rules might result in a soccer-like behaviour?   greetings and such - atomhamster 
  I don''t think youd want flocking per se, unless you want   6-year-old style soccer where everyone just lumps together around the ball...It might be a good base to start out with, and would likely work well to coordinate each line and make the players look more lifelike.  I''d think you''d need rather low weights on the flocking beheiviors and much higher ones on ball-seeking ( based on 1/d^2 or something ) and staying in the correct position.   - Scott "me22" McMurray( email/MSN me22@fastmail.ca ICQ 37213887 ) ;  You might wanna check out OpenSteer (http://opensteer.sourceforge.net/)They have a soccer demo which uses steering to determine how the player moves towards the ball.Hope this helps ;  What better resource than RoboCup?   Kami no Itte ga ore ni zettai naru! ;  me22: the question might be where "flocking" ends and "keeping positions" ends, but i guess if you put high priorities on "get ball" and "stay at position" its still flocking?i put a reaction rectangle around the positions of the defensive players (the team which does not have the ball). this way, they react on opposing players which are close to their intended position and it doesnt matter if they went forward to attack right before a counter.i made the rectangles overlap, so that no enemy will get through and when there are more then one opponent, i choose a position in the center of those opponents...xEricx: didnt know that site, thanks! ill have a look now.tangentz: RoboCup is a good resource too.   greetings and such - atomhamster 