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125 points akktor | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.195s | source

This question's for all those cool projects or skills you're secretly fascinated by, but haven't quite jumped into. Maybe you feel like you just don't have the right "brain" for it, or you're not smart enough to figure it out, or even worse, you simply have no clue how or where to even start.

The idea here is to shine a light on these hidden interests and the little (or big!) mental blocks that come with them. If you're already rocking in those specific areas – or you've been there and figured out how to get past similar hurdles – please chime in! Share some helpful resources, dish out general advice, or just give a nudge of encouragement on how to take that intimidating first step.

Let's help each other get unstuck!

1. trealira ◴[] No.44256915[source]
For a while now, I've had the desire to make an AI that kills enemies and beats levels like a human would in the game Crypt of the Necrodancer. Here's[0] someone doing it as a human without ever taking damage.

There's something close called ChoregraphAI[1] on GitHub. It simulates the entire map and does a brute force search for what will get it to the stairs. That doesn't satisfy me because it just skips most of the enemies and takes advantage of things that a human couldn't know, like where a bat will move (bats move randomly, while other enemies are completely deterministic). Also, it can't control the game and is for an old version of it (although those problems themselves seem not that big).

But, I do not know what kind of AI could be written to perform the kind of long term planning and strategizing that a human would do (e.g. isolate each enemy to beat it more easily) and to beat the enemies like a human would (with special, pre-practiced strategies for certain enemies or groups of enemies), and even if I did, I get the sense that this would be really complicated for a first try and that I should gain experience making such an AI for a simpler game, though I don't know what.

It might be a self-constrained challenge. It's just been floating around my head for a while because I don't really know where to start.

[0]: https://youtu.be/CxavaHV-K6A

[1]: https://github.com/Grimy/ChoregraphAI