AI Loom hierarchical AI toolkit

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Introduction AI Loom is a cross-platform C++ framework for rapid AI development. Loom evolved out of the idea that in game development there is often the need for placeholder AI while an application is in initial development phases. As the game matures so does the AI, and therefore a pluggable, component based AI engine would be ideal. It was also recognized that many software developers and game programmers have little or no experience with AI, and therefore a simple straight-forward API was a necessity. AI Loom is developed such that all components of an agent are pluggable providing a very rich functionality, but at the same time exposes a minimal API to the application developer. The goals of Loom have evolved to more than just a simple agent framework however. As the development of Loom continued it was recognized that it may be possible to abstract the general components of an agent out in such a manner that ALL agent types may be constructed. With such a lofty goal it has taken a few headaches and more than a few late nights to create a design that fulfills our general agent goal. Not only does AI Loom supply the developer with an excellent API for rapid agent development, but Loom is also a fully distributed AI system. The distributed communication is nearly completely hidden from the developer, but a peer-to-peer network layer is accessible from agents. Agents can send messages to one another, give each other orders, and solve problems on another agents behalf. For more information on Loom please see the documentation page! AI Loom is an open source project licensed under the LGPL. In short this means that you can use and link your application with AI Loom regardless of what license your application uses. However, if you make changes to AI Loom, you must make those changes open source under the LGPL. Portability is a major goal of the loom project. The current release, 0.1 is only supported on linux. The next minor release will support windows, irix and OS X as well as linux. If you are developing on one of these platforms please sign up for the mailing list: ailoom-devel@lists.sourceforge.net. This can be done on the sf site here. News Treefort Wars is using Loom [18 November 2003] Treefort Wars, a game developed for a class at Iowa State University is using Loom for the character AI. Loom 0.1 is out - Finally [22 October 2003] After six months I finally got moving on coding up the system I came up with and wrote about. So here is the first initial (very limited capability wise) release of AI Loom. I am working on it semi-regularily again so I will be making releases as more features become available. You can download the source or linux distribution of the libraries here. The technical paper for Loom 1.0. [29 April 2003] Here is the technical paper that I presented for my class in distributed computing at Iowa State University. There is two versions both in pdf of the paper. The IEEE(trans) typeset can be downloaded here, and a double-spaced version can be found here. Loom 0.1.0 in development [9.Jan.2003] Just in case anyone is checking out this page. We are finally starting work on a revised version of the library. Although we originally were shooting for new years for this version, it will most likely be some time before it is out. We do have a paper outlining the design of the system now. We hope that after completing this model for the core system that we'll be able to implement some common tools for the system and then add a slick gui managing system. Anyway check out the design doc new design. Loom 0.0.4 released [23.Oct.2002] Loom pre-alpha version 0.0.4 has been released. Download now! This version includes the following changes: fixed bug causing seg fault when there was no parent of a node. further support of hierarcical nodes. Loom featured on flipCode Loom was reseantly featured on flipCode. Thanks to Kurt Miller for finding us and posting a link to our site. Loom 0.0.3 released [17.Oct.2002] Loom pre-alpha version 0.0.3 has been released. Download now! This version includes the following changes: Fixed bug preventing access to the root node. API cleanups. Loom 0.0.2 released [9.Oct.2002] Loom pre-alpha version 0.0.2 has been released. Download now! This version includes the following changes: Added upward heirarchy support. Instict has been renamed to Reflex. Midworld using Loom Midworld, a game being developed by the Iowa State University Game Developers Club for the 2003 IGDA festival student competition has decided to use Loom as its AI engine. AI Loom 0.0.1 AI Loom pre-alpha version 0.0.1 is released. To download click here: download Here are the major features of this pre-alpha release: Supports abstracted instincts - object interaction capabilities. The basic framework of an aiNode is setup. The system handles any number of nodes at a given level - no hierarcical support.

	For inquiries, wishes or comments please contact ailoom-devel@lists.sourceforge.net. AI Loom is copyright (C) 2002 Josh Brown and Ben Scott - released under the LGPL.