Is psychology simulated/placement of services rewarded?

[IndyTransplant]

There are tricks to how casinos are laid out. Is there any simulation of temptations, let's say. So you put the bathrooms at the back, forcing people to walk past game after game, are they more likely to stop and play? Any reward for laying out your placement in some way, or does it not matter where you put anything?

[B1oodbathAndBeyond]

I'm curious about this too. At first I was purposely placing my ATMs and cashier in a spot where winners would have to walk past as many attractions as possible so that they may be tempted to keep playing instead of converting chips. I was also avoiding windows near games because I didn't want to remind the sims that the outside world exists, because then they might want to experience it instead of gambling!

I stopped when I saw that the sims have a defined "pursuit" where they decide where they're going, and just go there no matter what. So now I just place things where they minimize travel time and maximize environment.

If being within a certain distance of certain games or items had a small chance of "attracting" the sims, making them change their pursuit goal while on route, then psychology could be rewarded. I know the slot machine games have different "attraction" scores, but I don't know if they cause the sims to change their minds about what they were already going to do, or just make it more likely that they will choose that activity in the first place.

I *think* i witnessed a sim change his mind after waiting in line for several hours for an elevator (thanks to a bug), but I may have accidentally clicked off of him and onto a different sim. The screenshot I took said he was on his way to the bar, but when I tried to follow him, he actually went to the bathroom instead, and then left the casino. If it was the same sim, then apparently they can change their minds.

[chick10000]

Hi,

A work around for the elevator bug that i do is find the elevator with the bottleneck. Then only have that one elevator go up 1 floor. for example the bottleneck is on floor G. what I do is only have the elevator go to floor 2 and delete all the other stops. Then leave all the others alone. 2 things happen. The bottleneck elevator moves between 2 floors quicker. Also all the guest who use different floors will use different elevators and it makes it seem like everything is balanced out

[walter_nyc]

It has been rewarding so far looking how agent behavior is being improved, particularly on bathrooms and restaurants. I agree that eventually it would be more enjoyable if guests don't enter the casino or wake up with a pursuit goal. In Parkitect for example guests walk around the park and first try to find an attraction of interest that is available in the vecinity, only when the attempt fails they get the pursuit goal. Actually in SimAirport agents also tend to make smart decisions while trying to get closer to the gate. Right now in Casino -for what I can see- a guest wakes up or enter the casino and decides to go to a specific slot machine, even if it is very far away and sometimes that machine is not available and they have to decide again for any machine when the one next to her is empty. At the end they are exhausted of so much walking. Looking forward to see how agents keep on improving in SimCasino.

[LVGameDev]

Re: OP -- Good questions & line of thought.

Right now, the agents use "heuristics" to decide what to do -- distance/location, current needs, what the agent believes the object will do to their needs (utility scoring with attenuated need deltas), waiting time, cost, etc -- are all factored in. There are some flaws here, and it needs improved further for sure; we're aware (and have read some white papers on, even stumbled on some patents, etc) that there is quite a bit of psychology & planning/strategy that goes into casino floor layouts, game placement, etc.

It's not perfectly simulated yet, but it should do a decent job at approximating it right now -- very similar to SimAirport. The AI runs continually, depending on the need levels of the agent, and the agent can/will change their mind often -- my "go-to example" (adapted from SA, but same concept applies -- they're opportunistic/emergent):

Originally posted by AgentExample:

An agent want to gamble and kind of have to pee, but not badly; nearest bathroom is pretty far away, so they start walking towards a gaming machine -- which is a bit closer to the bathroom -- and then they realize "hey, I don't NEED to pee but it's close and will be pretty satisfying, let me run and pee real quick" -- once they've done their business, they'll most likely go back to a gaming machine (but not always/it's emergent, maybe they're a little hungry and a vending machine is near, etc).

It is something we do want to improve though, and long-term I'd ideally like to see it be a relatively high level of simulated perfection (it won't ever be *perfect* but it can objectively be quite close to fully "memory/knowledge/spatial-awareness -driven" AI).

@walter_nyc -- Yeah, we definitely want to improve it. The agents should be similarly opportunistic, like they are in SimAirport, though because they generally don't have a "lifecycle goal/target" it means they are more prone to meandering and/or locking-on to a more distant target.

They do prefer things near them, as in SimAirport, but it lacks the lifecycle weighting aspect that (IMO at least) does a ton to really "tie together" the AI and provide a good, realistic, and opportunistic experience from the agent AI.

A long time ago we did explore and try some "wander and find things" style AI but we had mixed results (was years ago, and was specifically for SA) -- it's something that probably would make a lot more sense in SC, though. That said, I do wonder if simply attenuating distance much more aggressively would yield similar outcomes; really would have to try it to know for sure though; one thing we've definitely learned is that theorizing about the AI is one thing, and seeing how it actually behaves in practice is commonly quite another! =D

We'll do some research on the AI paradigm that Parkitect uses -- if you have any links or good reading on the topic, we'd love to get them from you. Theory often varies a lot from the implementation, especially with AI [and pathfinding, to an extent], but much of this stuff does begin with academic/white-papers & general theory first, then implementation. Any link to background of Parkitect's conceptual implementation, or white-papers on "simulated-memory AI", or even written info/observations on Parkitect's AI, etc -- anything you might have handy and that might be relevant, we're always up for learning & trying other ways to see how they perform.

Hope you're enjoying so far! Ty for the feedback and thank you in advance for any additional thoughts / ideas / links on the AI topic -- it's something we definitely want to continue to refine/improve. I'd like to see the agents be *super* "smart" [read: wholly logical & 'believable'], really. =D

[wingllau]

Originally posted by chick10000:

Hi,

A work around for the elevator bug that i do is find the elevator with the bottleneck. Then only have that one elevator go up 1 floor. for example the bottleneck is on floor G. what I do is only have the elevator go to floor 2 and delete all the other stops. Then leave all the others alone. 2 things happen. The bottleneck elevator moves between 2 floors quicker. Also all the guest who use different floors will use different elevators and it makes it seem like everything is balanced out

I found that the elevator jam is partially caused by the staffers, the current setting only can assign staff only elevator but not guest only, so many staffs just compete with the guests.. to solve that i put an elevator inside the store room on the ground floor and placed the upper floor elevators inside a laundry room in each floor, it makes 99% staffs (I observed) to take the staff only elevator inside the store/laundry rooms (and it makes more sense and realistic). It helps to ease the jam but it still can't fix the problem of too many guests waiting for 1 particular elevator even I placed 6 elevators in the same area and leave the other 5 idle

[walter_nyc]

Originally posted by LVGameDev:

Re: OP -- Good questions & line of thought.

Hope you're enjoying so far! Ty for the feedback and thank you in advance for any additional thoughts / ideas / links on the AI topic -- it's something we definitely want to continue to refine/improve. I'd like to see the agents be *super* "smart" [read: wholly logical & 'believable'], really. =D

Definitely enjoying it so far! And thanks for the detailed response. I have not read white papers on Parkitect, my experience comes from many hours of gameplay.

Another thing that I wonder if you guys gave some thought -or am I completely wrong here- is the computational power assigned to the sleeping guests. It seems that the simulation makes calculations on the sleeping guests with the same frequency than to those that are awake. It is cool to see how everybody seem to have problems to holding it and they go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (all the drinks at the bar !) But seems like an overkill when half the guests in a large casino are sleeping and with a total of 3000 guests the awake agents lag in their decision making (in my gaming laptop), many times in the same coordinates. I wonder if an algorithm that put the guests to sleep for a period depending on, for example, how tired they are and the quality of the bedding and then "wake" them up would be more efficient.

[B1oodbathAndBeyond]

Originally posted by wingllau:

Originally posted by chick10000:

Hi,

A work around for the elevator bug that i do is find the elevator with the bottleneck. Then only have that one elevator go up 1 floor. for example the bottleneck is on floor G. what I do is only have the elevator go to floor 2 and delete all the other stops. Then leave all the others alone. 2 things happen. The bottleneck elevator moves between 2 floors quicker. Also all the guest who use different floors will use different elevators and it makes it seem like everything is balanced out

I found that the elevator jam is partially caused by the staffers, the current setting only can assign staff only elevator but not guest only, so many staffs just compete with the guests.. to solve that i put an elevator inside the store room on the ground floor and placed the upper floor elevators inside a laundry room in each floor, it makes 99% staffs (I observed) to take the staff only elevator inside the store/laundry rooms (and it makes more sense and realistic). It helps to ease the jam but it still can't fix the problem of too many guests waiting for 1 particular elevator even I placed 6 elevators in the same area and leave the other 5 idle

I did this too (not the same location - I put a staff elevator in the area where my storage, vault, and deliveries are all near), and while it drastically sped up my staff getting around the building, it didn't stop hundreds of sims from lining up at one elevator in my bank of 4, completely ignoring the others, despite the doors being wide open since I set ground floor as default.