4.4. Implementation on Real Video Game Scenarios
Implementing DOP on real video game scenarios can be a good opportunity to evaluate the proposed method and get advices and criticism from the experience game players. Many commercial game companies release their software develop kit (SDK) to allow game players to rewrite or modify the game to their heart’s content by creating custom Mods.
As the most well-known turn-based strategy game, Civilization 5 (Civ5) allows custom Mod to be created by game players to change the map of the game, the rules of the game and the AI behavior of the game. There are two official moddling tools available: ModBuddy and World Builder SDK. Posting a DOP pathfinding Mod on Civ5 can be a good opportunity to collect feedback from game players about the performance of DOP on real game scenarios.
Another famous city-building game SimCity 4 (SC4) also allows game players to create their own Mods to change the game. A Mod called NAM has successfully improved the built-in pathfinding system in SC4 by introducing a more accurate heuristic function [14]. Posting a DOP pathfinding Mod may make an improvement on the built-in pathfinding system from another angle.