Notes

• a finite state machine where an actor has a single action that they are performing (fight, flee, charge, etc)
  • these actions have associated persistent information about their current goals and some very simple rules for completion
• default transitions between actions come from an alert cycle based on an actor's perception of enemies
  • this provides only very basic behavior of 'see enemy, attack, pursue'
• all further control is provided by a toolbox of behaviors which is layered on top of the basic decision making
  • behaviors each have trigger conditions based on the reception of certain stimuli during the information gathering phase
  • behaviors can override each other, modify the current action or change an actor's emotional state
• differentiation between races of actors comes in the form of custom 'black box' code that enables and disables behaviors based on environmental conditions
  • these rules are very simple and typically less than a page of code