2006, Electronic Arts, PC (view on MobyGames)
Responsibilities: Gameplay Programming: Store Manager AI, Employee Assignments, Crafting Stations
After working on the base game The Sims 2 and the first expansion pack The Sims 2: University, I was called back to the PC team following the release of The Sims 2 Console to help make an expansion pack about building a store for your sims to shop at.
This project was the first which introduced the programming language Lua, as an alternative to the built-in proprietary language normally used to write The Sims behavior. Lua allowed for more complicated scenarios to be created easily by the engineering team, such as realistic poker games played by sims, and my assignment, which was a store managerial AI.
I learned the Lua language during this project, and used its strengths to help design the sorting and prioritization algorithm of the Store Managerial AI. When you told a sim to watch your store, they would intelligently manage which other employees should stock, man the register, take a break, etc, taking into account the various skill levels of the sims working in the store, as well as the skill levels of the manager. Beware of hiring a manager who isn’t very smart.
