can anyone tell me how to make a simple AI for a spaceship in an fps?  All it needs to do is move and shoot.  I cannot make something that apears real.

You might want to check out the space shooter minigame.

The Joss Master:

You might want to check out the space shooter minigame.

Sadly premuim :(. Restricting access does not help the budding indie dev. I don't understand why MS would restrict these samples. App has a premium account though so he's good.

it might help

http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/Obstacle.html

steering is probably what you are looking for.

cheers

Sounds like you are just starting out, so I would advise working it out yourself.

Start by thinking about a situation, say player is at AI's six o'clock and level.

What options does the AI have?

Fly straight? Gonna get you killed.

So it has to make a maneauver.
Work out what viable moves the AI has in this situation, and code each of them up. Give them sensible names so you know what they do like BreakLeft, BreakRight, InnerLoop, OuterLoop.

Then add a decision layer on top so the AI picks one, start out picking one at random, then as you get better at coding AI you can start adding things like decision variables to make the effect more realistic.

Then add more situations and do it all again.

It's a long job, but a very good learning exercise.

Stainless:

Sounds like you are just starting out, so I would advise working it out yourself.

Actualy I am not just starting out.  However my 3d AIs have a habit of lossing very fast, and with minimal effort.  I was hoping to see of there was a detail I was missing, not to learn how to make AIs.

It's a difficult problem for space combat, the nearest logical match is dogfighting, but all the parameters that make dogfighting work do not apply to space combat.

There's no gravity, no atmosphere, so a lot of the parameters make no sense.

Real world space combat would probably be very short, very boring, and very bloody. The most accurate weapons fire would win every time as a single hit may be enough to disable a spacecraft.

If you have spaceship parameters like turning rate, max acceleration, etc then your best bet is to teach the AI a set of combat moves and let it choose from them based on the relative capabilities of the two ships.

A ship that could accelerate and deccelerate quickly could make darting attacks, setting up an intercept vector with the target at a long range, running in and firing then running away again.

A ship that can turn quickly would attempt to get in close and get on the six

A ship that can pitch rapidly may try to sucker a target into it's six and loop behind it.

That sort of thing.

I found that simple is best for my space game!