: I've noticed that, when I die, not only do I have knowledge of the events
: that led up to my death the next time around, but often the aliens seem to
: as well. In other words, the aliens seem to anticipate my actions and play
: becomes more difficult with each unsuccessful attempt. Do the Pfhor have
: future knowledge as well? Have they been using pattern buffers, too? Do
: they have access to my patterns in the pattern buffers? Or is this all my
: imagination - simply a matter of chance occurances leading to
: progressively more adverse situations on occasion?
: In gamespeak - is the Marathon engine adaptive? Perhaps the open source
: community could answer this one. Does Marathon learn from the player's
: mistakes and adjust the actions of the aliens to make it more difficult
: with each attempt? There is certainly a value in this, particularly on the
: higher difficulty levels, as it keeps the player sufficiently off-guard
: that they have to always think one step ahead of the aliens. Or is
: Marathon purely random?
Within the storyline, the Pfhor and the S'pht and the humans and the jjaro must all use the pattern buffers for something...but I'm fairly certain this is your imagination. I've never noticed my actions being anticipated, although possibly that's because I don't usually anticipate them either. :-) I admit I haven't scoped out the engine itself, but there's certainly no reference within Forge and Anvil to any parameters that might govern the monsters' learning abilities. So unless it's all hard-coded...
Perhaps it's just that more random-spawn monsters are appearing when you're spending more travel time by saving more frequently?
--SiliconDream
