How Do I Make My Own AI?


Decide on a name.
The filename you choose is only used to keep files and folders that belong together together.
IMPORTANT:You cannot have spaces in your AI's filename.
AI filenames must begin with the two characters "^^". After those, you choose the rest of the name.
To be active, these files must be in your TA-Mutation folder.


Data Files
When active, AI data files go in the AI folder under your TA game folder.
What you do with your TA:M compatible AI is put your AI data files into a new folder that sits in the TA-Mutation folder.
The name of this folder must match the AI's filename, so in our example, we call our AI SuperAI the folder name must be named ^^SuperAI(1).
The (1) indicates that this is the first folder (or file) to be moved over to your TA game folder when active.
You can move multiple folders or files by incrementing the number (2),(3) etc...
Lets say you want to include more files in additional folders, for example lets say you want to put README.TXT in the Documents folder under TA when the AI is installed.
What you do is put your README.TXT in a second folder that belongs to this AI. (don't forget to increment the name)
In your Control File (.ai) you specify what the file or folder will be renamed to when active. This is covered in the next section.


The Control File
The first step is to create a new .ai file that contains info that TA:M needs in order to operate your AI.
In our example, this is our .ai file.
It is named ^^superai.ai - lets break it down:
  • The first line is the title. In our example the title is Super AI
  • This is the first line of the description that you see when you run TA:M and the AI is active.
  • The second line is the rest of the description.
    The whole remainder of the description must all be on this line in your control file.
    The way you insert multiple lines of text is by using ## as your carriage return, as you can see in our example.
  • The third line is for the Compatibility Codes for this AI. Compatibility codes tell TA:M whether or not your AI is compatible with the currently active TC.
    You can have multiple Compatibility Codes for your AI but they must all be on line three, and have spaces between them. In our example, we use the code UH but if we wanted to have more codes we could do it like this - UH XTA and then this AI would be listed as compatible with either the UH or XTA Total Conversions.
  • All lines from the fourth line on down are your data files (or folders).
    The lines indicate what the files or folders will be renamed to when they are active, and in the TA game folder.
    Line 4 matches with (1) or in our example, ^^SuperAI(1) - a folder renamed to AI.
    Line 5 matches with (2) and so on.
    In our example, Line 5 is a folder renamed to DOCS and line 6 is a file renamed to ^^SuperAI(3).hpi

    Here is what our example consists of when we're done.
    And here is what our example looks like when active and in the TA game folder.