Game Mechanics Cookbook: How to Use It With Your AI
A game mechanics cookbook is a collection of recipes for things games do, such as jumping, inventories or loot, with good starting values and the usual mistakes. You use it by handing a recipe to your AI, so that it does not have to guess.
Why would my AI need a recipe?
Ask any AI for a jump and you will get one. The catch is in the details it leaves out, because an AI knows the general idea of a dish, but not how yours should taste.
Take an invented game where a cat leaps between rooftops. A plain jump only works while the cat stands on a roof. Players judge a ledge by eye and often press a moment too late, and the cat just falls. Your AI's jump is correct, and it still feels unfair.
The recipe for that is called coyote time: the jump still works for a split second after leaving the ledge. Nobody would ask for that by name unless they knew it existed, and that is what a cookbook is for.
How do I read a recipe?
Each blueprint on this site has the same parts, and they map neatly onto a kitchen.
| On the page | In the kitchen | In the coyote time recipe |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | The dish | A late press still counts as a jump |
| Good starting values | Amounts | About 0.09 seconds to start with, 0.3 at the very most |
| What usually goes wrong | How it burns | "The player can jump twice" |
| How to check it works | The taste test | Run off a ledge, press late, and you still jump |
| Works well with | Good pairings | Jump buffering, double jump |
How do I cook with it?
Follow the recipe first. Use the starting values as they are. You cannot season a dish you have not tasted yet.
Then season to taste. Your rooftop cat may want more forgiveness than 0.09. Change one value, and play.
Read the warnings before you start. The "goes wrong" list is the most valuable part, as each item there is a mistake someone already made. Give your AI that list with the recipe.
Cook one dish at a time. Add coyote time, play, and then add the next recipe. Two recipes in one go means that you will not know which one spoiled it.
Watch your pairings. Recipes meet. The coyote time blueprint warns that together with jump buffering they must never give a second jump, and that with a double jump, the extra moment has to go first, or a late press uses up the air jump. Ingredients that are fine alone can clash in the pot.
What is in this cookbook?
The topics page lists everything, from movement to inventories, and story help covers plots and characters. Reading the wiki on the site stays free. If you would like your AI to look things up by itself, Spielerando passes it blueprints, ready-made code and the wiki over an MCP connection, with a free account via Google or e-mail. Plans are here. It stays away from your game and code.
No cookbook knows your game. A recipe gets you a good start, and you still have to taste it. If you need something that is not in the book, you can write your own blueprint.
Paste this to your AI
Add this mechanic to my rooftop cat game: [paste the recipe].
Use the recipe's starting values. Do not swap in numbers of your own.
Before you change anything, draw a Mermaid diagram of how the recipe fits my game: the states the cat can be in (on a roof, just left a ledge, in the air, landed) and what moves it between them. Mark where my game today differs from the recipe, naming the place in the project.
Go through the recipe's "what usually goes wrong" list against that diagram. For each item, tell me if it can happen in my game and show me the arrow that allows it or stops it. Then build from the diagram.
If something in the recipe does not fit my game, stop and ask me.
Or skip this and connect the MCP: your AI then finds all of this by itself.Connect the MCP
How to check it worked
- Run off a ledge and press late. Does the cat still jump?
- Press twice, quickly. Does it only jump once?
- Set the value to zero and compare. Can you feel the difference?
- Go through the blueprint's own taste test. Try every line of "How to check it works".