When it came to the first arcade games, you will find that they were designed with logic and were made for competition. There wasn’t any A.I. system at the time.
Heuristic algorithms have been used in arcade games. Scripting was the common method of controlling an NPC in the game.
Then there is pathfinding, which was another common A.I. system. It was used at the time for strategy games. Pathfinding works by calculating how to get an NPC from one place to another after considering the terrain and obstacles.
There were games known as Quake and Pursuit that displays enemy action and will store it in a particular pattern. The space invaders further refined this movement, by adding in-game events that were dependent on the hash functions.
This resulted in more varied and complex enemy movements.
Then Pac-Man became incorporated into these types of technologies and then they ended up improving the game by adding different personalities for each ghost.
Although the ghost movements in Pac-Man felt random, it was a cleverly scripted and well-disguised action.
Getting powered by Rubber Banding, the 1990s saw the beginning of finite state machines and arcade racing games.
If the computer-controlled opponents fall behind, they received a superb boost allowing them to catch up.
The system basically will enable a player to catch up if they simply fall a bit behind. They were difficult to play and to get a handle on it. The arcade shooting games should ideally have a large rule base which is basically the list of NPC options like attack long-range, call for help, flee, etc.
The trick to use a random factor so that you can display some intellect, but also create something that is fun. The random factor will help the game take off and become very popular.
