[roundsquare]

Also thinking out loud (out type?)

I agree with some of it... you'd need to keep track of the the location of each player on the x-axis and y-axis, momentums, etc... Additionally you'd want to keep track of the "visible" actions. For example, if the human hits the soft punch button, you can see the fist cocking before the punch. Similarly for other actions.

This gives you various points in the state space. The way I see doing this is:

1) Make the continuous variables discrete. You need enough granularity to have good responses of course...

2) Use genetic programming to pick reactions in each state. However, the reaction in each state is not a single action but a probability distributions over various actions (move left, move right, jump, punch, kick, etc...).

The randomness is key. I spent some time talking to a guy who plays in tournaments and he said that the absolute worst thing you can do is get into a cycle or become predictable.