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Usually, when we speak of the dumb AI around here, it's to mock their poor performance against human players. With exception of purely calculable games such as Chess and Checkers, AI has always been a punching bag in the gaming community, rapidly losing their value as viable opponent the instant you find any sort of the gamer that knows what they are doing.
Sure - they might dominate FPS & fighting games or have crazy mutalisk micro, but everyone knows they fall pathetically flat when it comes to actual intelligence. Even as our technology evolve in amazing rate, poor AI keeps returning to damper our enjoyment in innumerable titles.
![[image loading]](http://i39.tinypic.com/2927fo7.png)
Me versus alliance of seven computers? I'll actually win a game of Brood War for once!
image shamelessly pilfered from random youtube VOD
Still, I must admit that when thinking of artificial intelligence, it had often been limited to what was on front of my monitor. They do have important applications in real life such as in airliner industry, but it's difficult to imagine kind of impact they would have in one's lifestyle.
Or so it had been. For I had underestimated capability of bad AI to ruin one's day.
OH YES THIS IS A civilized RANT BLOG.
There is one computerized machinery prevalent on everyday life whose efficiency is heavily AI-dependent. Even worse, though it waste minutes of my time every day, it's extremely inconvenient to avoid using it. What is that you may ask:
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4b61b47a00000000009f71c5/entrepreneurs-the-elevator-pitch-is-dead.jpg) These jerks.
There are three elevators on the 20-floor apartment I live in. It wasn't too bad at first. However, upon undergoing some kind of upgrade past month, these contraptions has caught the idiot virus. Maybe it's some efficiency measure but if so they are utterly incomprehensible to me.
When you press the button on the main floor, often only one elevator moves up and down while other elevators stay still (on basement, 7th, 15th floor etc.), even when it is being used for a long time. So if somebody's holding elevator for awhile moving stuff on basement or something, we are forced to wait even if there are another elevator available like six floors above us.
Sometimes the elevator goes fully down to the basement before coming back up. At least that I could understand if the building had single elevator, but why not send one elevator to the basement and another to the main floor since more than one aren't being used? And last straw on the back happened today, where elevator went down to pick someone up in the basement, and simply skipped the main floor on it's ascent to the destination.
What in the flying sandwiches?
No, seriously, does anyone who are knowledgeable about the elevator AI know what's going on? I used them for a month yet I'm still clueless about the 'logic' behind them (it doesn't help that the main floor is the only floor which reveal the location of every elevators). My uttermost hope is that I can find some way to exploit the system in place.
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That reminds me I should play Sim Tower when I go home for my birthday :p
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My best guess at an exploit would be, instead of attempting entry on the main floor, which I assume is L/0, is to simply go to B1 and call from there. You said the elevator went down to pick someone up in the basement, bypassing L, your usual entry. Take the stairs to B1 and see how you fare there. If not, there is certainly some button-code being pressed by someone in the know.
Barring that, take some time and go to different floors and call the elevator at different states (moving, not moving, above, below, etc). Write down what happens in each circumstance. For example, would the ele on 7th come to 1 (L+1) if you called? What is the lowest floor that 7 will come to? 3? How many basement levels are there and what are the idling floors for the other 2 elevators?
I assume it works something like this:
Ele A: idles on L, moves between B(9?) and (3?)
Ele B: idles on 7, moves between 3 and 14
Ele C: idles on 15, moves between 14 and 20
If you figured out how many floors each elevator is travelling between, or even ALLOWED to travel between, then maybe you could figure that it is split evenly, or the top elevator is handling more floors as there is less load up there. It sounds like a system where you will have to hop between elevators to get to the 20th.
Anyway, it could be a fun puzzle if you provided more data about the elevator behaviors. 
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lol that screenshot is from my video from years ago. So many haters in the comments.
SC2 AI is pretty fucking annoying, arguably more so than in bw. For example; when using lings early game to surround stuff or attack specific targets, they tend to not fit as many as they can, or they attack some other target too quickly, or they just sit there running around back and forth attacking nothing (when they can attack something). They also tend to double back or fuck up just due to the nature of 3d terrain. It's pretty wack.
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The only reason artificial "Intelligence" can win at fighting games, is because the computer can sense what button you are pressing, react inhumanly fast, and counter it. If you take that away from them, they have nothing, because then they have to actually think. And we all know they can't do that very well yet.
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@ hp.Shell
Fortunately the elevators aren't that crazy 
Your statement probably has grain of a truth though, where other elevators are on standby for those coming down on higher floors regardless of how much traffic there may be below. It's pretty bad when a (part of) troll theory is what's actually happening in RL!
There are four stories below the main floor by the way, if you're still curious. The fact that you can only track the movement of elevator on the main floor makes it surprisngly annoying to puzzlify things.
@ MarlieChurphy
I would say small world, but this is TeamLiquid so... :p
Surprising you figured out that from looking at just one frame. It might not be yours since 1v7 BGH is pretty common; at least I hope so because background music on that video was really really bad.
I didn't know SC2 AI had their pathing - attacking? - issues as well! I only played a bit of WoL before quitting, so most of what I know is unfortunately just unfounded stereotypes. The idea that SC2 AI is more annoying than that of SC1 pathing is certainly quite novel.
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Even though I have a watermark in the unit portrait, that's not what tipped me off. I remember that game very well because it is a popular video on YT. You can actually watch me abuse the 4pool rushing zergling AI to buy me time until my sunkens and shit finish. Necro is still better than Kpop and all the other shit sc players listen to lol
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I am pretty sure it's not AI (as in they constantly readjust like the SC BW AI), there is a defined pattern that it follows based upon someone's logistic formula.
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United States4207 Posts
Elevators are awful.
My law school is in a 40 story building... in between classes is a nightmare. I usually just take 10 flights of stairs rather than wait 20 mins while a completely full elevator stops at our floor every time.
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EPT
