Hi all.

I've updated an old project of mine to work with SC:Remastered as I try to get back into Brood War. It's called BWMetaAI. It's basically an AI that tries to follow a human metagame instead of silly 12 zealot all-ins nearly every game.

The project is available here:

https://github.com/jncraton/BWMetaAI

I've been using it to help me get back into playing, and I thought that it might be useful to others as well.

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Cheesefome

314 Posts

September 26 2017 01:08 GMT

Nice, i'll have to give it a try :D

Sjokola

Netherlands800 Posts

September 26 2017 01:08 GMT

This might be very helpful. I played bw years ago. And now due to an injury I have to relearn all my games using the mouse with my left hand.

owned4ursake

Australia59 Posts

September 26 2017 02:15 GMT

Just played a few games vs your AI.
It's definitely a vast improvement over the default AI.
Very good for beginners like me

Immaterial

Canada510 Posts

September 26 2017 03:15 GMT

This is awesome thank you! I'll give it a try tonight for sure. I'm learning to play BW properly and have been playing quite a bit against the AI for the sake of perfecting my execution of build orders but it kinda sucks just leaving the game after 5-10 minutes because the CPU is such shit that it would be a waste of time otherwise haha

Golgotha

Korea (South)8418 Posts

September 26 2017 03:44 GMT

damn. impressive. it will be fun for offline practice and just warming up. by the way, will you update it so that the AI doesn't do stupid things like storming a single zergling?

neptunusfisk

2286 Posts

September 26 2017 03:48 GMT

On September 26 2017 12:44 Golgotha wrote:
damn. impressive. it will be fun for offline practice and just warming up. by the way, will you update it so that the AI doesn't do stupid things like storming a single zergling?

There are plenty of bots that try to be as good as possible, but this isn't one of them. Go to http://www.sscaitournament.com/ to find bots that are harder to get running, but once they are, they will stomp you.

One thing that would be a huge improvement over the standard AI is if it actually gave up before being eliminated. I hate that so much.

Littles

United States3 Posts

September 26 2017 05:45 GMT

I am curious on how to run the AI.

I replace the patch_rq.mpq with the new BW Meta AI. But the problem is that the Blizzard App (that name *shudder*) keeps forcing me to update the game before playing. I've tried to manually launch the game form the folder, but it just redirects me to the app.

Because it cannot launch the game unless it is updated, I am unable to try out the meta AI.
(I disabled autopatch and it only displays an Update button instead of Play on the launcher)

Velitation

Canada224 Posts

September 26 2017 06:56 GMT

~~I think you just have to let the game update to latest patch first, then you can try replacing the patch_rq.mpq after that point.~~
Other than that, try seeing if temporarily going offline (turn off wifi and/or unplugging ethernet) and launching does anything different. I'll try it out for myself in a bit.

EDIT: I was able to get it to work offline, but the App will attempt to patch the mpq file if you go back online and quit the game.

Golgotha

Korea (South)8418 Posts

September 26 2017 07:11 GMT

#10

On September 26 2017 12:48 neptunusfisk wrote:

Show nested quote +

how come it's hard to get running? Also, do these more advanced AI follow standard build orders? that would be so cool.

Littles

United States3 Posts

September 26 2017 12:48 GMT

#11

Oh, thank you, thank you. I was under the impression that SCR requires me to always be online.

jncraton

United States8 Posts

September 26 2017 12:56 GMT

#12

I replace the patch_rq.mpq with the new BW Meta AI. But the problem is that the Blizzard App (that name *shudder*) keeps forcing me to update the game before playing. I've tried to manually launch the game form the folder, but it just redirects me to the app.

For me, it works to open the Blizzard app, run any updates, and once the play button appears I replace the patch MPQ and then hit play.

jncraton

United States8 Posts

September 26 2017 14:11 GMT

#13

how come it's hard to get running?

BWAPI is more difficult to get set up because it requires running multiple instances of StarCraft. It takes control of the game engine in the same way that human would, so you actually have to join a multiplayer game against one of the AIs running on another machine/VM or use some hack that allows multiple instances to run simultaneously on the same machine.

XCraftin4K

19 Posts

September 27 2017 22:06 GMT

#14

This is interesting. I'll give it a try.

jncraton

United States8 Posts

September 29 2017 14:17 GMT

#15

On September 28 2017 07:06 XCraftin4K wrote:
This is interesting. I'll give it a try.

Sounds great! Let me know how it goes or if you have any problems getting it set up.

xdq28635

11 Posts

September 29 2017 16:30 GMT

#16

TY so much i m about to try it out

Littles

United States3 Posts

September 30 2017 07:57 GMT

#17

On September 26 2017 21:56 jncraton wrote:

Show nested quote +

For me, it works to open the Blizzard app, run any updates, and once the play button appears I replace the patch MPQ and then hit play.

Clever! Worked for me as well. Thanks!

Polyknikes

6 Posts

October 01 2017 05:26 GMT

#18

funny, this AI plays better than many humans. could you also include a version that focuses on macro/standard play? no all in builds like 5 pool from the AI. this is to generally create longer games with multiple expos

Yadnak

9 Posts

October 02 2017 08:37 GMT

#19

This is just what I needed.

Thank you.

Broodwar4lyf

304 Posts

October 02 2017 09:52 GMT

#20

this is really what the community needs right now. bwapi thing needs years before it can be something of use, its just too damn hard to figure out for new players and nobody's bothering to make ease of use accessible with all the programers in that community