|
Hi everyone,
If you didn't know, starcraft (BW) has been used as test bed for several research publications within the field of artificial intelligence. On my master thesis, I'm supervised by Julian and Tobias - Julian wrote about generating Broodwar maps based on balance issues (publication). In my thesis we are developing challenging and human-like (hopefully) computer players playing on SGDL (Julian + Tobias) (Strategy Game Description Language)- a language describing games; starting minerals, bases position, units damage, units movements etc.
We would love if teamliquid showed interest in our ongoing project by playing some games against our computer players - the link for the game is here (it's a java applet, so no need for any download): http://game.itu.dk/sgdl/index.php.
Everything is explained within the game, and also in the tutorial on the site.
By playing the game, it allows us to figure out what makes our agents "human-like" and who knows? Perhaps Blizzard employees might pick up something for a future patch or Starcraft 3?
Thanks for participating.
Edit: The survey is divided into 2 games, after the 2 games there's 4-5 small fast questions.
- Qzy.
FAQ:
Can't move? Press enter to end the turn, once the opponent has moved you can move again!
|
This looks really cool. I'll definitely check it out when I get home.
|
Doesn't seem to work properly for me. I can't give my unit any order, when I click it, nothing happens.
|
On July 15 2011 00:27 h3r1n6 wrote:
Doesn't seem to work properly for me. I can't give my unit any order, when I click it, nothing happens.
Try ending the turn (press enter). It's turn based  .
|
It didn't load properly for me, I'll try it again in a bit
|
UI Is horrible. i'm sorry i cant continue playing that 
|
I played the tutorial and both maps. Map 2 seems bugged, but more on that later.
If I'm understanding it right (mouseover tooltips bug out after a while):
Unit 0 works vs units 0 and 2, but is weak to 0, 1, 2.
Unit 1 works vs units 0 and 1, but is weak to 1.
Unit 2 works vs units 0 and 2, but is weak to 2 and 0.
Which means that units pretty much hardcounter themselves. The game favors the player that doesn't move into firing range, and if your goal is to win, you just sit back and do nothing and wait for the other guy to make the first move. It's seems pretty easy to code an AI that spawns its units and does nothing after that, which is the most assured way to achieve victory. The computer does pretty much this, and doesn't start attacking on its own. In order to test AI's, I'd say you need a more rock-paper-scissors set-up.
Also, on map 2, the AI never moved his 3rd unit from the 'spawn location', blocking all future spawns. Combine this with the mechanic where units can shoot the turn they spawn, if you were to play this game and really want to win it, you'd simply never spawn a unit, because spawning a unit on the first turn and immediately firing allows you to counter your opponents units perfectly, and trade more efficiently then your opponent will ever be capable of. The factory is a problem like this, you either need to lock units the turn they spawn or just remove the factory and spawn all units on the map.
I'm not sure if any results from the game in it's current state will have any meaning. Gonna replay it now to test my theory ;p.
(There's some minor issues with unit movement, where you click once and the unit moves in a random direction, but no big deal.)
|
On July 15 2011 00:35 Qzy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2011 00:27 h3r1n6 wrote:
Doesn't seem to work properly for me. I can't give my unit any order, when I click it, nothing happens. Try ending the turn (press enter). It's turn based .
It's in the tutorial, where it tells me to click my yellow unit and move it. Pressing enter does nothing
|
Just curious... Is this for ITU or DTU or what?
|
On July 15 2011 00:49 Derez wrote:
I played the tutorial and both maps. Map 2 seems bugged, but more on that later.
If I'm understanding it right (mouseover tooltips bug out after a while):
Unit 0 works vs units 0 and 2, but is weak to 0, 1, 2.
Unit 1 works vs units 0 and 1, but is weak to 1.
Unit 2 works vs units 0 and 2, but is weak to 2 and 0.
Which means that units pretty much hardcounter themselves. The game favors the player that doesn't move into firing range, and if your goal is to win, you just sit back and do nothing and wait for the other guy to make the first move. It's seems pretty easy to code an AI that spawns its units and does nothing after that, which is the most assured way to achieve victory. The computer does pretty much this, and doesn't start attacking on its own. In order to test AI's, I'd say you need a more rock-paper-scissors set-up.
Also, on map 2, the AI never moved his 3rd unit from the 'spawn location', blocking all future spawns. Combine this with the mechanic where units can shoot the turn they spawn, if you were to play this game and really want to win it, you'd simply never spawn a unit, because spawning a unit on the first turn and immediately firing allows you to counter your opponents units perfectly. The factory is a problem like this, you either need to lock units the turn they spawn or just remove the factory and spawn all units on the map.
I'm not sure if any results from the game in it's current state will have any meaning. Gonna replay it now to test my theory ;p.
(There's some minor issues with unit movement, where you click once and the unit moves in a random direction, but no big deal.)
I believe the rules in the game is constantly changed . Cost of units, range, damage, etc. Yes there's still a lot of bugs with the UI - but it's a simple UI put on a pretty extensive language (I haven't developed the language, I'm just building agents for it).
Edit: funny note; I told the Ph.d.'s who supervise me, that TL would try to solve the game  . Good job man.
On July 15 2011 00:53 Mentalizor wrote:
Just curious... Is this for ITU or DTU or what?
ITU, sir!
|
On July 15 2011 00:50 h3r1n6 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2011 00:35 Qzy wrote:On July 15 2011 00:27 h3r1n6 wrote:
Doesn't seem to work properly for me. I can't give my unit any order, when I click it, nothing happens. Try ending the turn (press enter). It's turn based . It's in the tutorial, where it tells me to click my yellow unit and move it. Pressing enter does nothing
Strange, can you press the "end turn" button? It should turn your units yellow again and allow you to move them again. There might be some bugs with the UI :/.
|
On July 15 2011 00:54 Qzy wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2011 00:49 Derez wrote:
I played the tutorial and both maps. Map 2 seems bugged, but more on that later.
If I'm understanding it right (mouseover tooltips bug out after a while):
Unit 0 works vs units 0 and 2, but is weak to 0, 1, 2.
Unit 1 works vs units 0 and 1, but is weak to 1.
Unit 2 works vs units 0 and 2, but is weak to 2 and 0.
Which means that units pretty much hardcounter themselves. The game favors the player that doesn't move into firing range, and if your goal is to win, you just sit back and do nothing and wait for the other guy to make the first move. It's seems pretty easy to code an AI that spawns its units and does nothing after that, which is the most assured way to achieve victory. The computer does pretty much this, and doesn't start attacking on its own. In order to test AI's, I'd say you need a more rock-paper-scissors set-up.
Also, on map 2, the AI never moved his 3rd unit from the 'spawn location', blocking all future spawns. Combine this with the mechanic where units can shoot the turn they spawn, if you were to play this game and really want to win it, you'd simply never spawn a unit, because spawning a unit on the first turn and immediately firing allows you to counter your opponents units perfectly. The factory is a problem like this, you either need to lock units the turn they spawn or just remove the factory and spawn all units on the map.
I'm not sure if any results from the game in it's current state will have any meaning. Gonna replay it now to test my theory ;p.
(There's some minor issues with unit movement, where you click once and the unit moves in a random direction, but no big deal.) I believe the rules in the game is constantly changed . Cost of units, range, damage, etc. Yes there's still a lot of bugs with the UI - but it's a simple UI put on a pretty extensive language (I haven't developed the language, I'm just building agents for it). Show nested quote +On July 15 2011 00:53 Mentalizor wrote:
Just curious... Is this for ITU or DTU or what? ITU, sir!
It doesn't matter much if the properties are switched around. The basic principle seems to be that for every unit there excists a (perfect) counter (both times I tried it so far, all units could be 'oneshot' with a perfect counter), you can always trade your units most efficiently by not spawning them until your opponent is in range of the unit spawned at the factory, just as you will always trade more efficiently if you don't move yourself.
My point is: This makes the 'survey' at the end irrelevant, because if 2 humans were to play this game seriously, it would never end (and in it's current state, never even start). You can't ask things like 'does the AI feel like playing a human?' if a rational human would never do anything in this game in the first place.
(Not bashing, trying to help. Nothing sucks as much as conducting a survey and then finding out the results can be invalidated by the survey tools.)
(I also realize now that the maps are randomly generated, which makes my first map 2 experience a very rare one.)
|
Well, it's true - but compare it to starcraft. Some units are better than others and the objective is simply to use every units for the best . Sure if 2 humans were to play it, and there's no ressource gathering, no one would approach the other - hopefully it'll come in a future patch . For now see if you can counter the unit-composition of the enemy and smaaaash him!
|
The first AI was hard to kill because of all the rocks protecting his base (and he kept all his units in the bottom corner so I couldn't approach), while the second one was much easier where rocks were evenly spread out (who charged at me with 1-2 units at a time
|
On July 15 2011 01:36 57 Corvette wrote:
The first AI was hard to kill because of all the rocks protecting his base (and he kept all his units in the bottom corner so I couldn't approach), while the second one was much easier where rocks were evenly spread out (who charged at me with 1-2 units at a time
Yes, the rocks are placed at random locations . Sounds like the players did show some sort of intelligence.
If you notice a unit that does not shoot you, but moves towards you, it might not be the fault of the agent but simply the rules does not allow that specific unit to shoot at anything (rules are randomized). The unit simply hopes you create a unit it can shoot .
|
Won't load for me, tried using Firefox and Chrome. Any idea why?
|
On July 15 2011 01:57 State wrote:
Won't load for me, tried using Firefox and Chrome. Any idea why?
There are some minimums requirements on the site..
Requires: minimum screen resolution of 1024x768. A graphics card that supports OpenGL 2.0 (might work under 1.4+ as well). Operating systems Windows, MacOS and Linux are supported. A Java enabled browser, both in reasonable current versions (if your Java VM doesn't load the JOGL library, please consult their homepage).
Please give the applet some time to start. Depending on your system's performance, it may take up to 30 seconds.
Does this help you?
|
Yeah, I read over that and gave the game over 30 seconds. Still didn't work, even though I meet the requirements. Oh well, best of luck!
|
On July 15 2011 02:06 State wrote:
Yeah, I read over that and gave the game over 30 seconds. Still didn't work, even though I meet the requirements. Oh well, best of luck!
It's an experimental UI Try again later - I had some problems loading it as well a week ago.
|
|
|
select piece, move with arrow keys. if the piece has no chance to fire. End turn. would make this game about 1000x better. Do you have source available on SVN?
|
On July 15 2011 02:41 Iwbhs wrote:
select piece, move with arrow keys. if the piece has no chance to fire. End turn. would make this game about 1000x better. Do you have source available on SVN?
It's a simple test case, the UI is only used to represent the language. I don't believe the source is available yet.
|
Is it just me or the range 0 unit doesn't attack at all? Won't really put out a valid result if the unit is useless.
|
On July 15 2011 02:58 Anthodeus wrote:
Is it just me or the range 0 unit doesn't attack at all? Won't really put out a valid result if the unit is useless.
Is it on the first map? It's a tutorial map, the opponent wont attack on that one. If it's on the 2nd or 3rd map, it's the SGDL creating a random rule that is a bit.... bad .
|
It's on the third map. The second one i just got lucky because i didn't make too many of the non-attacking units.
|
I've taken a look at the game. The UI is a nightmare, and it's really hard to figure out which unit is which type. As near as I can tell, the popup tooltip for units doesn't actually say what number the unit is, so even if I remember that 1 beats 2 or whatever, I can't tell which face corresponds to which number.
I would change the menus to just show pictures of the units instead of their numbers. Also allowing the use of arrow keys would be vastly superior to the menu selection you're using now.
I understand that this is just for a study, but the UI is so infuriating that I gave up after just a few minutes. I think you're going to have a hard time getting enough people to play several rounds of this to get the data you need without a bit of improvement.
|
On July 15 2011 03:34 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
I've taken a look at the game. The UI is a nightmare, and it's really hard to figure out which unit is which type. As near as I can tell, the popup tooltip for units doesn't actually say what number the unit is, so even if I remember that 1 beats 2 or whatever, I can't tell which face corresponds to which number.
I would change the menus to just show pictures of the units instead of their numbers. Also allowing the use of arrow keys would be vastly superior to the menu selection you're using now.
I understand that this is just for a study, but the UI is so infuriating that I gave up after just a few minutes. I think you're going to have a hard time getting enough people to play several rounds of this to get the data you need without a bit of improvement.
Saluting unit = 0
Smiling unit = 1
Black unit = 2
;p
|
It could one day make game AI intelligent. Count me in.
|
On July 15 2011 03:34 AmericanUmlaut wrote:
I've taken a look at the game. The UI is a nightmare, and it's really hard to figure out which unit is which type. As near as I can tell, the popup tooltip for units doesn't actually say what number the unit is, so even if I remember that 1 beats 2 or whatever, I can't tell which face corresponds to which number.
I would change the menus to just show pictures of the units instead of their numbers. Also allowing the use of arrow keys would be vastly superior to the menu selection you're using now.
I understand that this is just for a study, but the UI is so infuriating that I gave up after just a few minutes. I think you're going to have a hard time getting enough people to play several rounds of this to get the data you need without a bit of improvement.
Yes it was one of our fears that the UI were too bad for user testing. Thanks for trying to game anyhow .
|
Thanks to those who made it through the game, we have about 40 entries in the database .
|
Pretty awesome, outsourcing testing to the interworld :D
I can't wait to try it when I get home in a few days!
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
