Argh. OK I know what the problem was now. Explanation at the end of the post.
For the moment you REALLY want to watch AI battles! Thanks for your patience. I can do one better than a single replay. I uploaded the mod to battlenet and tested it online. just follow these steps:
make sure you are on the NA servers (uploading takes time, I only upload to NA unless I make big releases)
go into custom games, select map (I tried with coda, I would recomend a map with 2 spawn locations as I'm not sure what will happen if there are more), and click on "create with mod" button.
find and select the mod call "testing dorfl not playable"
you need to remove yourself as a player and make yourself a spectator. right click on your icon and click "make spectator"
add 2 AI players. Make sure to set the difficulty to medium and the races to Protoss.
start the game. Player 1 will be controlled by the Blizzard AI and player 2 will be controlled by Dorfl. Dorfl will introduce itself a few seconds after the game starts so you will know which one it is. There will be a few seconds pause at the start of the game while everything gets set up.
Watch dorfl fight against the Blizzard AI as much as you want. I only got half way through its first game before the Blizzard servers shut down for maintanence (stupid Bnet) but it all seemed to be good.
Insert disclaimer about how this is only the begining and there is a long road ahead. Dorfl has never even played on any of these maps before and doesn't know WTF it is doing, but it can hold its own in a fight.
Also the code is available for anyone who wants to have a look for themselves. just download the mod using the map editor.
Doesn't really matter any more but FWIW, I was playing offline while testing Dorfl as it saves a lot of time. I was also setting up the player slots so that there would be two AI opponents. This however counts as a modification to the map as the map determines the player slots. So I was actually playing on a slightly modified version of the map which only exists on my computer. Hence why it worked fine for me but no one else.
To fix this I can just use online replays from Bnet from now on if I want to share a replay
Somebody casted a game of Dorfl vs Blizzard AI and stuck it on youtube!
Thank you to GamerSteed for the cast. I stuck the replay file up on /r/castit, a subreddit for players to get their games cast and for aspiring casters in the community to source replays.
In the blue corner (left) is Blizzard AI - created by Blizzard Entertainment, one of the heaviest hitters in gaming and worth $18.9 billion.
In the orange corner (right) is Dorfl - created by me in my spare time and worth about $400.
"Lets get ready to rrrruuuuuummmmmmmmbbbbbblllllllleeeeee"
He said it in the video but let me repeat. This is only the framework of a fully functioning AI. It doesn't use warpgate, the stalkers don't know how to blink, the unit pathing glitches and the units sometimes spaz out (or dance ), I wrote the script for unit kiting in a single afternoon with a lot of coffee... you get the idea. But every few weeks Dorfl takes a few more baby steps towards being a good AI player.
Those of you who are likewise fascinated by watching a computer "make it's own decisions" will enjoy watching this AI vs AI battle.
On September 14 2015 06:28 Leviance wrote: Is the dorfl that is uploaded also being updated regularly like the version you work on?
Hi, the version I work on is my local version. Keeping the online version up-to-date and making sure it is not broken is a lot more work and stress. Just keeping it to myself and doing an update every few weeks / a month allows me to spend more time doing productive work on it.
Next change is going to be big which means it's going to take a long time. I think I'll be back in probably a month but I will have redone some of the macro and probably got it playing all 3 races.
That's the idea. putting the replay up on /r/castit to get a community member to cast the game was a great solution for me as it saved me a lot of time and headache and was a fun way for people to view the progress. So I'm definitely going to go that route from now on. Also I've got a well known SC2 personality lined up who said he would like to cast a Dorfl game in the future. So that will be fun :D
I'll post here periodically whenever there is an update so people can subscribe to this thread and know what's happening, but it will often be weeks/a month in between updates. That does not mean there is no progress happening behind the scenes though.
Keep up the good work, turtles, it's nice to see someone taking the time to do something with the AI of SC2
Hey guys. Still working on it. I was just exploring a new way for the AI to make high level descisions. I managed to implement a genetic algorithm to find and make good descisions, not by following a script but by generating it's own ideas about what moves it should make.
Maybe the details would be boring to other people but I find it so fascinating I'm going to talk about it anyway! Genetic algorithms attempt to solve a complex problem by a process of imitating the natural process of evolution. They start out with different candidates and then evolve a solution by removing weak candidates and producing offspring which inherit the capabilities of their parents. Interestingly enough for a process based on evolution they often come to solutions which are strangely animal like. Here are some examples of virtual creatures created to solve problems:
The same approach can be used for an AI to "learn" how to play starcraft. This approach is not unique and is the same technique others have used before to create build order optimizers. For example the 7 roach rush? That was not a human build order, that was a build order designed by a computer using genetic algorithm techniques and later copied by humans.
But those people were using genetic algorithms outside of starcraft, AFAIK I'm the first person to try and use techniques like that within the game to guide an AI. The good news is that it WORKS! but the bad news is that it works very slowly The time it takes for the AI to come up with a solid game plan seems to be taking too long and I can't make it run faster without lagging the game out.
My computer is about 10 years old, so it's no spring chicken, I'm sure other people would have faster computers. But I need to find a way to optimize it and make it run a LOT faster if this is going to work. Unfortunately I do not think I will succeed at speeding it up enough. I will make a bit more of an attempt but I suspect that it will forever be too slow to be practical and I will have to abandon that approach (after showing it off a bit just so I can say I did it :D ).
Whether I get it to work and move forwards with that approach or abandon it and go back to my previous approaches I will be making progress once again soon.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have already talked with the creator of Micro AI, I messaged him over reddit to ask about the possibility of joining forces. Unfortunately though the creator does not have an interest in creating an AI that can play a whole game. He seemed like a nice enough guy but the two of us have very different goals in mind:
He is interested in creating a perfectionist AI. One which behaves 100% perfectly within very narrow situations (such as the marines + bunkers vs adept). This is flashy and interesting to watch but it would not be able to actually play starcraft.
Where as I am interested in creating an AI which needs to be good enough at EVERY situation so that it can play a full game.
Sort of specialist vs jack of all trades. Both of us think our goals are not compatible enough to compromise on where we want to go.
Wouldn't it be possible to keep the current state of the AI between sessions using Banks, so it doesn't have to relearn everything from scratch every time? I don't know how complex you've made the structures describing it, and whether or not the storage provided by Banks will suffice to store them completely (as I've never worked with them), but even a partial save should speed up the process.
Are you still working on it? I was wondering if Micro AI can be implemented into your AI.
Referring to this AI:
TheBalanceIssue!
I just realized that you ARE the creator of Micro AI? I talked to you ages ago and you weren't interested. lol.
I'm trying to find our email correspondances but I can't find them... maybe I was thinking about a different AI creator and got them mixed up with you? I'm very confused now :p
But yeah I would love to talk over the possibility of if we could help eachother out or contribute parts to eachothers projects. Even if we don't find a middle ground I'd be curious to know where you're going with what your doing.
Are you still working on it? I was wondering if Micro AI can be implemented into your AI.
Referring to this AI:
TheBalanceIssue!
I just realized that you ARE the creator of Micro AI? I talked to you ages ago and you weren't interested. lol.
I'm trying to find our email correspondances but I can't find them... maybe I was thinking about a different AI creator and got them mixed up with you? I'm very confused now :p
But yeah I would love to talk over the possibility of if we could help eachother out or contribute parts to eachothers projects. Even if we don't find a middle ground I'd be curious to know where you're going with what your doing.
Hmm... I dont remember saying I wasn't interested lol. Will PM you in reddit.
Hi Turtles. I'm glad to have found this thread; I've been using SALT for a while now, and recently started my own AI project. It has different goals than yours, so I'll probably continue to work alone.
I can't seem to find SALT mod on Battle.net anymore. I only see the "SALT lotv macro" version, but I need the HotS version. Did you unpublish it for some reason? It's a super useful tool.
With all the chaos from LOTV being released I was rushing to get a SALT verion out for LOTV. I just published the LOTV version last night and put it on all servers today. In my rush I was not considering the people who still use SALT for HOTS and did not consider that adding the new units would make it no longer available for you.
I appreciate everyone who uses SALT, so I appologise for overlooking some of you in my haste.
I've got tomorrow off work and plan on doing a bunch of starcraft stuff so I'm putting "HOTS compatibility" on the top of the list. Probably be done by tomorrow evening. (I'm feeling like Blizzard lately. I keep using the word "SOON" over and over.)
What kind of AI project are you making? It's a shame AI battles are impractical in SC2 but I love seeing what people come up with.
On November 10 2015 04:39 PurpleStreak wrote: Wouldn't it be possible to keep the current state of the AI between sessions using Banks, so it doesn't have to relearn everything from scratch every time? I don't know how complex you've made the structures describing it, and whether or not the storage provided by Banks will suffice to store them completely (as I've never worked with them), but even a partial save should speed up the process.
Hi PurpleStreak.
The plan the genetic algorithm tries to come up with a plan which is suitable to the current game state (and only bothers looking 10 minutes ahead). So at the begining the current plan might look like "10 supply depot, 12 rax, 14 refinery...." as the game progresses the current plan will look more like "50 thor, 55 starport, 60 banshee...".
I COULD keep a record of what it builds and save it in a bank and use it to seed the genetic algorithm next time around but then it becomes like a script. I may as well just feed it a list of predetermined build orders. It's more that it is slow to figure out how to adjust what it's doing to the game state, so I could feed it the plan from last game but if this time the opponent goes for mutas instead of roaches it will adapt only very slowly.
I'm sure there is a lot of ways I could make it better but I don't want to go increasing the complexity too much considering how slow it is already.
It's frustrating because I'm having trouble getting the function profiler working. The SC2 editor comes with the ability to tell you how much processing time each function is taking up but it keeps giving me nonsensical answers so I'm not sure if it's broken or I'm just stupid :/
On November 13 2015 00:25 turtles wrote: Hi HeadBangaa,
With all the chaos from LOTV being released I was rushing to get a SALT verion out for LOTV. I just published the LOTV version last night and put it on all servers today. In my rush I was not considering the people who still use SALT for HOTS and did not consider that adding the new units would make it no longer available for you.
I appreciate everyone who uses SALT, so I appologise for overlooking some of you in my haste.
I've got tomorrow off work and plan on doing a bunch of starcraft stuff so I'm putting "HOTS compatibility" on the top of the list. Probably be done by tomorrow evening. (I'm feeling like Blizzard lately. I keep using the word "SOON" over and over.)
What kind of AI project are you making? It's a shame AI battles are impractical in SC2 but I love seeing what people come up with.
Thank you so much for republishing the HotS version of SALT! It cuts my development cycle down dramatically. Would love to buy you a beer, PM me your paypal.
My project is just for fun; I'm creating a series of user-centric intelligent agents. They use the mouse and keyboard interface, throttled to human speed, and scrape the screen for visual information to make decisions. This is an external program, and does not read program memory or "cheat" in any way. It's basically a game-long, dynamically constructed macro. I'm in the process of building out the API which drives basic game activities, and have already programmed a user agent which just does a 2 rax reaper rush (as a test model). I'm using Autohotkey for the programming and the GDI+ Windows API for fast screen scraping and bitmap analysis.
The Broodwar AI scene was pretty well-developed. They ran myriad games on private servers and had tournaments. It's not just technically difficult, but illegal to run a private server for SC2. Blizz really has their platform locked down; the EULA is absolutely brutal too.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/e9AB0cC.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wXJ0lY3.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cwMjD8b.jpg)
), I wrote the script for unit kiting in a single afternoon with a lot of coffee... you get the idea. But every few weeks Dorfl takes a few more baby steps towards being a good AI player.
The time it takes for the AI to come up with a solid game plan seems to be taking too long and I can't make it run faster without lagging the game out.
