EPTLast weekend me and a friend decided to work on a micro bot to push the potential of the in-game units to the limits.
As of today, we've implemented two common scenarios: bum rushing siege tanks with zerglings, and splitting Marines.
Our bot is now capable of :
40 speed banelings vs. 20 marines (no marines lost)
20 spread siege tanks vs. 100 zerglings (all tanks dead, 19 zergling survivors)
To liven things up we made videos with footage using the bot, combined with some decent music and scenes from GSL.
Here's the scenarios:
It would be awesome to get some ideas on what we should implement next
We're currently planning on making a little gang of malicious Stalkers. If you feel you have a scenario that requires a ridiculous amount of micro, please let us know.
Please note that this is not any form of a third party program, just code in the Starcraft II Editor.
Edit, regarding the zerglings splitting before the shot lands:
+ Show Spoiler +
The script is capable of determining which zergling that is going to take the next blow. When a tank starts aiming (when its target dies for example), the bot predicts it's gonna fire at the closest zergling and executes a split the AI of Starcraft 2 is very predictable in that meaning..
As for the cool "sphere"-effect in the beginning, we made the tanks prefer zerglings with more friends around, but the ai compensates for this too!
the AI of Starcraft 2 is very predictable in that meaning..As for the cool "sphere"-effect in the beginning, we made the tanks prefer zerglings with more friends around, but the ai compensates for this too!
Edit, with some answers:
+ Show Spoiler +
First of all we must say that we're really glad that the community appreciated Automaton 2000!
Question: What is the APM of the bot in the different videos?
Answer: We just made a script to check the APM, we got 250 and got kinda disappointed... then we realized that we had 250 APS, which is equal to 15000 APM!
So: 15000 APM for the kiting marines, and 8000 APM for the zerglings breaking the tanks.
Is there a risk that this will be abused on ladder?
For everything Automaton 2000 can do we have to thank Blizzard for creating a wonderful editor. Having that said, there's obviously no way Automaton can be used for cheating online.
Would it be possible to code this same micro-scripting into a custom AI without needing to prompt the actions with a chat command?
Yes, the chat commands were only implemented because it was convenient. And when we use the command, the AI will be applied to all marines/zerglings that spawn. The reason we had the commands was that we wanted to try out some zergling/marine-micro for ourselves! (...and we failed horribly!)
We've already started with the next implementations, and we're planning on having them finished in a couple of days. One of the scenarios will be more "realistic", and the other one just for funzies. Thank you for all the great ideas!
Question: What is the APM of the bot in the different videos?
Answer: We just made a script to check the APM, we got 250 and got kinda disappointed... then we realized that we had 250 APS, which is equal to 15000 APM!
So: 15000 APM for the kiting marines, and 8000 APM for the zerglings breaking the tanks.
Is there a risk that this will be abused on ladder?
For everything Automaton 2000 can do we have to thank Blizzard for creating a wonderful editor. Having that said, there's obviously no way Automaton can be used for cheating online.
Would it be possible to code this same micro-scripting into a custom AI without needing to prompt the actions with a chat command?
Yes, the chat commands were only implemented because it was convenient. And when we use the command, the AI will be applied to all marines/zerglings that spawn. The reason we had the commands was that we wanted to try out some zergling/marine-micro for ourselves! (...and we failed horribly!)
We've already started with the next implementations, and we're planning on having them finished in a couple of days. One of the scenarios will be more "realistic", and the other one just for funzies. Thank you for all the great ideas!
