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djsherman
United States140 Posts
I'd like to hear from the StarCraft community: what would you like to see from this years competition, as far as organization, results, and rules? Last years competition was a huge success and we are excited to see what future competitions will show us. UC Berkeley won last years main event with raging Mutalisks, what else can AI show us? | ||
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ArbAttack
Canada198 Posts
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djsherman
United States140 Posts
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gen.Sun
United States539 Posts
A round where a 'surprise' element is added to the game on tournament day, in order to check for AI's adaptability. In mirror matchups maybe a unit is removed. For example, zerglings or mutas in ZvZ. Or maybe a special Python where the the main has only 4 mineral patches. A sudden decrease of CC/Hatch/Nexus price to 75/100/100. (ehh, probably imba in favor of zerg) These are some example surprises. This way we can see whether the AIs are truly intelligent or have hard coded BOs. From my understanding all the current bots would fail pretty hard if tested like this. But with another year maybe it's enough time to write something more flexible? | ||
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djsherman
United States140 Posts
[B]This way we can see whether the AIs are truly intelligent or have hard coded BOs. BOs are expected, due to the complexity of the domain. But I do like some of the ideas you are proposing. Basically, there are two directions in which to increase complexity. The first is to relax the constraint of a fixed race, make the bot play all races, against all races, even random. The second is to relax the constraint of know maps, make the bot play on new maps. But AIs are not yet able to overcome humans when following both of these constrains, so why relax them at this point? StarCraft is an excellent domain for AI research and there are all sorts of potential for investigating general intelligence techniques, but first consider humans. Humans have to first study maps, or at least be given a high-level description of map features. Second, even top level players don't random races, because its too complicated, even for humans. I agree that an advanced AI would be capable of these feats, but it is far beyond the current capabilities of systems. | ||
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gen.Sun
United States539 Posts
An AI should be given all the information that a newbie human is given, data on unit HP, attack, move speed, range, etc, and tasked with figuring out unit counters themselves. They should be able to figure out on the fly the answers to questions like, I'm expecting mutas, should I build more turrets or make barracks for more marines. Year 1 should be enough for figuring out all the mundane stuff like unit micro and pathfinding. Year 2 should be dumping the constraints for more interesting play. If the AI is thinking on a high enough level then things like race or map should not matter to them. If you set the rules from day 1 to favor flexibility then you might be able to encourage faster development in that direction. Otherwise teams might be tempted to stuff the bots with mid to low level strategies, like BOs and unit counters and end up with effective but uninteresting bots. my 2 cents. | ||
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djsherman
United States140 Posts
If you set the rules from day 1 to favor flexibility then you might be able to encourage faster development in that direction. Otherwise teams might be tempted to stuff the bots with mid to low level strategies, like BOs and unit counters and end up with effective but uninteresting bots. my 2 cents. My view has always been that before we build general intelligence, we must first build specific intelligence, With chess, we went too far, and built chess specific machines, but as long as we are using cpus off-the-shelf we should be fine in our quest for intelligence. We can't build expert general intelligence until we have first built expert intelligence for a specific domain! | ||
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kamikami
France1057 Posts
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zobz
Canada2175 Posts
All i want to see is more full tournaments with lots of games played on proper maps, ala the final stage of last year's competition. For micro maps to be worth a damn they really should have dynamic armies of differing races, and then balancing the map would be sort of a problem and probably just a waste of resources, unless you have them to spare. What i really want to see is more stuff like that article on Berkley's Overmind. I find it extremely interesting to read about the whole process of game theory based programming, especially in relation to starcraft. | ||
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stafu
Australia1196 Posts
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Spazer
Canada8036 Posts
In addition, more interesting unit compositions for micro maps would be nice instead of just plain mnm or dragoons. Something like tank/vulture/goliath/dropship. With a composition like this, you can do a lot of different things. Since this is essentially TvT, positioning becomes key. Where do you set up tanks? Can you lure the enemy within range of those tanks? How should I place the few mines I have? Can I effectively utilize my dropships to make their tanks splash friendly units? To date, the majority of the terran bots I've seen tend to be very sloppy regarding positioning. Oftentimes they'll siege up over their own mines, with predictable results. Stuff like that shouldn't happen. Basically, I want to see more emphasis on positional play. This is the one area I think bots really need to improve in. | ||
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GGTeMpLaR
United States7226 Posts
1) No AI is capable of competing on a professional level in Starcraft we seemed to agree on this point but they claim that it is possible to program an AI that would be capable of outmicro-ing professional gamers rather easily while I was under the impression that this would be one of the hardest things to program am I mistaken or are they | ||
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plutonian
United States6 Posts
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Goragoth
New Zealand1065 Posts
As far as what I would like to see: a detailed write-up from each team, how they went about making their bots, design philosophies, etc... like the article on the Overmind but not just from the winner. Maybe some sort of documentary that could be put on YouTube would be cool too, with interviews with the developers and maybe some graphics to explain certain concepts etc... to make it all more accessible to a wider audience. Maybe someone could contact one of the science magazines like New Scientist to do a piece and maybe even a TV station like the National Geographic channel. I'm not sure what the funding and organization is like behind this competition but there are some fantastic PR opportunities here. | ||
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rasdasd
United States82 Posts
In general, to what i have read on the previous posts. My bot, and pretty much almost all of the other bots, already have an algorithm to analyze the maps. My bot will spend the first 30 seconds analyzing the map if it has never played on it b4. As was stated before, The micro actions themselves are easy, but knowing when to micro is hard. I should probably post a video of my Psi Storm micro :D a 80 supply army beats 200/200 Hydras with 80 food of siege tanks supporting them :D I'll prolly post here again when i have more time. | ||
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djsherman
United States140 Posts
On February 05 2011 18:13 Goragoth wrote: Why is it that every thread about AI invariably has some complete moron that thinks that any AI that doesn't have human-level intelligence is somehow worthless? We are at least 50 years from achieving that, probably more. Real, true intelligence requires levels of complexity that are hard to imagine. Having a computer solve even a constrained problem like playing Starcraft well requires a ton of work and interesting research. This is why we are starting with a fixed task. Not sure about your timeline of general intelligence, but yes, playing expert StarCraft is only the beginning in building human level AI systems. | ||
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gen.Sun
United States539 Posts
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rasdasd
United States82 Posts
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nalgene
Canada2153 Posts
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Ookm
Bolivia18 Posts
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