Starcraft AI - Limitations and Issues - And the Ideal SC2 AI.

[IskatuMesk]

Check out this post I made at SA. It's kind of a half-rant, but if you are interested in either of these games, it might be worth a read.

http://forum.samods.org/index.php?topic=9526.0

[chris]

RequiemX for the win! ^^

Wc3's AI also presented an extremely hilarious and game-breaking issue where the AI would return to its base after destroying the initial target designated by the attack handling. In any size of map, this meant the AI could be out of combat action for another 10 minutes, or half an hour if it was a big map. Not only that, but this target was often a stray tower on the rim of the enemy's base - the AI would leave the enemy, who chances are was completely undefended, and return to base. Not only that, but the AI would then choose a completely unrelated target, like a creep camp, even though the game is in its favor. Wc3's AI is a complete and total disaster.

guess what I tried playing yesterday 
its ridiculous, my base is like tiny and puny, the enemy comes with a huge army. I'm thinking "ok I'm dead, time to learn from my mistakes" then once the enemy destroyed just ONE tower theyr retreat. and in the confusion I manage to bring in some peons to two gold mines next to each other and get a huge income of gold. its utterly ridiculous....

The final attack loop is the AI's final sequence it loops after it has fully teched and accomplished the scripter's specifications. In this script, the AI builds lots of siege tanks and assets and attacks. It seems very simple, but there is a huge problem with it.

It will softlock. A lot.

alot? it softlocks EVERYTIME. Please god tell me that RequiemD fixes this, please!

I want them to make the AI moddable. In SC, all AI commands and actions were pretty much hardcoded. Past telling them what to build and attack with, I am almost powerless. In wc3, it wasn't any better. Micro and spell-related things were still very much hardcoded.

In Sc2, I want them to softcode everything. I want to be able to take a swing at programming my own targeting, my own profile system with name-specific build orders, my own spell handling, my own building pathing.

judging by the responce Blizzard gave to the SC issues I say they are gonna be assholes and hardcode the stuff....such is life...*sigh*

[Zilla-]

Well I don't have any experiance with the staff at blizzard but from sc -> wc3 they made a lot more stuff modable, to the extent that most people don't need to make custom .exes for their campaigns to look the way they want to, and I'm guessing that since they are saying that the editor in sc2 is going to be based off c that it will be even more "modable" than wc3.

[chris]

lets hope you're right then...

[IskatuMesk]

and I'm guessing that since they are saying that the editor in sc2 is going to be based off c that it will be even more "modable" than wc3.

There is several possibilities.

Blizzard was using hardcode in wc3 and SC because they weren't capable of making the AI do something right with softcode, especially in SC1. JASS could have done some AI functions but still they kept most of it hardcoded.

In dawn of war, an AI project I beta tested and wrote a few scripts with rebuilt a lot of how the AI functions using lua. I'm pretty confident C is more powerful then lua. They had full dancing scripts, ect. Their handling code combined with my build orders and tech scripts created incredible opponents. I could not beat them myself, and I was damn good.

Blizzard will probably still end up hardcoding the majority of the AI's functions just because. They haven't ever considered that maybe people want to mod the SC2 AI past build orders.

They may softcode some of it, since C is pretty powerful, but the lengths of that still probably won't be complete.

Although, I would settle for a SC1-style system with improvements. Under no circumstances should they use a captain system ever again... never ever ever.

[Whiplash!]

Great read, posted it on the battle.net forums in hopes that a blizzard employee will read it (but they wont).