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DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

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Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#61

Post by komaromy »

levemi wrote: post #53
ludamad wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Brood War has been thoroughly explored, and is a much more stable target (SC2 is prone to game-shaking patches). Back when pro play was just ending, I was astonished by the level of play. While players may need a bit to practice against the AI, a good AI spurring more play is really exciting to me.

> (SC2 is prone to game-shaking patches) It's something humans have to put up with, the AI should too?

Once there's a system that claims to be better than humans, sure, but it's just a headache for researchers until then.

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#62

Post by komaromy »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #44
bottled_poe wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The control required to master SC2 is far beyond any MOBA style game. AI for MOBA games seems trivial compared to AI for a large scale RTS. It's the difference between controlling 1 unit vs 100 units.

I don't think I agree with that at all. If you can control 1 unit it's trivial to control 100. I might argue that the AI vs AI challenge in Starcraft is deeper and more difficult to master. But for AI vs Player the Starcraft AI has an enormous mechanical advantage. Being able to harass mineral lines in four different places is a big deal. Being able to perfectly micro multiple lines of attack/defense is a big deal. I…

> If you can control 1 unit it's trivial to control 100.

Control them, sure-kiting 100 units at a time would be a breeze-but using them together in a coherent way is drastically more difficult.

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#63

Post by trollingineer »

scottjad wrote: post #41

Starcraft is a game that is played with mouse and keyboard (or game controller on console). I think in order to say an AI has beat a human, it should have to use the same interface that a human uses. That's part of the definition of the game. In Go, anyone can place a stone as well as anyone else, it's deciding where to place a stone that's the game. In Starcraft, not everyone can control the interface to the game eq…

Is that you Nick "Tasteless" Plott?

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#64

Post by rcheu »

scottjad wrote: post #41

Starcraft is a game that is played with mouse and keyboard (or game controller on console). I think in order to say an AI has beat a human, it should have to use the same interface that a human uses. That's part of the definition of the game. In Go, anyone can place a stone as well as anyone else, it's deciding where to place a stone that's the game. In Starcraft, not everyone can control the interface to the game eq…

BW has more than enough players to challenge the AI, there's still plenty of players like Bisu, Flash, Effort, NaDa, etc. There's going to be multiple BW tournaments broadcast this year too.

I think there's no need to make it use a keyboard/mouse, you should just add in some human like constraints that are assumed in the game (some limit on APM, some delay between moving the screen and being able to take an action/observe the state).

The interesting part would be whether they can build an AI, not a robot. It's unfortunate that both games are pretty figured out at this point though, it'd be interesting to see if an AI could be made that could react to a big metagame change like http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Bisu_Build

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#65

Post by erm »

scottjad wrote: post #41

Starcraft is a game that is played with mouse and keyboard (or game controller on console). I think in order to say an AI has beat a human, it should have to use the same interface that a human uses. That's part of the definition of the game. In Go, anyone can place a stone as well as anyone else, it's deciding where to place a stone that's the game. In Starcraft, not everyone can control the interface to the game eq…

SC:BW is quite different than SC2. It would be much more interesting to see this on SC:BW, regardless of where the money/tournaments currently exist.

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#66

Post by lumpypua »

komaromy wrote: post #62
forrestthewoods wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I agree with that at all. If you can control 1 unit it's trivial to control 100. I might argue that the AI vs AI challenge in Starcraft is deeper and more difficult to master. But for AI vs Player the Starcraft AI has an enormous mechanical advantage. Being able to harass mineral lines in four different places is a big deal. Being able to perfectly micro multiple lines of attack/defense is a big deal. I…

> If you can control 1 unit it's trivial to control 100. Control them, sure-kiting 100 units at a time would be a breeze-but using them together in a coherent way is drastically more difficult.

From an above poster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#67

Post by ShardPhoenix »

ktRolster wrote: post #20

Artosis wrote his view on the topic, it's probably worth a read: http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/15019778/infinite-apm-...

It sounds like he has no idea about the machine learning basis of Alpha Go (and therefore presumably any future Starcraft AI) and thinks all this complex decision making has to be programmed in by hand (which would indeed be nigh-impossible).

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#68

Post by ktRolster »

drwl wrote: post #32
ktRolster wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wherein the element of strategy is strongly over-powered by a reflex-based combat system This isn't true, in general a bigger army will beat a smaller army every time. After you can make equal size armies, the next problem is army positioning and when to take engagements. Finally, after you can do all that, then you can get an extra bonus to your power by microing really well. But not every micro is about speed - mos…

It's not always the case where smaller armies lose to big armies. There are many situations in Starcraft where superior micro of less units can taken on more units. One example is Phoenixes versus mutalisks. For those who don't play, Phoenixes are faster and have slightly longer range than mutalisks. Phoenixes can infinitely shoot and run and kill of mutalisks.

That's true, I should have added "unit composition" in there right after "army size"

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#69

Post by derefr »

barbs wrote: post #52
scottjad wrote: post #41

Starcraft is a game that is played with mouse and keyboard (or game controller on console). I think in order to say an AI has beat a human, it should have to use the same interface that a human uses. That's part of the definition of the game. In Go, anyone can place a stone as well as anyone else, it's deciding where to place a stone that's the game. In Starcraft, not everyone can control the interface to the game eq…

From the 2015 AIIDE Starcraft AI competition report[0]. > ""Why not StarCraft 2?" > This is the question we always get asked when we tell people we are doing a BroodWar AI competition. This competition relies completely on BWAPI as a programming interface to BroodWar. BWAPI was created by reverse engineering BroodWar and relies on reading and writing to the program memory space of BroodWar in order to read data and i…

It has always seemed to me that there is a truly "proper" way to construct an AI 'bot' for a networked game, and that is to write your own headless game client software that connects to the game's network—emulating the physics well enough to avoid desynchronization with one's opponent, but otherwise being entirely its own program, rather than having anything to do with the reference client per se.

Re: DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft

#70

Post by ktRolster »

ShardPhoenix wrote: post #67
ktRolster wrote: post #20

Artosis wrote his view on the topic, it's probably worth a read: http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/15019778/infinite-apm-...

It sounds like he has no idea about the machine learning basis of Alpha Go (and therefore presumably any future Starcraft AI) and thinks all this complex decision making has to be programmed in by hand (which would indeed be nigh-impossible).

The interesting parts aren't his views of AI (since he doesn't have much knowledge there) but rather his views on the complexities of the game. Because on that topic he is an expert.
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