Does anyone know of any resources for someone looking to learn more about Game AI for real time strategy games?
DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
41–50 of 344 posts
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#42I suspect this will eventually lead to AI as a service for games. Rather than build a terrible AI that delays a game by months, approaching a company that can build a decent AI initially which gets better overtime would probably be ideal and create better experiences. Im curious if a startup can be built from this.
Is it harder to make an AI that is mediocre at playing the game vs one that is good? That is the main issue with making good AIs for games now. We want AIs (if you can call them that) that play kinda like humans but worse then the player as the player wants to win.
Making an AI for game isn't about making a good AI. It is about making an AI that loses in a convincing manner. This is especially try for games like Starcraft (RTS and strategy games in general. For FPS games it really isn't so important as you can just increase or decrease the accuracy and hp of the enemies)
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#43This is really good news!
Lets hope DeepMind can improve even further on their Differentiable neural computers (DNC) which seems like an requirement for this kind of AI to work (exploiting long-term dependencies).
I also hope that other research/industry teams will join on the competition to create competing AIs. Very exciting!
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#44I suspect this will eventually lead to AI as a service for games. Rather than build a terrible AI that delays a game by months, approaching a company that can build a decent AI initially which gets better overtime would probably be ideal and create better experiences. Im curious if a startup can be built from this.
the real question of course would be how to train the AI to have varying levels of "expertise" (ie: penalize if score is too high)
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#45That's so cool! I wish they could start doing AI for team based competitive games like League of Legends where meta-play and team decision making is important. Is that too complicated to tackle yet?
Are you imagining a single AI playing all 5 heroes on a team, or 5 independent AIs each playing a single hero with limited communication between them, or a single AI controlling a single hero on a team with 4 humans? I would say the first scenario (1 AI controlling entire team) is roughly equivalent to the the RTS case. It's just fewer units with more abilities, and character progression instead of base building. The…
I can't wait to see the first team of 5 separate AI learn to insult each other. It'll be a watershed moment in history when the first vote to kick another AI occurs.
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#46Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.
High apm is required, yes. But most people push it by pushing it through spamming 1-2-3 (groups of your army). There was a pro player who didnt do it and he was around +- 70 APM.
It would be interesting to see what percentage of a pro player's APM is actually useful. Like you said, most of the time they are spamming buttons to keep their momentum up.
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#47I suspect this will eventually lead to AI as a service for games. Rather than build a terrible AI that delays a game by months, approaching a company that can build a decent AI initially which gets better overtime would probably be ideal and create better experiences. Im curious if a startup can be built from this.
Is it harder to make an AI that is mediocre at playing the game vs one that is good? That is the main issue with making good AIs for games now. We want AIs (if you can call them that) that play kinda like humans but worse then the player as the player wants to win. Making an AI for game isn't about making a good AI. It is about making an AI that loses in a convincing manner. This is especially try for games like Star…
Having checkpoints along the way as you train your model could be a good way to allow fine-grained level selection. I guess :)
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#48Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.
Unfortunate. I personally would love play against an AI with strong game sense as well as insane micro a la https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#49Looks like they are going to limit the APM of the AI. I wonder how they are going to decide the limit? I've never played StarCraft, but from what I understand very high APM is needed to play the game at the highest levels.
Back when I played SC2, you really didn't need a high APM to succeed, unlike SC1. SC2 offered some helpful mechanics that SC1 did not, such as the ability to select infinite units at once, or give commands to multiple structures at one. I think Sheth, a high level Zerg player, was famous for having under 100 APM.
I'll consider APM "not high" when it gets down to 12. Two actions per second is comfortably "high".
Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment
#50I suspect this will eventually lead to AI as a service for games. Rather than build a terrible AI that delays a game by months, approaching a company that can build a decent AI initially which gets better overtime would probably be ideal and create better experiences. Im curious if a startup can be built from this.
Is it harder to make an AI that is mediocre at playing the game vs one that is good? That is the main issue with making good AIs for games now. We want AIs (if you can call them that) that play kinda like humans but worse then the player as the player wants to win. Making an AI for game isn't about making a good AI. It is about making an AI that loses in a convincing manner. This is especially try for games like Star…
Probably not, to be honest. For a game like chess, the challenge is that there are so few things you can actually do. Inefficiencies aren't really a thing, every single move has a semi-discrete value.
Starcraft however has all kinds of minor inefficiencies you can build in. You could inconsistently build workers, you could occasionally supply cap, your army comps can vary in sophistication level, etc.