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DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

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Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#61

Post by stale2002 »

fazzone wrote: post #12
Miner49er wrote: post #2

Looks 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.

There's probably no reason to restrict the computer the below human pro players (200-300 APM). My guess is the engine just wasn't designed with superhuman APM in mind and could be exploited. If that's the case then the AI would in some sense not really be playing the same game as the humans.

An apm limit is needed because impossibly high APM results in stupid strategies that the game wasn't designed for.

The point is to build ai that compete with humans using human strategies. Not to cheese with borked game mechanic exploits.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#62

Post by spacehacker »

stale2002 wrote: post #18
luka-birsa wrote: post #8

Anybody else sees a problem with training the AI to move troops around a battlefield, with the purpose to exterminate the opponent?

No? Starcraft isn't troops on the battlefield, in the same way that Risk, the boardgame isn't troops on the battlefield. Just because the 1s and 0s or game pieces represent "troops" to humans, doesn't mean that the underlying game mechanics have anything at all to do with a real war. For all we know, the problems solved by a monopoly AI, are more applicable to a real war than those solved by a Risk or starcraft AI.

You must admit that there is an underlying aggressive theme in games like StarCraft. The visuals show clear resemblance of people being killed by projectiles and by other war technology. The AI will be rewarded for skillfully decimating the enemy, for protecting the units it has control over and for coming up with strategies like ambush, raids, patrolling etc. I am more convinced by the idea that an AI will be able generalize to the real world from playing StarCraft than from playing Monopoly. However, I think it will be quite a leap to the real world either way.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#63

Post by brylie »

It would be cool to see a project like this for an open source game, such as OpenTransportTycoonDeluxe (http://www.openttd.org/). The AI developed by interacting with the OpenTTD economy might even prove useful for urban planning of real geographic regions.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#65

Post by HackBlade »

KZeillmann wrote: post #9

This is so exciting. I've always wanted to program bots to play online games -- mainly for learning purposes. (Can I make a bot that plays better than me?) But I've never done it because of the risk of bans. I'm glad that Blizzard has opened it up for people to experiment with this. I wonder how it will interact with any sort of anti-cheat systems in place, etc.

You should give Adventure Land [1] a try. Its a browser MMO where you can code a bot to play for you. Its still in alpha but it has been pretty stable for the past few days that I have been playing it.

[1] http://adventure.land/

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#66

Post by placeybordeaux »

DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #14
Miner49er wrote: post #2

Looks 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.

There was a Starcraft brood war AI competition that did not have a limit on APM. The top contestants were employing strategies that required APM an order of magnitude higher than what players could do. For example, in brood war, SCVs can repair any Terran building or vehicle but it is not worth the effort to repair goliaths or tanks for a player. However, the AI could easily manage repairing it's tanks which makes th…

This was an example of extreme micro that a very simple AI can do that changes the game entirely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKVFZ28ybQs

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#67

Post by placeybordeaux »

Cafey wrote: post #46
Aweorih wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a replay analyzer that attempts to figure this out, generally the effective APM will go up during a fight, but the players will keep the APM fairly high even when the eAPM is not high just because it is easier to go from many useless actions to many useful actions than few useful actions to many useful actions.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard to release StarCraft II as an AI research environment

#69

Post by placeybordeaux »

lanius wrote: post #51

I can't wait to see how far DeepMind can go in this area. I was initially skeptical that AlphaGo could defeat top human players, but then it happened. Who knows, perhaps one day AI can compete against progamers in GSL!

Competitive AI in broodwar already can destroy the best humans. AI can use strategies and tactics that human can't effectively do. Most notable is perfect splitting which changes the game quite a bit.
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