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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

#141

Post by frostirosti »

arcticfox wrote: post #134
burke wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Google’s AI can beat a human at StarCraft, it’s time to be very afraid. I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of strategy; "micro" (micro-managed tactics, basically) also plays a big role. An AI is going to be able to issue a LOT more commands per second than even the most skilled humans, giving them a natural tactical advantage. Strategy is more difficult for an AI, but not…

I agree. I think you'd have to limit that machine's APM to somewhere around the human limit, and make it choose which actions it wants to spend its time on. Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. We've known transistors were faster than fingers for ages.

Could probably configure it/optimize it for different apms (10,100,300,inf)

Could be interesting to see if it chooses different strategies based on that. What actions will optimize performance if I can only do 50 a minute

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

#142

Post by louithethrid »

jandrese wrote: post #85
doikor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It depends. AIs can do some things much better than nearly all humans. Twiddly little micromanagement for example. Total Annihilation (and it's successors like Supreme Commander) do this. The AI will send out a constant stream of micromanaged harassers constantly order to annoy the human opponent to death. Where the AIs tend to be very bad is in long term thinking and overall strategy. Blizzard's AI in Starcraft gene…

Some AIs for the Spring RTS Engine had this too. The funny thing is though- harrassment doesent scale. In these Exponential Economy type of games, the harassment only works as long as the macro-strategy is unable to take off. After a certain treshold, you can micro all the funny dances in the world- but the wave of enemys is going to carry this surfer to the shores end.

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

#143

Post by tgb »

noiv wrote: post #83

Hopefully there's a JS/Spidermonkey interface. I'd be happy to port Hannibal from 0AD.

What does Hannibal do that makes it portable? My impression is most game AI is essentially completely game specific, outside of, eg, pathfinding.

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

#144

Post by KZeillmann »

yurymik wrote: post #31
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 can always start with something like codingame.com to practice.

Yes! I tried this site a while back and loved it. It fell off my radar a while back, but I'll need to jump back into it.

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

#145

Post by Spellman »

ssalazar wrote: post #89
spacehacker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> You must admit that there is an underlying aggressive theme in these games. The visuals show clear resemblance of people being killed by projectiles and by other war technology. An AI doesn't know or care about any of this. Literally its applying statistics to optimize a cost function or assign labels to input states. These numbers could represent number of kills or number of dollars; the computer doesn't care.

And that's what makes it ~spooooooky~.

It's just absentmindedly optimizing a cold value function! No more humanity! More more external input! Just cold machine logic!

We've doomed ourselves!!!!

But seriously. No, there is nothing inherent about an AI maximizing wins in StarCraft than one maximizing profits on the stock exchange. Although I feel like there's a bunch of Sci-Fi where this obviously goes awry.

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

#146

Post by CydeWeys »

Savageman wrote: post #34
rcthompson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Either one could work. If the single AI that controls 5 heroes is easier to program, let's imagine that. I have the feeling that it's more complicated than a 1vs1 RTS game, but I don't know why...

Controlling five units is a lot easier than playing an RTS. In an RTS you don't just control five units, you control potentially hundreds of units, and you have base-building and an economy to manage.

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

#147

Post by icelancer »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #66
DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unbelievable! From 2011 even! That's awesome. Can't wait to see more detail on this going forward.

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

#148

Post by burke »

scarmig wrote: post #137
burke wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Google’s AI can beat a human at StarCraft, it’s time to be very afraid. I don't actually agree with this. Unlike Go, StarCraft is not only a game of strategy; "micro" (micro-managed tactics, basically) also plays a big role. An AI is going to be able to issue a LOT more commands per second than even the most skilled humans, giving them a natural tactical advantage. Strategy is more difficult for an AI, but not…

Isn't it easy to account for this? Just force the AI to stick to between 100 and 150 APM, and it becomes its responsibility budget its APM.

Sure, but even then it's difficult. Micro'ing three fronts at once would be difficult for a human but could easily fit within the AI's budget.

You could solve this by coming up with some sort of context-switch effort function but it starts to feel forced.

Or at least, once you start calibrating the parameters of the problem around human limitations, it sort of feels weird to talk about the computer being better or worse than the human.

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

#149

Post by Thaxll »

lordnacho wrote: post #139
arcticfox wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I think you'd have to limit that machine's APM to somewhere around the human limit, and make it choose which actions it wants to spend its time on. Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. We've known transistors were faster than fingers for ages.

> Otherwise the AI is eventually just going to absolutely destroy humans with micro, which is not remotely interesting. If you could issue as many orders as you wanted, what would the optimal strategy be?

Simple example would be in combat, like being always out of range ect ... Imagine one army where every single unit is controlled by one human. Each individual unit would be very very strong.

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

#150

Post by Aweorih »

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.

I think they are doing it to stay "warm". E.g. if something happens that the fingers can react quick and you don't need a "warmup" time.
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