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DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

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Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#151

Post by mulmen »

yannyu wrote: post #124
pavedwalden wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe what usaphp is getting at is that the AI could still gain an advantage by doing a set of actions much faster than humanly possible in just a fraction of a second as long as it kept its total number of actions that minute below the cap.

A 65MPH speed limit doesn't mean I can go 100MPH for some section of the road, and 30MPH for another section and still be in compliance. Similarly, an APM limit wouldn't directly imply that the kind of "gaming" that you're talking about, where a user/agent simply has to have an average APM over a certain period to be in compliance.

usaphp's point seems to be that the period should be less than one minute. When the police measure your speed with radar they are not waiting an hour to average your speed. The same idea applies here.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#152

Post by jtolmar »

sanderjd wrote: post #125
scj wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For SC1 BW, you can already watch https://www.youtube.com/user/certicky for a weekly highlights broadcast / commentary of AIs. Right now there is an AI arms race where the previously dominant AI (Iron Bot) is being beaten by challengers. It used to happen when Iron Bot did something silly. Now it is happening because the competitors have really stepped up their game. The current board leader (krasi0) has a strategy s…

This surprises me - I would have expected the computer mechanics to be much better than what a human can achieve. Do you have insight into why that isn't true?

Positioning matters in basically every decision in Starcraft and humans are incredibly good at precisely that.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#153

Post by steinystein »

Impossible wrote: post #150
qub1t wrote: post #71

A lot of people here seem to be underestimating the difficulty of this problem. There are several incorrect comments saying that in SC1 AIs have already been able to beat professionals - right now they are nowhere near that level. Go is a discrete game where the game state is 100% known at all times. Starcraft is a continuous game and the game state is not 100% known at any given time. This alone makes it a much hard…

Minor nitpick, video games running on digital computers are by definition still discrete even if they feel continuous. Networked multiplayer wouldn't be possible in RTS games if that wasn't the case. The granularity of unit positions and turns in Starcraft obviously leads to a much larger state space, so I get what you're saying, for AI its effectively continuous.

For a game of go the entire game state is known to each player. That's the diff. For vidya games state is hidden to the player if the player cannot 'see' it. Therefore u wrong fam.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#154

Post by [deleted] »

Impossible wrote: post #150
qub1t wrote: post #71

A lot of people here seem to be underestimating the difficulty of this problem. There are several incorrect comments saying that in SC1 AIs have already been able to beat professionals - right now they are nowhere near that level. Go is a discrete game where the game state is 100% known at all times. Starcraft is a continuous game and the game state is not 100% known at any given time. This alone makes it a much hard…

Minor nitpick, video games running on digital computers are by definition still discrete even if they feel continuous. Networked multiplayer wouldn't be possible in RTS games if that wasn't the case. The granularity of unit positions and turns in Starcraft obviously leads to a much larger state space, so I get what you're saying, for AI its effectively continuous.

[deleted]

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#155

Post by kornish »

steinystein wrote: post #153
Impossible wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor nitpick, video games running on digital computers are by definition still discrete even if they feel continuous. Networked multiplayer wouldn't be possible in RTS games if that wasn't the case. The granularity of unit positions and turns in Starcraft obviously leads to a much larger state space, so I get what you're saying, for AI its effectively continuous.

For a game of go the entire game state is known to each player. That's the diff. For vidya games state is hidden to the player if the player cannot 'see' it. Therefore u wrong fam.

The term the grandparent post meant to use is "imperfect information game" versus Go, which is a "perfect information game."

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#156

Post by j9461701 »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #141
j9461701 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You think so? Brood War is the most mechanically demanding game I have ever played, and certainly the most demanding that has ever been an esport. [This clip]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXH8eCcvQMI ) of Flash playing SK Terran style is illustrative of what I mean. Let's go down the list of things Flash needs to do: He needs to click on every one of his production structures every 15-19 seconds, and click M or…

> Starcraft 2 is a game I could get to masters league in, despite only playing make a few hours a week for a month or two. Was this in beta? I played from beta to end of WoL and got masters in NA. It was not easy.

Mid-way through WoL and again shortly after launch of HoTS.

I played BW a lot as a kid, and the fundamental concepts carry over pretty decently. Always build workers, don't get supply blocked, expand as fast as your opponent lets you get away with, never let your resources bank, upgrades are always worth it, etc. etc.

As I recall someone in WoL actually went from bronze to masters building literally no units except marines, medivacs, and scvs to prove the point raw mechanics are all you need to carry you up the ladder.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#157

Post by marcell »

ktwo wrote: post #96
JefeChulo wrote: post #30

"so agents must interact with the game within limits of human dexterity in terms of “Actions Per Minute”." I am really glad they are limiting APM because otherwise things just get stupid.

IMO there should also be a precision limit. The timing of actions should include human-typical jitter and the wrong action should sometimes be activated to simulate misclicks/fat-finger keypresses — e.g., messing up a control group by assinging a unit to the wrong number key. The bot must also not be able to act faster than human reaction times (~250ms), this could be enforced by adding a fixed delay to the observati…

Yea, agreed. Specifically they should add a loss function that compares the AI's action stream against a pro human action stream, and attempt minimize that loss.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#158

Post by littlestymaar »

qub1t wrote: post #71

A lot of people here seem to be underestimating the difficulty of this problem. There are several incorrect comments saying that in SC1 AIs have already been able to beat professionals - right now they are nowhere near that level. Go is a discrete game where the game state is 100% known at all times. Starcraft is a continuous game and the game state is not 100% known at any given time. This alone makes it a much hard…

As a long time StarCraft fan I don't share your point of view :

People usually refer to StarCraft as a strategy game but there's actually really little strategy involved : during the first weeks after a new map pool is released, the pro players explore different build orders that are strong on it. And after this period, when the meta-game has settled, the winner of a match (best of 3 or 5) is almost always the one who has the best mechanics (including scouting, unit micro-management and multi-tasking) and sc1 AI are already way better than humans in that field.

Unless you add some artificial limitation to the AI (for instance, a hard limit of APM[1], at an arbitrary level) I don't really think the challenge will be exciting. Imho it will look like a race between a cyclist and a motorcycle : on the mechanics point of view, the machine wins easily without need for intelligence.

[1] action per minute

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#159

Post by placeybordeaux »

j9461701 wrote: post #156
placeybordeaux wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starcraft 2 is a game I could get to masters league in, despite only playing make a few hours a week for a month or two. Was this in beta? I played from beta to end of WoL and got masters in NA. It was not easy.

Mid-way through WoL and again shortly after launch of HoTS. I played BW a lot as a kid, and the fundamental concepts carry over pretty decently. Always build workers, don't get supply blocked, expand as fast as your opponent lets you get away with, never let your resources bank, upgrades are always worth it, etc. etc. As I recall someone in WoL actually went from bronze to masters building literally no units except m…

To be fair marines and medivacs are amazing units in WoL. The same likely wouldn't apply with most other two unit combo. Roach ling maybe, maybe blink stalkers.

Re: DeepMind and Blizzard Open StarCraft II as an AI Research Environment

#160

Post by crazypyro »

siegecraft wrote: post #107
Forrest7778 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid that I'm essentially nitpicking here, but the games don't really compare that linearly. For one, "insane micro" was around before SC2 and was more of a deciding factor in BW than SC2. For instance, if you pay attention and analyze pro games you'll notice that macro (the boring repetitive work) that you think was flushed out from BW was actually just translated into other, equally monotonous tasks in SC2. A…

Yes, very nitpicky. MarineKingPrime didn't invent marine micro but he was known for it/popularized in the early GSL seasons before it became a standard tactic. SlayerS (the team) dominated MLG Anaheim with blue flame hellions and basically caused them to get nerfed if I recall.

I don't believe he's being that nitpicky. Brood War had a lot of micro, including marine micro...

Boxer (SlayerS_Boxer is who I think you are referring to, as he also played starcraft 2) was well known for having really insane marine micro in the community before SC2 even came out. Starcraft 2 was just way bigger in the west so more people over here associate MarineKingPrime with micro than brood war pros.

e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJp0t9n8DWk

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