Last year I attempted to work on an AI...but had so much trouble getting environment and source and stuff configured properly that I gave up.

I recently installed the latest spring engine binaries, and source, followed the simple instructions here (http://springrts.com/wiki/AI:Development:Lang:Java) and was able to get a simple AI bot up and running in mere minutes.

Thank you, thank you, thank you (even managed to get the javadoc for the interface working in netbeans!)

I'm sure I'll have questions....but between the forum posts, the javadoc, the examples that are out there, I think I'll be ok now. I have a wager with some friends that my AI will be able to beat them (land only, BA, 1v1) at the end of January, so I have lots of work to do. Lots of innovative ideas...who knows if any will pan out.

Thanks again for all your hard work!

ehh cool! :D
nice to hear that! thanks for the post!
keep us informed about your AI!

javadoc? - is this in the wiki?

i think what he means is this:
in netbeans (and i guess in Eclipse too) you can add a jar with the sources for a library. this would of course contain the javadoc comments, and the IDE will then show them during code completion eg. -> no need for the JavaDoc in HTML format.

exactly.

and there's me thinking somebody had commented the methods in the interface!

Might have to volunteer for that one as it would be useful...

You would be very welcome of course :D

You had to comment the methods in rts/ExternalAI/Interface/SSkirmishAICallback.h, as the Java Callback is generated from this file, and inherits its comments during generation. It would be good if you sticked to relatively simple comments, as in, the special paramters you use and such, eg, just just add a description, and use @param, @return and @see. The reason for this, is that these comments are used in different languages, and therefore also in different doc tools (eg DoxyGen and JavaDoc).

As for getting your changes into spring:
best way is to fork spring (eg on github), and commit to your fork. that means you would be seen as the author of the commits, and it also means less work for me
(i would then merge your commits into master)
alternatively, you can also send me patch files.