.:New Map:. AI: Proving Grounds

[Forboding Angel]

This map is intended for AI devs to use for pitting AI's vs one another. Includes the following features:

- smallest possible (realistic) size - 4x4
- some impassable terrain
- hill
- some flat area
- two start points, one with many resources (this is done without actually unbalancing the map for actual play but the way the start area/resources are laid out should give AI devs an excellent testing area).
- water (2 Metal Spots in the water)

It is also interlaced with features (from Spring Features 1.0). You can set the feature resource values yourself by including the featuredefs from Spring Features in your game and editing the values. Pretty much everything defaults to 1 Energy.

This map Depends on Spring Features 1.0, which will be automatically downloaded from the lobby, if you install it that way. Otherwise you'll need to grab it from:
http://springfiles.com/spring/tools/spring-features
and place it in your GAMES folder

Should make for some really nice BA 1v1 matches.

Screenies


Download

P.S. Other misc tidbits...
This map is made using featureplacer and JK's blueprint. I am in the process of converting ALL evo maps over to this so that the evo maps can be played in BA/ZK/etc.

[AF]

hmmm how has it come out when testing?

I imagine the following events would take place in a 1v1 of two Shards:

• Shard 1 would spend a minute reclaiming trees to make room for the first non-mex structure
• Shard 2 would walk down into the flat area to start building the first non-mex structure
• Whichever built a factory first would win, probably the Shard in the bottom right every time.

I expect the same scenario would play out regardless of AI. Wtaer on most games might be problematic because of the small size of the water.

Recommendations:

• Clear all starting positions of trees
• 2 or 1 secondary area with 3 spots
• Double the dimensions of the map to 8x8 by taking the map and adding a copy inverted in the top left so it is diagonally symetrical from top right to bottom left. Put a hill or a flat area or whichever in the top right so its still interesting, and put more water in the bottom left, maybe a small island.

At this point a further map becomes possible by mirroring the map into 4 corners to create a lake with an island in the middle for AI FFAs. Maybe put a geo on the island.

[Forboding Angel]

I recommend that you unpack the map into a .sdd and make whatever changes you like to it.

It's blueprint, meaning that the only things that are hardcoded are grass and metal spots.

Wrt size, I made this for someone specifically who requested it.

So ok that make 3 things you can't change:
Grass
Metal Spots
Total size

All the other stuff can be changed as needed. It's worth noting that in evo, when a building is placed, all features in the build area are instantly reclaimed (without any resource benefit of course).

I'll even do ya one better... here is a widget that will make a dump of all the features and unit on the map.

This way, any feature you don't want, just reclaim it, and dump the feature list. And since you have the map in an sdd, you can just copy and paste the dump into the feature set (or you could remove the features entirely and save yourself some time).

http://code.google.com/p/evolutionrts/s ... umpall.lua

In the map, the features are set in:

AI_Proving_Grounds.sdd\mapconfig\featureplacer\set.lua

Have fun!

Most of the stuff you might want to change can be changed in mapinfo.lua, this includes height ranges, etc.

[AF]

You're not paying attention.

Blueprint? This map uses wibble wobble, you can use the wombles in the wibble wobble to change the polarity of the neutron flow.

How do I do this without redoing the entire map from scratch since I cant change the size? What about the texture not matching with the new heightmap? (how change heightmap?)

As I understand it, and from my look around the 19mb sd7, I can change the specular map, I can meddle with the extractor ranges, I can figure out how to eradicate all trees if I want, but that's the extent of my abilities.

I cant make the map bigger, I can't mirror the map, I can't modify the heightmap (making the heightmap taller or shorter and shifting it up and down is not the same as adding new hills, water, flattening or unflattening ares), I can't adjust the texture.

Those are all beyond my mapping skills, aren't trivial or obvious, and aren't a part of blueprint.

[Forboding Angel]

If you want a new map, make a new map. 4x4 was what was requested, 4x4 is what was delivered.

Changing the size to 8x8 only requires doubling the size of the texture (re-render at 4096x4096, then just upsample heightmap, feature and metal maps). The process is pretty simple really.

I cant make the map bigger, I can't mirror the map, I can't modify the heightmap (making the heightmap taller or shorter and shifting it up and down is not the same as adding new hills, water, flattening or unflattening ares), I can't adjust the texture.

You can't do this with any other map either.

[knorke]

-no visible metalspots
-unclear & random where units can go (tested with BA and its visible in your screenshot too)
-is there any ai for any game that can play this half-decent?

[AF]

I have no texture though, no do I have a heightmap.

[Forboding Angel]

I have no texture though, no do I have a heightmap.

Nor have you asked me to do it for you. You posted what I "should" do for this map, and I disagreed, but you never asked me to make you another that was larger.

-no visible metalspots
-unclear & random where units can go (tested with BA and its visible in your screenshot too)
-is there any ai for any game that can play this half-decent?

-AIs generally don't need to see metal sports
-Not unclear at all. Requires maybe a little thinking on your part. In the north, you cna go kbots on the hill or climb down the hill and go vehicles. In the south you can start vehicles on the hill. The north has the advantage of being able to go kbots which can easily climb the top right hill (and cap the resources there) whereas vehicles have to use the ramp. The south can go kbots and lose some of it's advantage. South has easier access to the metal under the water and quick vehicle access to the hill.

This is mainly designed for AIs to duke it out, knorke. That means that Ideally, the AI dev would unpack to an sdd and change variables around. This includes the max/min height (currently 200/-30 or something like that) and the features.

Shard in evo does well, though this map is kinda funny in evo because it's so tiny Lately though shard has regressed into this irritating habit of building power right outside of factories in a grid. I dunno if it does that in other games as well.

I suppose I should add the painfully obvious part that you should test using both the north and the south spawn. I know some ai devs test vs other ais, well you should alternate the starting locations and pay attention to how your ai performs on both.

[Forboding Angel]

BTW AF I'm going to make what you asked for, hopefully tonight. My point was that all you had to do was ask.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

this looks terrible for testing AIs ideal AI map has minimal feature/tree bullshit and decent size so the AIs dont blunder into eachother and mutual destruct in the first two minutes. Hills, sea and chokepoints make most AI fail terribly (unless that is the intention of the map).

Ideal AI map is big and flat, like comet

[gajop]

Ideal AI map is big and flat, like comet

Yep, comet should be the starting point of any AI (and only one side/mod at that). However more complex maps should be attempted at later stages of AI development.

[AF]

AIs need a variety fo as many land types so that testing can be done, else people will complain when there's a terrain feature other than flatness. Minor bumps? Small hills? Ramps?

It also provides tests for things like building kbot labs on tiny islands, shipyards in ponds, direct fire turrets trapped in hills, bases that get too crowded next to a hill making it impossible for units to leave and attack the enemy etc

An ideal AI map should have enough flat area for it to start off with, but enough non flat area to show its shortcomings or give it a chance to test, as developing for the rough terrain makes efficiency on the flat terrain far better.


Also the AI may not have a need of visual metal spots, but the AI dev testing extractor positioning on the other hand might..

[knorke]

-unclear & random where units can go (tested with BA and its visible in your screenshot too)

By this I meant stray red blocks on the F2 map, on otherwise passable terrain
And narrow passages where you can squeeze units through on unpassable terrain.

The AI testing is obv fail, unless AIs lately learned to use their commander and cheese tactics like making offensive turrets. Because such small maps play nothing like normal sized one. (duck duck duck duck)

[Google_Frog]

How is this good for AI? It is too small for many games so will be cheesy and you're assuming the point of an AI is to play on maps with strange pathing.

[abma]

this map is not good for ai's, its good for testers! (and maybe its also good for ai-devs because its easy to see which ai fails in microing)

this map was requested by me, because:

- it loads fast
- i want in a short time a winner. on bigger maps this could take endless without setting resource bonuses or tweaking / custom settings
- 4x4 is a test, if ai's fail to hard, yeah size should be increased but it seems ok

especially it should be good for the testing lua ais. on other maps ai vs ai sometimes takes endless.

same tests i did:
8 minutes for cai (Zero-K)
10 minutes for craig (Spring:1944)
11 minutes for skirmish ai (The Cursed)

(ai's for ba seems to perform quiet well, too)

just as note: the more an ai fails here, the better the map is imo because you can see where it fails. you can learn much more when you fail.

maybe version 2 of the map should be renamed to "quicky". the curent name is maybe a bit misleading...

(and sorry forb, i didn't see that ongoing flamewar here / didn't exactly say for what usage this map was meant...)

[Forboding Angel]

Well, as you said abma, I would think it would be good because you can see where your AI screws up and perhaps adjust behavior accordingly. I fail to see how a flat map like comet catcher would be useful for testing your AI at all. Maybe if what you wanted was to just see how it built, but that's unrealistic (at least in my opinion) as the terrain is generally going to be closer to something like this, than completely flat.

I released like this uber serious and all because I thought it was humorous. Unfortunately, that didn't last long.

However, something positive definitely came out of this, and I have AF to thank for the suggestion, but you'll have to look on the Evolution RTS G+ stream to see it. Not getting in a discussion here.

[Forboding Angel]

Updated to v2. Changed heightmap a bit, shipyards can now be built. Vehicles can move around more easily.

[Google_Frog]

If it's designed to break AIs it looks like it serves it's purpose. On the other hand a player that wants to play against and AI should use a map that is reasonably easy for the AI to handle.