Configs and user ignorance

[AF]

It all depends how the ai is made, how good its at adepting to mods and if you need to do tricky stuff to get it to work (like configs and stuff) or it just adapts automatically to different mods thanks to hard coding like RAI seems to do.

Not every AI is hard to make config files for. Some AIs have fancy easy to use config makers that explain everything and wrap up all the text editing in a nice GUI. ATM I have yet to recieve any usability issues from my own config builder program NTai Toolkit, and configs should be no excuse because mods should come with prebuilt configs that you just drag and drop already for NTai, and at the very least AAI, afterall AAI and NTai are the two longest running AIs for spring that are still being maintained.

There's no excuse for not having support for one or the other, indeed for many configs all you have to do is rename the file, no editing required, and for some configs they work with every version anyway.


And it is not complex at all. DJ gets very good results with very simple configs, and it is possible to put together an NTai config that is mildly challenging and builds all tech tiers in 2-5 minutes.

configs are not hard, AI makers have made allowances and you're all ignoring them.

Configs have enver been easier to make, and the level of power provided by them and the ease with which you can create them has only gotten better and better

You dont need to know all th possible thigns you can do to create a config, you can ignore 90% of the controls toolkit provides you with and still make a good simple config thats a challenge, you dont need to know all the AAI keywords to build a good AAI config, just copy paste an existing config, fill in the new commander names and rename the file.

Everybodies singing the praises of configless AIs, but what they dont realize is that these AIs are very demanding to make and they dont play as well. AIs like RAI are going to be left dead in the water once good hard solid configs are produced, because these configs can provide an AI with things that will take years for a person to code in their free time todo automatically and dynamically.

There is an immense amount of power and control available in the config system that people just arent using. There is a reason the 4 primary AIs that started the AI community off all had config files. JCAI used configs, AAI has configs, OTAI used configs, NTai has configs, and we all did rather well from them. Sadly two of those AIs fell in on themselves after their authors left for other things, such as Real life, or work on the main engine.

But really, some people I've worked with have sat down and really looked at programs like Toolkit and the config systems in our AIs and been shocked by how poor our AIs are despite the huge array of tools provided via configs that could make them hundreds of times more difficult than they are today.

The reason why is nobody is using these tools, they're just labelling them as hard and complaining about it.

There is a reason AAI and NTai are still here today. Dont ignore the lessons me and submarine have learnt in making them, and realize you already have brilliant AIs, you're just not putting them to their proper use.

[Zpock]

Is there a step by step instruction somewhere how to get goin? That would help so much since I and surely many others don't like figuring things out by ourselves (huge waste of time)...

1. what files do I download. (including wich spring version if it dosn't work with the standard one, and any other dependencies)
2. where do I put them
3. to make a config, what files do i need, and where, and how do i write a very basic skeleton one.
4. Reference of all available keywords etc.

Nothing is hard to learn if you want to, if there are good instructions I mean. Oh and put this where it's easy to find, IE on the first post of the main NTAI post. Just a suggestion.

[AF]

Toolkit has such a set of simple instructions on the second tab labelled "Quick help" or something similair. It also has it repeated numerous times throughout the toolkit and NTai threads, infact I copy pasted what was said in the threads into toolkit itself.

Its quite simple. Run NTai to generate a blank config, open it in toolkit, create tasklists, and assign them to units, then save, start NTai again, and check if you're happy with your config, if not open toolkit again and fix your mistakes (e.g. "oops its building too many factories, lets just remove that factory from this tasklist").

There are a mountain of other things you can do in toolkit to refine the config but they arent necessary and they do have notes and descriptions attatched to them if you ever decide to take a look.

For AAI, I goto the AI/AAI/ folder. There you'll find a generic config and a file with instructions. copy the generic config, and edit where necessary, rename the config where appropriate. For most mods you'd just take an existing config and rename the file, e.g. AA/BA/BOTA/KuroTA etc.

[Slamoid]

What slows me down here is the fact that I didn't memorize every frikin unit's abbreviation to put into the configs.

Can we please get a new thread/wiki-page going about Configs and maybe have some good ones posted?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

the NTAI tool is v v easy to use once youve played around with it a little

[Slamoid]

<--- Runs Ubuntu

We have no tools.

[jcnossen]

The user just wants to play games, not make configs. That's totally not ignorant.

[PicassoCT]

The Users want to be asked - DO you want to play against a AI Yes/No - and thats it.. there are peopl out there who are not Programmres.. sick world

[1v0ry_k1ng]

the idea is the person with an attention span makes a config, taking an hour maximum to produce, and then it works for all the lazy people. ta da!

[imbaczek]

the idea is the person with an attention span makes a config, taking an hour maximum to produce, and then it works for all the lazy people. ta da!

laziness = win!

[TheFatController]

I agree that there is no clear guide (with screenshots) accompanied by an example config that the guide creates.

NTAI leaves out steps in its guide I gave up after: "start the AI and it creates a blank config".. yeah where will this be found, what file extension will it have and what naming scheme will it use in relation to the mod I just chose... The one I opened from intuition crashed the config-making tool so I closed it and went back to playing spring :p

[AF]

itll only let you open files with .tdf file extension, and the files your supposed to open are in the folder that just happens to be there when you first select the open file dialog. But that dialog will be replaced in future with a list so no file selection is needed unless specifically asked.

I've managed to build the kernel panic config in 10 minutes and the nanoblobz config in 30, the vast majority of that time being ingame testing the configs.

The user just wants to play games, not make configs. That's totally not ignorant.

Users complain that the current 'AI depression' is the AI makers fault for not providing good AIs. This isnt true. There are AIs that can do far better than what we have today usinf configs, but users complain the configs are cumbersome and hard, involving programming knowledge and lots of undocumented data, but this is not true, thats hearsay passed on from when the configs where first introduced, they've been simplified documented and made clearer since.

[jcnossen]

it doesnt really matter what's true. "The users" is not a group that can take responsibility for anything. Saying that they're lazy or something of like that, and that they should help build NTAI configs is just not getting you anywhere.

You should just conclude that people are not contributing like you want them to, and try to change your system so they might do.
Write a small php script to upload a TDF AI config to darkstars, and then have NTAI load it if it doesnt have a config for that mod stored locally. Manually downloading stuff doesnt work for lazy people.

[AF]

But re-releasing with new batches of mods does work.

People complain about configs for reasons that just dont cut it anymore, they dont know what they're talking about, and thats ignorant.

But more specifically, configs are rightly the realm of the modder not the AI coder, in an ideal world, modders would be making the configs for the users as a part of their mod, but sadly its the players who're picking up those responsibilities, and people who can build configs are being deterred by misinformation and hearsay from ignorant people.

[imbaczek]

AF: Well, that's how the whole world works and is the primary reason that marketing&PR costs Microsoft more that development; and MS is not alone, that's just an example.

Of course, you don't have the funds for both (and neither does anybody here...) But moaning won't make anything better - inviting people to make configs, or even making some and publishing them with your AI will be a good start. Then invite mod makers to spice them up.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

configs are the route to the best possible AI for each mod. Ive got NTAI economically the king at XTA now, producing more resources and units and expanding and defending excellently. NTAI currently has no proper attack behaviour atm but when it does, this is the route to a good challenge for mid level players.

[AF]

And the attack issue is something that may already have been made obsolete by the build I have on my PC(XE9.7c).

[Lindir The Green]

Is the NTai config builder still buggy?

Because that was what eventually drove me away from my long-in-construction XTA config, along with NTai disobeying what it's told to do.

Anyways, I don't think it is the mod maker's "responsibility" to make a config for the mod. It is the mod maker's responsibility to make a good mod that people will play, and it is the AI maker's responsibility to make a good AI that people will use. An AI that requires the mod makers to make configs isn't as good as one that runs automatically.

Really, it is no one's responsibility to make the configs, but it would be to both the mod's and the AI's advantage, proportionally to how well used the opposite on is.

Since NTai isn't used as much right now, there would be little gained by the mod maker in making a config for it, except maybe for a really small mod. Because the other AIs work just fine, and it wouldn't attract more people to the big mods.

However, there would be a lot gained for NTai in making a good config for, say, BA. Because it would have the potential to attract a lot of people to NTai.

This is all why in Hive AI I'm planning on a config system where the configs are automatically created, but then they can me modified by skilled users. It's the ease of use of non-config AIs, and the customisability and eventual quality of config AIs.

[DJ]

I don't think it's the mod makers responsibility to make a config but at the same time the mod maker needs to be involved (or some other expert) if the config is to be as good as it can be as they understand all the nuances of the particular mod.

I think the whole idea of configs is a good one, I agree that you aren't going to have the vast majority of users building them but there are people out there such as myself who don't have the skills to build an AI for spring but would like to be involved. A highly configurable AI such as NTAI gives us the opportunity to help produce a quality AI without needing the coding skills.

I disagree that an AI without configs is "better", I think in the long run a configurable AI will allow us to have such features as AI "personalities" which is a feature already in C&C. Also a none configurable AI will generally get beaten by an AI that is configured correctly, particularly when you consider that most don't learn. Perhaps if RAI learnt it might be able to generate it's own configs but I believe Reth has said he never intends to include that feature.

[AF]

'AAI style learning' has its limits and a whole host of disadvantages. In the end its not statistical fiddling but type versus type efficiency abse don kill ratios.

And your long running bug with running both toolkit and NTai wasnt a bug with toolkit or NTai at all, I keep telling you this, you had a learning file that had a syntax error. NTai found the error and halted. Toolkit crashed. You havent been paying attention to the NTai thread.