new widget: QueueCopypasta

[Forboding Angel]

Global AI's have to be written and compiled. Lua is jsut a scripting language.

What about when mods have specific gui's and the user is running IceUI. Did you think about that, genius?

There are a lot more reasons than cheating.

[Nemo]

Not all widgets work ideally with all games, and some games have very game-specific widgets (like GUI elements) which conflict with third party widgets, and so being able to disable them to ensure the game is presented as intended is a useful tool.

I wouldn't be as upset about it - repacking it and unlocking in that situation is just begging for trouble with conflicting widgets.

Its more troublesome with games that are looking to be 'competition standard' since the lock file ensures a perfectly level widget playing field. If one player can create a command queue for a map (say for a con laying mexes), save it, and load it with a single keypress, isn't that player going to have a huge advantage on that map over the player who still needs to go and click all the orders out? Not that I'm knocking your work - I think its very cool. Its just an example of a widget that can dramatically shift the balance of the game as far as the time/player attention resource goes.


In general game-makers aren't yelling about HelperAIs because practically none of them exist. I don't think you were around (it was over a year ago, I think), but when krogothe demonstrated a helperAI that seemed to really give a huge advantage (dgunning hawks at full speed), people were up in arms like they are now. So drawing that particular comparison isn't all that valid, I think.

Edit: I've been beaten again. Yeesh you people type quickly.

[dizekat]

Global AI's have to be written and compiled. Lua is jsut a scripting language.

For cheating though, AIs are the way to go. Much more power.

What about when mods have specific gui's and the user is running IceUI. Did you think about that, genius?

actually thats precisely what i had in mind. Mod running some extremely shitty GUI or a fork of IceUI.
Its not like that override is automatic. User has to modify the mod and repackage by hand.

Nemo, fob: can you guys even bother to read "offending" text? I added a warning that it may lead to problems, outlining two most major issues.

[lurker]

Say, you'd be misinformed into believing effective cheating prevention is possible in OSS game, and you'd *care* to prevent cheating. You'd think about it if you care, no? AIs was first thing that Hoi mentioned.

Except that I'm not aware of any useful groupai's atm other than a dgunner, but there are many useful widgets that a game maker might not want. Forb is getting a bit too excited about this, though.
In a way, it is about control. But it's not control over what the user does at all. It's control over what they call the game they play, to try somewhat to keep them from lying.

[dizekat]

Say, you'd be misinformed into believing effective cheating prevention is possible in OSS game, and you'd *care* to prevent cheating. You'd think about it if you care, no? AIs was first thing that Hoi mentioned.

Except that I'm not aware of any useful groupai's atm other than a dgunner, but there are many useful widgets that a game maker might not want. Forb is getting a bit too excited about this, though.
In a way, it is about control. But it's not control over what the user does at all. It's control over what they call the game they play, to try somewhat to keep them from lying.

its probably more about control over which UI player uses, one he chooses himself or the mod's bundled.

[lurker]

It's not the UI itself at issue, but macros or actual game logic implemented in lua.

[dizekat]

It's not the UI itself at issue, but macros or actual game logic implemented in lua.

I'm not saying UI is real issue, just that its the issue for mod makers. One more thing to control - which UI user uses, Iceui or bundled stale fork of IceUI .

Regarding cheaty AIs, i'd say, most of group AIs here are more cheaty in concept than majority of widgets.
Auto mex upgrader? Come on, my widgets at least never *automate* anything, just process user control. Radar AI? Information hack, also not working correctly. What else, the central build? Automates task assignment. Economy AI? Automates eco making (but presently does not work correctly, presumably due to lack of maintenance. It can be fixed though). All are excellent starting points for developing a cheat.

[dizekat]

Also, before i go sleep.
I just posted a compatibility guide. Don't like it, don't use it. End of story. No you cant have control if others use it with "your" mod. If that thing was secret knowledge, my widget would be empowering cheaters over fair players, something that i don't want. With guide open, everyone has equal opportunity to use this widget.
Theres nothing really to discuss.

[REVENGE]

My take on this is that if I spend the time to write lua widgets that help me micro/automate everything that can possibly be automated by widgets, then I deserve to be able to use them regardless of what you say.

Right?

RIGHT?

[SpliFF]

Firstly, Queue copy/paste exists as a trepan widget. I extended it to make a widget that automatically restores orders for engineers that die while performing a queue. I think it's in SVN. Your implementation looks good though.

Anyway the discussion on whether support AIs are cheating intrigues me, especially as I'm currently working on one. Sorry but this thread is pretty well hijacked already.

The thing is, whether widget automation is cheating depends largely on what you think a strategy game IS. If you think of TA as an action game then widgets like this are the equivalent of aim-bots. I guess this is most of the CA crowd since that mod emphasizes unit micro. On the other hand if you see TA as a strategy game then unit micro is actually a serious flaw, since it is a distraction from planning and tactical analysis.

Personally I fall into the second camp. I absolutely despise micro-management - largely because in most RTS titles pathfinding bugs and poor UI choices make precision movement extremely frustrating. I can't properly focus on other parts of the map while microing peewee scouts around to the back of someones base. The game is just too complex to handle everything, everywhere, no matter how good you are. Any attempt to micro units like this typically puts you at a disadvantage. This is essentially why porcing, spamming and nuking are so effective.

What I actually want is a way to tell a few units to "go hassle the enemy" while I focus on other tasks. That is strategy - clicking units around is... whack-a-mole.

To this end I'm working on widgets that do exactly that sort of automation. Define goals and let the widget micro them. I know some people are going to bitch about it but if you want me to care you'll have to convince me that the only point of Spring is to manually direct units around a map while clicking on things.

While I agree somewhat that the game author should define the rules of play the fact remains that Spring provides no way to reliably enforce it. I've seen enough of the code to realise that it probably never will. Arguing for any other outcome is wishful thinking. No matter what I do to conform my widgets to mod authors demands there is nothing I can do to stop others from modifying the widget themselves (other than not release it, which would then give me an unfair advantage).

So in short, if this sort of thing bothers you then you should probably stop playing now and go back to Quake or something.

[Evil4Zerggin]

I guess this is most of the CA crowd since that mod emphasizes unit micro.

Ironically we're known for having lots of LuaUI, including command-giving widgets.

[dizekat]

Well thats my view on widgets. Neither strategic nor tactical side of the game could be automated here. You can automate chess, but thats coz its tiny board with extreme per step microing of 16 units. Even Go at non-noob level is pretty much beyond the computers.

Speaking of aimbots, in all mods here virtually all units (except a commander) have their own 'aimbot' built in, i.e. aim and fire by themselves. So aimbot accusations are at best retarded, unless its commshooter.

Now, fairness. As far as fair play goes, requirement for micro, with widgets or without, is just a huge source of unfairness. Host has 0 lag, while all players have various lags depending to distance, and in my experience in BA, especially first 10 minutes, lag matters more than any widgets i seen so far.
Lag aside, different people have different screen resolutions and graphics cards. That makes big difference. Some people cant afford to buy PC components specially for gaming, etc.
Widgets currently are more of a thing for making annoying sides of gameplay less annoying.

I even suggest that, if we care about fairness, comm needs auto-dgun mode, done same way as autofire on all other units, with perfect prediction for airplanes.
But thats kinda not very related, I think we can say that in this thread it was already very well established that motivation of that buzz about lua ruining game and stuff is 100% unrelated to fairness.

as for "harass enemy" AI, i would have to release a rebuilding and llt making widget to counter such kind of stuff. Because it only gives you advantage as far as you're raiding enemy automatically while enemy's defending and rebuilding manually.

[Wisse]

@Spliff
I wonder what kind of micro level you can achieve with this widget of urs.

I take it i could be able to fend off 1 sided attack with no problem which means free metal, but if you made AI to attack me from 2 sides and you microed the 3rd i would be possibly bashed couse with my current skill i can only micro 2 sides descent enough. That would rly piss me off. And i would call that a cheat.

Micro roughly comes down to MC/min and there's physical limitation of clicks one can achieve. Which means that most players are approaching their limit of how well they can handle stuff. That gives me and others room to improve and to catch up with them. But for what u need to play alot.

Than u come with ur widget and suddenly get 200MC/min (very good spring players get arround 120) worth of commands which will be impossible to counter without similar AI. That would kill the gameplay in mods like BA.
So maybe ur idea about ur own mod is good and there should be allowed widget list for each mod to counter unwanted help.

[SpliFF]

I know Wisse but I've already abandoned the idea in favour of writing a complete mod. Essentially because I know some people will get upset. I don't see it as cheating since you would be perfectly entitled to run the same widget (thereby performing a three-pronged defense and simultaneous counter-attack), but I know this will cause resentment anyway. In short, I'm not releasing the widget for other mods, but it will be hard-coded into mine.

So now we can all go back to talking about... what were we talking about?

[dizekat]

@Spliff
I wonder what kind of micro level you can achieve with this widget of urs.

I take it i could be able to fend off 1 sided attack with no problem which means free metal, but if you made AI to attack me from 2 sides and you microed the 3rd i would be possibly bashed couse with my current skill i can only micro 2 sides descent enough. That would rly piss me off. And i would call that a cheat.

Micro roughly comes down to MC/min and there's physical limitation of clicks one can achieve. Which means that most players are approaching their limit of how well they can handle stuff. That gives me and others room to improve and to catch up with them. But for what u need to play alot.

Than u come with ur widget and suddenly get 200MC/min (very good spring players get arround 120) worth of commands which will be impossible to counter without similar AI. That would kill the gameplay in mods like BA.
So maybe ur idea about ur own mod is good and there should be allowed widget list for each mod to counter unwanted help.

AI cant attack decently anyway.