Unrealistic Expectations

[AF]

When AI fails AI developers are blamed.

spiked helmet, if we all followed your attitude then AI development would never have gotten off the ground. JCAI and NTai 0.2 would be the only AIs and they would have been abandoned weeks after they were created.

AI developers here are a gift you have refused to acknowledge, who gain little respect for what they do. You have no idea how lucky you are.

AI development for a full skirmish AI can be hard. But you can help, it isnt rocket science its very very easy.

For example Foreboding released unit restrictions once that improved KAIs game play in a mod greatly. He wrote not C++ code. He did nothing complicated. It was all very very simple based on common sense.

AI configs aren't hard to create. Very good configs take time and effort but that effort required gets smaller and smaller as the user learns more and more about how the mod works. An experienced player can do in 30 minutes what a noob would achieve in several days.


Lua gadgets can do things that aide AIs without affecting non AI players. They can do this while being extremely simplistic, far simpler than what's needed for modelling or cob animation. Yet they're being underrated, and the effort required to produce them is vastly overestimated. Sometimes a 1 liner in a gadget can have a profound effect on an AIs gameplay.


So I leave you with this:

Why should I as an AI developer pander to you the mod maker when you cant be arsed even glancing in my direction when I provide interfaces, and dumb them down for you only to see you either harass me or fob it off on your userbase.

Why shouldn't I focus on those modders who don't develop for themselves but for the community and take an active interest?

Please don't complain that AI isn't interesting or hard in your mod when you offer no help of any kind.

[submarine]

The AAI and NTAI configs work completely differently. There's pretty much no information in common between them, except maybe scouters.

That's because AAI and NTAI work completly different as well....

[AF]

Infact even scouters no longer apply as NTai no longer uses the scouter tags in the latest builds

[SpikedHelmet]

The point is, AF, you're having a tantrum over absolutely nothing. Like I said, modders are already too busy as it is without having to learn yet another fucking thing.

If you don't want to make AI's, don't. If some modder comes here asking for someone to program an AI for their mod, and nobody's willing, fine! If you want to make AI on your time and at your leisure, fine! Nobody's holding a fucking gun to your head.

[AF]

If you are in a modding team and you're overloaded then find another person to add to your team. You don't need a modeller or a scriptor to deal with AI, and it isn't hard to learn, especially when tis been dumbed down to such an extent that theres a point and click program for it.

However you don't appear to have even looked at what would be involved. Please explain how numerous players with no modding or AI experience of any kind have managed to create aai and ntai configs. It takes very little to get the AI to just play the game, and the more effort put in the better it plays, and the only pre-requisite determining how good you are at it is how well you understand the game.

However, if you would indeed like to see an AI community were its ok to blame everything on AI developers, and AI developers cannot make any attempt to explain the situation or why things are the way they are, who instead just give up and walk away, then fine, watch the AI community here dissapear into nothingness in a matter of days, watch single player support in spring collapse and ripple into other areas of spring. Then we can see where such an ignorant attitude will land us,

[FLOZi]

If you are in a modding team and you're overloaded then find another person to add to your team. You don't need a modeller or a scriptor to deal with AI, and it isn't hard to learn, especially when tis been dumbed down to such an extent that theres a point and click program for it.

However you don't appear to have even looked at what would be involved. Please explain how numerous players with no modding or AI experience of any kind have managed to create aai and ntai configs. It takes very little to get the AI to just play the game, and the more effort put in the better it plays, and the only pre-requisite determining how good you are at it is how well you understand the game.

However, if you would indeed like to see an AI community were its ok to blame everything on AI developers, and AI developers cannot make any attempt to explain the situation or why things are the way they are, who instead just give up and walk away, then fine, watch the AI community here dissapear into nothingness in a matter of days, watch single player support in spring collapse and ripple into other areas of spring. Then we can see where such an ignorant attitude will land us,

More people playing multiplayer?

[AF]

This isn't an FPS, its an RTS and single player is very important, as it is for any game. To simply ignore it won't work unless your running an MMO.

[stilicho]

If you are in a modding team and you're overloaded then find another person to add to your team. You don't need a modeller or a scriptor to deal with AI, and it isn't hard to learn, especially when tis been dumbed down to such an extent that theres a point and click program for it.

However you don't appear to have even looked at what would be involved. Please explain how numerous players with no modding or AI experience of any kind have managed to create aai and ntai configs. It takes very little to get the AI to just play the game, and the more effort put in the better it plays, and the only pre-requisite determining how good you are at it is how well you understand the game.

However, if you would indeed like to see an AI community were its ok to blame everything on AI developers, and AI developers cannot make any attempt to explain the situation or why things are the way they are, who instead just give up and walk away, then fine, watch the AI community here dissapear into nothingness in a matter of days, watch single player support in spring collapse and ripple into other areas of spring. Then we can see where such an ignorant attitude will land us,

More people playing multiplayer?

More likely less people playing Spring overall. Some people don't play Spring because they don't even realize that there are skirmish AI's, others can't be bothered to download and install them properly. Single-player is a feature that can attract people to the community. It shouldn't be ignored. It behooves modders to make their mods AI-compatable.

[FLOZi]

But really Spring is a multiplayer game and is designed as such. The same was true of TA.

[stilicho]

Would nearly as many have bought OTA if there hadn't been a single-player campaign? How many more people would play Spring if we had one, for even just one mod?

[AF]

The vast majority of people who play rts games never login to the multi player or register on the forums. Most who do are just interested in patches and fixes.

I personally have only ever known one person other than myself who played RTS games online, although I know many RTS players.

[Triaxx2]

Mainly because most RTS's have no strategy involved in their online components, beyond build X amount of Y unit and charge. Everything else is tossed aside for simple speed.

[jcnossen]

But really Spring is a multiplayer game and is designed as such. The same was true of TA.

That is a really crap excuse to have no single player.
For any game, single player will attract new users because the barrier to play is lower. Multiplayer then might keep the users around when they are done with singleplayer.

[FLOZi]

But really Spring is a multiplayer game and is designed as such. The same was true of TA.

That is a really crap excuse to have no single player.
For any game, single player will attract new users because the barrier to play is lower. Multiplayer then might keep the users around when they are done with singleplayer.

It's not a reason not to have, its a reason for priorities. Mod makers are mainly concerned with how their game plays competitively online, single player is a secondary concern.

[KingRaptor]

Mainly because most RTS's have no strategy involved in their online components, beyond build X amount of Y unit and charge. Everything else is tossed aside for simple speed.

~~



Related to the subject, here's an excerpt from something a friend of mine wrote on RTSes:

Part I: RTS Entertainment Value
An RTS game has two VERY distinct ways to be played. You can play through the single player storyline by following the campaigns or playing against a scripted AI, or you can play online multiplay against human opponents. RTS single play campaigns typically have a very shallow story line, even when trying to mimic a story line as in depth and detailed as that of the Lord of the Rings. The problem is that fighting 15 different battles really does nothing to contribute to the story line. In reality, fighting your way through each mission is nothing but an interlude or intermission between the cut scenes that play out like a movie. How you fight the battle means little to how the story line plays out. Your only goal is to complete the mission objectives so the C++ code from the game will load the next cut scene from your CD-ROM. Now take a look at the single play of a roll playing game like Final Fantasy for example. Compared to the handful of hours it takes to complete the single play storyline of an RTS game, it takes dozens and dozens of hours to complete a game like Final Fantasy. Not only that, but if the game was designed well, your playing actually BUILDS upon the cut scenes that help to explain what you are doing. The game play and the story line are intricately woven together, making it much much more enjoyable as a single player game than even a first person shooter and especially a RTS game can be. If you play a FPS like Doom 3, you will find that the game play also helps to build upon the story line. In fact, the entire game IS the story line. You cant separate the missions from the story at all and it makes for a very fun single play experience.

An RTS game also has something else to do in single play, the skirmish. Basically you test your skills with the settings of your choice against a scripted AI. For the first few games, this can be fun, but after that, you have adapted your play style to perfectly counter the way the AI scripting works. At this current level of technology, an AI in an RTS game isnt exactly the most clever of opponents. In some RTS games, such as Zero Hour, the AI was given cheats to make it seem harder than it was actually programmed to be. Several people took it upon themselves to produce better AI that didn├óÔé¼Ôäót need to cheat to be harder. But given the fundamentals of the game engine, you could only make it better, not good. This leads me to what actually gives you the most entertainment value in a RTS game. Remember that single play can be beaten in a matter of a few hours, and skirmish just gets old after a few games. However when you play online, against human opponents, the game is dramatically different. What you know about the game is now in direct competition with what thousands of other players might know. What makes multiplay unique from skirmish is not necessarily that human opponent's are better or harder than the scripted AI opponents of a skirmish match, but the fact that each player is a completely different challenge. If you played one player all the time, it's no different than playing against the scripted AI. Unless your opponent really does a good job adapting, you will eventually get used to his play style and come up with a play style of your own to counter him. But when you factor in the diversity of play styles of thousands of different people, you now need to expand your knowledge of the game such that you can adapt to each person's different play style, army choice, and level of skill. The combinations are endless. You have no choice but to get better at the game as time progresses if you want to continue to win. This requires learning and invested time into the game on a level that far exceeds what you would need to win the campaigns and a few skirmishes with. I have been playing a single army of the 12 armies available in Zero Hour for nearly a year, and I am STILL learning. I haven├óÔé¼Ôäót even touched the other armies yet. In theory it would take me about 12 years to fully understand Zero Hour if I invested the time needed to become equally good at every army. The reason for this is because while I am learning, my opponent's are constantly learning as well, meaning I have to learn new things. It's constant improvement and constant challenge, and ultimately, constant fun.

You will, unquestionably gain far far far more entertainment value from playing and making and effort to get good at multiplay than if you just buy the game to play through the campaigns and skirmishes. I would go so far as to argue my main point, which is buying a RTS game just to play single play is an absolute waste of money. It's about 1/10th the fun of playing online against a diversity of human opponents.

Note: This is not to say that singleplayer support/AI are worthless to an RTS. If that's what you got from the excerpt, you really are an idiot.

[Zpock]

Hmmm interestingly, I have to use a commands hack to do any sort of user input to gadgets. Basically I'm using the resurrect commands (cuz I dont care to use it in my mod) as a 4 parameter input command where the 1st parameter is what kinda input it is, the others as parameters for this input.

This means writing an ai that uses this to it's advantage could be easy, just make the ai send those commands and the input part is handled. However it would still lack a way of snapping up the output information from the gadget so it would be more or less blind.

[clericvash]

AF, just get rid of your work in AI, working on your lobby, and then see what happens.

[AF]

I pre-ordered supreme commander, and I regularly logged into GPGNet for updates and a look around, and for the first few week our lobby had more people in it despite thousands of units sold.

Where are all these people?

And spring has had tens of thousands of downloads in the last year yet I've never seen the lobby rise above 350 for any time longer than maybe 10 minutes in the last 3 years.

Multiplayer, despite whatever you may think of it, no matter how superior or inferior it may be, is played by a minority, especially where RTS' are concerned. The vast majority of peewees killed are AI peewees offline. The same with zerglings, mammoth tanks, or riflemen.

More to the point, you don't have to do anything for multi player save balance things. It isn't a priority because your not doing it, tobi or auswaschbar are the ones fiddling with that. So don't consign AI to the scrapheap because its not the #1 priority.

[SpikedHelmet]

AF, going back on what you said, who the hell is blaming AI developers for not developing AIs? I know I've not blamed anyone for their being no AI for S44. Well, except God.

[AF]

Do realize me and kloot have other responsibilities, Kloot is mainly an engine dev not an AI programmer and I have my own commitments too. We're rather pressed for time.