Spring RTS Engine

Hey Zaphod hate to bug you; but do you supose you could give us a new update on your progress?

Ok sry for the lack of promised progress reports...

This new AI is so far very stable, currently the only way to crash it is by capturing a unit from the AI, but that's an AI interface problem that I have to fix in spring itself. Anyway, it attempts to balance resource usage so every part of the unit buildings gets a predefined share of the resources. The biggest problem currently is that is will never start using multiple builders on a simple task, only on tasks with lots of build time (such as goliaths) This is a big problem because it fails to use all the resources it actually has. This is my todo list currently:

- improve assisting of builders by other builders, or find another way to use excess resources.
- make force groups split up when units are stuck
- support/defense building
- storage building
- resource excess resulting in temporary production increase
- make force units defend while building the group

Just a few minutes ago I think I stumbled on a bug that's been staring all us AI dev's in the face, and we didn't even see it
It seems that GetMetalIncome() and GetEnergyIncome() actually report the income of the current player, and not the current team! This means that if you're playing against the AI, it will report the resource income of the human player, and not the income of the actual AI!

So that's it for now, there probably won't be any more progress reports because it's almost done.

hum,

Is it hard to make the AI placing missile tower or gaat efficiently? (with the most of los and facing the ennemy)

It could be cool for the AI to be able at the beginning to choose between a few config files...
Like that, we could have a few different build order.

Is the AI able to send "marker", like that, we can know where and when it is attacking.

Is it hard to make the AI placing missile tower or gaat efficiently? (with the most of los and facing the ennemy)

Just placing: no i've just been lazy and postponing this part
Efficiently: yes, I'll first have to implement a way to analyse high los areas and choke points on the map. I know a way to do that, but it's not a high priority right now.

It could be cool for the AI to be able at the beginning to choose between a few config files...
Like that, we could have a few different build order.

I've been thinking about that too. Provide a few config files and randomly pick one of them. Would certainly make the AI a lot less predictable.
Besides that, I also would like a way give certain parameters to the AI from the game settings. Maybe just a parameter string stored in the startup script would enable the player to select the AI's behavior without messing with special AI config files.

Is the AI able to send "marker", like that, we can know where and when it is attacking.

Not right now, but why would you want that? Pretty much spoils the element of surprise (not that there is such a thing, it's completely deterministic right now :) ).

Zaphod wrote:

Is the AI able to send "marker", like that, we can know where and when it is attacking.

Not right now, but why would you want that? Pretty much spoils the element of surprise (not that there is such a thing, it's completely deterministic right now :) ).

I sometimes make lan, and when we are 5, a good way to make more balanced team is to make a 3 vs 2+AI. So it's only good if you play in the same team as the AI...

But forget that, it's not really important.