AIs that require config files are serious usability problems - Page 3

AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Discuss the source code and development of Spring Engine in general from a technical point of view. Patches go here too.

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YokoZar
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by YokoZar »

AF wrote:The last thing I want to deal with in NTai development is politics and waiting on content developers to release new versions of their content, because they won't re-release their games because I added support.
Right, that's why you should be able to white-list their mod in the AI itself rather than waiting on them.

Whitelist and config files could come from any source really. We could even have them downloadable from the lobby in the same way that lua widgets are.
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AF
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by AF »

But we need version numbers to make them worthwhile, or we could end up with an AI saying we support BA when BA changes critical thigns in a new version and everyones puzzled.
YokoZar
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by YokoZar »

AF wrote:But we need version numbers to make them worthwhile, or we could end up with an AI saying we support BA when BA changes critical thigns in a new version and everyones puzzled.
I'm not sure if that's workable given that users tend to update mods more frequently than AIs -- if it's the mod author supplying the whitelist that would work fine, but there's not much an AI-author can do about a mod version that's not out yet.

BA is a good illustration though - it's not changing too much from one version to the next these days, so an out of date AI would probably still be pretty good.


edit: still, "support" = "doesn't crash and makes units" is a much better user experience than we have currently. We'll likely want a generic "I support all BA versions" flag anyway, and if that turns out to be inadequate we could easily make it more specific
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AF
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by AF »

But these whitelists are guides not draconian rules. Suggestions, reccomendations, and should never be made to enforce support.

For example there are gray regions such as what you suggested, or where the AI dev implements basic support but the content developers do not think its good enough, yet some players may wish to use it anyway.

Put a list of recommended mods with every AI, and a list of mods that aren't recommended, with the option to specify version numbers if possible. There are version number tags in modinfo.tdf, and if they're not being kept upto date then the content developers have a bug to fix.
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Pxtl
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by Pxtl »

Isn't the flamewar kind of talking past each other here? NTAI isn't bundled with Spring is it? What people are complaining about is the list of AIs that are currently coming with spring... which does not include NTAI.

Probably what would make the the most sense would be to allow the AI to include binding for lobbies - either as an API call or a Lua script (Lua would be preferable for this job to avoid the risk of crashing the lobby as bad as an AI can crash the engine itself). This binding is called against the mod archive, which may include custom AI files. The binding returns True if the AI is compatible with the mod.

So, the AI can include a whitelist for compatibility, or the mod can include an AI config file informing the AI of its compatibility and how to use it. The AI can then say "yes, because this config file is here, I know how to use this mod - include me in the AI list".

Of course, I know positively dick about AIs, so this feature may already exist.

Or something like that.
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zwzsg
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by zwzsg »

AF wrote:Oh look, winning at kernel panic

http://springrts.com/phpbb/download/file.php?id=2655
Was about to ask you where to get this new NTai, but then I noticed from the bits' laser that this pic is several years old.

AF wrote:The last thing I want to deal with in NTai development is politics and waiting on content developers to release new versions of their content, because they won't re-release their games because I added support.
Lies and slander. When NTai supported KP, I immediatly included it in KP installer. Same for Baczek's KP AI: I used it in KP installer and skirmish generator less than a week after we heard of that AI for the first time.

I don't refuse to cooperate with AI devs. But most of them don't care about KP, and two of them who did still haven't released anything more than 4 monthes (imbaczek) / 1 year (AF) after I pointed out glaring bug rendering them unusable.

But to your credit, NTai doesn't crash much, compared to other dll's AI.

YokoZar wrote:There's no point removing DLL/.so based AIs if they're useful to some users.
There's a point, if it's detrimental to most users and useful to very few.
YokoZar wrote:At worst just keep them from the user - that can easily be done by hiding them unless they're whitelisted for a particular mod. Such a whitelist could be a simple text file in either the mod or the AI itself.
I already proposed a whitelist system. But AI devs hubris wouldn't stand it. I could even agree on a greylist instead of a whitelist. Though it needs to be mod side, not engine side, as they are hundreds and hundreds of mods but only a dozen AI max (and even fewer with builds compatible with current Spring.exe): A modder can test all AIs, but an AI dev can't test all mods.
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AF
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by AF »

Then it would make sense for 5 AIs to maintain 5 whitelists than 50 mods to maintain 50 whitelists. It si an AI developers choice normally which mods he supports, and the AI dev knows more about which mods are supported by their AI, so they should be in charge of the white list, if only because they're more likely to maintain it.

And zwzsg, that was a general statement, not directly aimed at you. Taking the whole of spring content dev subtracting kernel panic, my point still holds, but I wont start labelling exceptions as that leads to 'what about us too' posts etc etc

And the picture of kernel panic and NTai was more to the point that NTai attempted to support nonTA games
YokoZar
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by YokoZar »

zwzsg wrote:
YokoZar wrote:There's no point removing DLL/.so based AIs if they're useful to some users.
There's a point, if it's detrimental to most users and useful to very few.
KAIK as I understand it is a popular AI since it's reasonably good and BA-compatible, but it's also DLL/.so based. But we're talking past eachother here - enforcing a whitelist would get rid of the bad parts of the library AIs without losing the good.
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Argh
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by Argh »

Then it would make sense for 5 AIs to maintain 5 whitelists than 50 mods to maintain 50 whitelists.
I totally disagree with that.

It is very unlikely that a new AI that actually works well with our games will face a long wait before the game developer releases an update for the whitelist. You make it sound like there is this huge wait, when at most with most active projects, their turnaround times between updates are 90 days or so...
The very people who refused to cooperate with AI developers in the old days are now complaining because of it.
LOL, give me a break, AF.

You very well know that I spent a lot of time with AI developers in the past, trying to get them to build AIs that wouldn't crash with novel game designs. I wrote multiple configs for NTai and NanoBlobs, AAI, et al.

But with P.U.R.E., it started to go outside your collective comfort zone. I was no longer just using Spring's ruleset... and voila, suddenly there was absolutely no support for my game. Just modifying the basic economic ruleset made most AIs just sit there, because they couldn't handle "metal" maps.

For a long time, I kept myself in a straightjacket, game-design-wise, to keep AI support. I talked about it honestly and openly, in the hope that that might alert AI developers that there were serious problems. I reported bugs and problems to the AI maintainers, etc. What I got for my trouble... was even fewer working AIs than when I started.

I pretty much gave up after KAIK suddenly quit working with P.U.R.E., RAI suddenly quit working with P.U.R.E., both maintainers were told and the problems weren't addressed. And NTai wasn't being maintained at that time, so what was I supposed to do?

Again, you act like I've been hostile to AI developers historically... the fact of the matter is, I've been one of the few game developers who even bothered talking to you guys and explaining my needs.

I'm talking to you guys again here to explain why I lost interest in dealing with you as a group, and why I generally have a very low opinion of your priorities and goals.

It's not my fault that most of the AI developers here can't be bothered to download and test with new games, and as a game developer, I think it's pretty insulting to imply that I should have to chase down the people who are supposedly building AI- if anything, they should be asking ME about my game's features, and trying out new games as they're released, which is hardly an onerous obligation, and if they like the game, figuring out how best to support them.

To top this off... when I watched you guys fail find the collective willpower to deal with Lua, etc., I pretty much expected things to rapidly become untenable, and they have.

So don't blame me for your collective failures to address the real problems in terms of the end-user's experience with anything outside the OTA box, or tell me I'm being "ignorant", when in fact I was the one who pushed AI developers to build broader solutions in the first place. I just quit pushing it when it became entirely clear that I was shoving back the tide, is all, and I am not in favor of giving AI developers even more ways to cause trouble, by allowing them in any way shape or form to tell me, the game developer, or players whether their product works with mine.
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AF
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by AF »

Argh until in the last 2 or 3 months the only AI developers present in this community for 3 years have been the old guard as I shall name them.

By the old guard, I refer to the likes of myself etc basically the maintainers past and present of the major AIs of the previous generation.

Right now the only ones of the old guard left behind are me, kloot, reth, and submarine.

Submarine rarely comes here, and does little AI work, but still makes updates.

Kloot has other things to do, but he may make fixes to KAIK every now and again. If you dig through the AI forums you'llfind he has actually started a new project whcih isn't in a releasable state yet.

Reth I assume has academic work to do, and I'm unaware fo any forum posts or updates he has made in the last month, he may well not be here at all, or have retired form AI devleopment to play in the lobby.


All 3 of the above have been busy elsewhere or not been present most of the time for the last 2 years, and most other AI developers buggered off somewhere else or took up engine development, or re lua developers writing lua AIs.

The only exceptions are myself and hugh perkins, I myself come from the first generation of JCAI OTAI and the early AAI, but I've been inactive on the AI front for most of the time. Hugh Perkins had his C# AI. I single me and him out here because he has a new project, and I have resumed NTai development.

The old guard as such have a very different ideological view of things, one that I disagreed with hence why my AI took many forks away from convention, such as choosing configuration files.

You relied on the old guard to think up ideas to tackle the lua mechanics problem, yet this occurred at a time when there were little or no AI developers, and those that were present had little time for development. The necessary time and effort to tackle problems could not be spared, and for most, the time to even maintain AI at a standstill was nonexistant, which was the case for NTai, else I would have taken a stab at the problem.

The latest generation of AI developers though are young, and have different ideas. Do not be so hastey. We're painfully aware of the lua mechanics issue, and now we have more resources, and new developers, hopes are high =] Just give us time, the new projects are not mature enough yet!
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hughperkins
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Re: AIs that require config files are serious usability problems

Post by hughperkins »

Spring Grid might make analyzing which AIs work/don't work a fairly automatic process.

http://manageddreams.com/ailaddergrid/viewresults.py

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=20358 , and specifically:
http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 31#p387431
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