Spring RTS Engine

NTai has a tendancy to make spring close to windows if I let it be for a while (and then attack with a large army)

New installer

Can we choose what we want to install?

Looks nice but why spend that much time on the installer?

Yes you can choose what gets installed.

Also that wasnt made from scratch, a combination of NSIS 2+eclipse+paintshop pro7 + UltraModernUI skin, quite easy.

Guessmyname wrote:NTai has a tendancy to make spring close to windows if I let it be for a while (and then attack with a large army)

Continued investigation has shown that this is a Spring problem, nothing to do with the ai

I think I'm going to make learning files unsavable and let NTai learning routines have a much much bigger affect, making learning effects much much more visible and changeable, and more specific to the game being played.

This should end up benefiting mods using the abstract buildtrees a lot more.

So, how is the buildtree stuff coming along? I keep trying to use NTai, but I only play AA and E&E, which the abstract buildtrees don't seem to like. I would like to help Egarwaen with the buildtrees, but I can't see how NTai implements them. If I set armcom.txt for instance to build mex, solar, mex, solar, mex, kbot lab, and then start a game with 4 Arm NTais, they will all have a different starting BO. Also, it seems to me that if they did follow the trees to the letter, it would be very inflexible and would need lots of map specific trees (to support water maps etc).

Am I missing something?

EDIT: And yes, I have use_mod_default_if_absent=1; in the mod.tdf.

buildtrees rely also on keyword values that are tied to rules and dynamic stuff.

there's also the mod.tdf thing.

Is this documented then? I found some basic info at darkstars.co.uk but not enough to figure out what I'm doing.

there're some docs int eh NTai install, existing buildtrees as examples, and a few docs at darkstars

Read this entire thread. I made several very long instructional posts on how to make buildtrees, and then the rest is just new tags that AF added.

I'd rather that Ntai was just packed in a zip file for easy extraction and deletion while navigating my Spring directory.

However, I'm not saying that you should phase out an installer entirely, just give us different download options.

I'll think about that for the source release.

I've re-added dgunning, but it's XE8 style dgunning with a twist.

First it will try to capture the enemy. If there are units with weapons in range it instead dguns the enemy. If after all that there is an enemy commander, it instead attempts to reclaim the enemy commander.

I may consider changing it so that it calculates if the enemy commander will end up reclaiming the NTai com first if they start reclaiming eachother and if so then tell the comander to run away.

AF wrote:I may consider changing it so that it calculates if the enemy commander will end up reclaiming the NTai com first if they start reclaiming eachother and if so then tell the comander to run away.

That would be a good idea, else NTai would always get its com reclaimed (a player would just run if he was losing, and another NTai would naturally complete the reclaiming).

I've read through most of the thread looking for buildtree info, and while I have found your posts Lindir, the only thing in them which I didn't already know was B_GLOBAL. I still don't see what B_RULE and B_RULE_EXTREME do, though they appear to be essential for keeping the buildtree dynamic.

There are definately comments on B_RULE. Look at my posts instead.

B_GLOBAL doesnt do what I originally said atm though, rather B_GLOBAL == B_RULE in the current build.

B_RULE decides what to build absed on a set of rules. B_RULE_EXTREME is similar exept its designed to only kick in to prevent extremes, such as emergency building of energy if an energy stall is iminent. Usually a B_RULE_EXTREME is skipped btu they're essential to keeping thigns going right.

The deviating build orders are a result of the interpolation. For mod makers that's easiest to understand as B_RULE_EXTREME being inserted between each command. I had to disable the interpolation to prevent NTAI from building factories or other expensive things before the necessary ressource buildings were ready otherwise it would stall badly (the economy section in the mod.tdf is undocumented and as such I'm not using it). The B_RULE I use early on to tell it to start building factories (but not with every builder that reaches that point in the script) sometimes results in a big factory which means stall and often a loss in the early game.

Yeah, I need to modify the AA buildtrees to turn on B_RULE_EXTREME partway through the Commander buildtree. That way, I can get the precision early BO I want and then leave more up to the AI as the game goes on.

RC19 has a stall algorithm that sitn at all optimal, which leads to sometimes very very bad chocies. I beleive you'll be able to turn on interpolation again in rc22, making not to turn it off and then back on againf rot he first 5 or 6 entries in your commanders startup.

where is this new version at?