Spring RTS Engine

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NTAI 0.28.10+ Installer

Download here
Either downlaod the above ro add the fodler MEXCACHE to your AI fodler to get NTAI working. (PS: The above has a few additions and changes, including a hidden golden egg you wont fidn in the source code. Mex spot choices are also mroe efficient and the AI will expand more.)
This is gonna be a big list of changelog...

Changelog from 0.27:

Mynn support
Xect support
TLL support
Arm support
Rhyoss support
Fixed attack code
counter attacking
Vastly improoved build tree
Fixed mex class (UW mex spots & scouting)
Missile Silos can stockpile and fire
Con unit stalling nearly eradicated
Ever increasing attack group sizes.
Ressurection and reclaimation
New task system
High trajectory support
Roam versus maneouvre support
Blobs showing what a unti is doing
Command blobs are scaled to the size of the unit
UW techtree additions
Better choice between solars and wind gens

NTAI 0.27

I release this as a midway between 0.26 and 0.3, aswell as to provide an alternative to JCAI. With many needed tweaks and improovements, aswell as much demanded thigns which werent too hard to add.

Download It Here
NOTE:: If you downlaoded within 4 hours of this and are one of the initial 14 downlaoders, redownlaod, as there are fixes and improovements I made. Gnome/storm could you delete old NTAI 0.27 entry at fileuniverse?

Changelog:

- '.Verbose' command toggles the output log to the infoconsole.
- Improved scouting
- Water map support
- Numerous Optimisations and stability improovements.
- Units dont go further than they have to to build a mex anymore..
- Expanded build trees
- Krogoths
- Initimidators/nuke silos/ EMP missile launchers
- Doomsday machines/ Punishers/ Flak/ toasters
- Builds Moho Metal Extractors
- AI builds radar and sonar jamming units
- Aircraft and Vehicles
- One or two amphibious units
- Mobile radar & flak units
- Improoved attack system
- Attack groups are far less likely to sit doing nothing in the middle of the AI's base.
- Distances are set by how hard it is to get somewhere rather than the direct distance
- Construction projects are put on hold if they're absurd, such as a krogoth gantry being started while in nanostall
- The overflow lag error should be 80% less likely to occur (engine bug still not fixed)
- smaller html logfiles
- Reduced the risk of fluke metal extractor placement

- Generic Core only support for all OTA based mods with (AA, UH, XTA, OTA, KuroTA)

A water build tree has been added. The AI can now attack scout and build a base using water units, and will do both water and land if on a mixed map. The construction system has had a few changes to ready it for the next step up to 0.3, but I may release a version 0.28 specifically for other mods if there's a big enough demand and you dont mind waiting a little
longer for 0.3, I could change it so that it laoded all the build trees from a mass of files int the form of unitname.txt.

NTAI 0.3 wishlist

I've been researching and taking lots of opinions from people and asking questions and so I have a good idea what people think is a priority now.

- Universal mod support -
Any mod any version, instantaneous support with no config files at all.

- Intelligent build decisions
As a side effect of unviersal mod support, I'll have to have more intelligent building choices than a hardcoded build tree, such as selecting resources if they're needed, or building res storage or defences.

- Basic unit effectiveness learning -
Counter to AAI, simple to implement once the above is taken care of.

- Voronoi based pathing -
I've gone through gabbas research and I'm going to implement basic voronai generation code and key it into the pathfinding itnerface for NTAI, basic things such as going over the mountains on small divide, choosing areas to take that give the worst possible disadvantage to the enemy, aswell as more intuitive scouting. It'll also let NTAI lay minefields, and I anticipate I'll need a '.mines' switch

- Replacement building placement algorithm -
Letting NTAI play on maps that crash as soon as the game starts with an engine crash, such as small divide and acid foursome. An algorithm exists but causes immense game lag.

If there are any minor things you think the AI needs for 0.3 that arent very labour intensive then I'll be starting a wishlist thread. This doesnt include the commander D-Gunning, as I can see how veylon did it in OTAI, and I shall experiment with it.


The only errors that impede NTAI at the moment that I am aware of are caused by engine problems. For example units may cease functioning and not follow the commands NTAI gives them. Such as voodoos and finks dropping out fo the sky and landing when they reach a mex point instead of moving onto the next position that NTAI has assigned them. Or units getting trapped in factories, most notably freakers. You can reproduce this bug by building a factory in the middle of a crowded forest with a con airplane then build things with it, then they get stuck and the bug occurs. I do have a solution that fixes this error and rpevents it happenign at all in NTAI to soem extent but it lags the game immensly making NTAI almost unplayable, so for now I have a temporary fix that doesnt affect gamespeed but wont catch all possible occurances. If you incurr this error during an AI game or a multiplayer game either take manual control fo the unti usign fps mode and move it out manually and the lag should dissapear, or self destruct the factory its stuck in.

Thanks for the release! I will play test it quite a bit. I did not see an important feature for version 0.3, maybe 0.28 could include it....
What about making the build lists an external text file the user can modify? That would allow full AA support or generic mod support without a recomplie on your end.

I just had a pretty good game against that version until it crashed

Early on


Near the end

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=1775

I found the bug myself a few minutes after my tim online ended, and now after fixing it and begging stepdad to upload I've got it.

Any error in NTAI that hasnt been caught or fixed in the last hours or two is handled by exception so it will never crash unless the engine is at fault

Good job! The AI is looking great; I was impressed when I saw that it was building water units as well. One quesiton though, how would I watch two AIs fight each other? I tried adding the bots and starting a game through TASClient, which used to work for me, to no avail. One bot fights while the other two idle.

on that note, I completed my first game against the computer NTAI ever, using 1v1 on Azure rampart

The next game was on smalldivide with the same settings and the game instantly crashed and hard booted me when my commander appeared. After having similar issues over and over, I suspect it was a change to cain's metal class for the instant crash. AzureRampart has uniform metal, SmallDivide would require identifying metal locations.

Zaphod, Alantai, is there any way we can get Spring to not hard boot the computer on crash?

Rainbow land and painted desert worked too, again uniform metal... or in the case of painted desert, metal on specific spots.

I had a ton of exceptions caught during the fight too but that doesn't end the game or hard boot the machine

I just tested the new version and it showed some strange behavior. Instead of sending its attacking units towards the enemy it just send them to the top left corner doing nothing over and over. Exceptions were some Freaker scouting and running around.

Maps were : Shore2Shore (testing the water performance) and Castles.

daraknor, you completed your first game against it, so I have to ask.

Did you win?

My second release of 0.27 was to fix an error I thought I had corrected.

But it seems rather than eradicate the bug in ym haste I simply made ti less likely to crash.

Hence why my added exception handling meant I lasted till the end of the game while the IA posted error messages instead of crashing.

So I have made a lot of additions for checking, in the attack code I've ruthlessly gone through adned every location a check to see if it's 0,0,0.

The error that crashes your machines too si the one that was ported over from SJ's metal maker GroupAI. It's bene known that there is a bug in it, but it becomes more obvious in a skirmish AI that makes use of lots of metal makers at times. The error cocurs when you blow up an enemy metal maker, and the code doesnt erase the untis entry when it's destroyed.

I have a dll here that should fix all fo that adn has a working bit of code that laods the hardcoded list of construction untis to give tasks to from a file if it exists.

In future config files for 0.28 will take the form modname.unitname.txt

I'll get soemone to playtest the new version then release it in 20-30 mins if all goes well.

Also small divide and a selection of maps always crahs on start. This is an engine bug in the AI interface, specifically in ClosestBuildSite(). Hence as soon as the commander appears it goes to build a llt so it asks for a position which results in the crash.

The most cains class could ever do atm is cause an exception error message, and I havent had any of those.

hmm could someone experiemnt and se if the map being rectangular makes the AI crash as soon as it starts. I'm preoccupied with resolving the atatck code atm, as masse has playtested and it doesnt seem to itnerested in attacking at all

Having the AI not crashis a great milestone and I did not want to diminish that. Yes, I have won every game agains it. When I flash rush it doesn't rebuild its resources at all. When I porc it doesn't get a change to attack before the turrets ri it apart. When I build planes I have 300 planes before they build anti air. I heard it builds nukes but I did not see any, or anti nuke, after 2 hours of speed 3.0.

I also noticed that it scouted me, but attacked the start location for player 1 even if I wasn't there. On Hells pass the AI would scout, but it never attacked the bottom.I am certain that the AI plays better in some situations rather than others. I also never saw the Krogoth. Any maps where Krog comes out?

Rainbow worked and that is very rectangular. I had the same start position as the computer.

You're not reading my posts are you? The attack code is broken, and sends units to location 0,0,0. I have versions that fix that, but at the cost of the AI never attacking at all.

The code is supposed to work, and it used to work before I swapped my cvs copy from 0.65 to 0.66, but now it doesnt, and it reports in logging that the engine isnt giving it information it likes.

Alantai, I must say somthing.

You've done really well. Seriously, this is a GREAT AI. I look forward to pitting it against Sub's when he gets it done. Against my JCAI version, it would have cleaned UP where it not for that attack bug. Well done. I just never thought it would have done that well, because you've seemed like just another arrogant noob on the forum, but I was wrong. Really good job on this thing dude.

I look forward to the next release.

I did read, but "start position" was not 0,0,0

AF is not A noob on the forums, he is THE noob on the forums not his fault he can't play much, his codings pretty awesome though

It seems appropriate to include NTAI as the standard AI now. My AI was originally included because it was more stable and supported slightly more things than NTAI (although AF will probably disagree on this), but now that ntai is better, I would like to have that included (Also because I don't want requests for an AI that I don't work on anymore).
AF agree with this?

Include away.

The errors I have been searching for in NTAI's attack code have drawn em to a simple conclusion.

NTAI in its current carnation is errorless.

I shall start a thread detailing my experiments in which i pitted NTAI vs NTAI vs me and JCAI sharing a player. Which lead to some intresting results, and some insights into the reliability of the interface.

While zaphod is busy with singlehandedly fixing what errors he can find and is swamped from the looks of things, these are errors that affect NTAI badly, btut hey also affect JCAI too, so much so that zaphod felt the need to make JCAI check its untis where following tis commands then re-issue them.

And a n00b? I am no n00b, I am a 17 year old who has far and wide reachign interests and an unhealthy overuse of computers. Given that vast breadth fo knowledge ti is very likely that I will err at least once a day at the least, and I wouldnt be surprised if I erred 10 or so times, but I do get the gist across, albeit too many posts per day.........

Heck I blame NTAI's standards on my ruthless obsessiveness, adn my need to learn. Of course that's caused problems in itself...


ahk I'm babbling again.

Nice!

I'll have to download when I can and play it vs. OTAI.

BTW, you might want to tinker with how I did the D-Gunning, as the AI still suffers the "wiggle bug" when the commander gets hit rapidfire.