Spring RTS Engine

man this is SO not fair, im currently stuck with my AI, thinking out a way to make it choose its buildings, while there seems to be 1000's of AIs coming out! I think maybe it would be time to start taking proactive steps towards this whole AI thing!

Spring is the only game i know of that is both great and has a proper AI interface (buggy but nevertheless extremely powerful). The TA setting is perfect for developing AIs too since simple behaviour is very easy to make but complex and smart behaviour is also possible!
I was thinking maybe we should grow this side of the community a bit more, make a few changes on the interface to make it more AI-friendly (eg allow communication between AI's) and start publicising this whole thing more!

Sure its a far-fetched dream, but wouldnt it be cool as hell if we got loads more people into making AI's? The forums would be more lively, we would get more experienced programmers to help spring's development...
Hell we could have weekly AI tournaments in both single and team settings! Or have the wiki more complete and have AI templates posted so beginners could have a go too!

I'm not asking for the second coming of jesus here! If each of us does their part in telling as many people as we can about spring and the AI scene, it will help a lot already!

dont you guys agree it would be just too cool to have a bigger AI community here?

It would confuse the hell out of newcomers trying to decide which AI to use.

(On a side note, is it possible to combine AI scripts with scripts other than Commanders - ie LUA mission scripts?)

It wouldnt confuse them since there could be a ladder of the best AI's.
At the moment people would be confused, since there are 4 AI's out and about and theres no evidence of which plays better besides heated discussions on fairness of some south-american maps...


as to your note:
Probably, but:
1. Why would you need/want to? c++ is more powerful than LUA AFAIK
2. This would be off-topic

People have always been confused with TA and it's 'AIs'

5000000000000000000000000000 variants...


oh, and you can make your own without acctually knowing what you're doing.

I think we should first have a fair AI tournament or something. An someone who's not involved in any of the AI should select a date, announce it, and download all the AI's and let them play against eachother. We could even have a script generator for it, to generate startup scripts for every combination of AI's in a list

Zaphod wrote:I think we should first have a fair AI tournament or something. An someone who's not involved in any of the AI should select a date, announce it, and download all the AI's and let them play against eachother. We could even have a script generator for it, to generate startup scripts for every combination of AI's in a list

One flaw. What about AAI? A virgin install of AAI would get pwned since it doesn't have as vetran knowledge as it would need.

If the maps and mods are known, submarine can put the necessary learning data with it.

krogothe wrote:!
dont you guys agree it would be just too cool to have a bigger AI community here?

i think the community already grows fast, doesnt it? Taking MyAI developed by Berion and KAI developed by Krogothe into account there are at least two further ais that will add to spring's ai scene.

in the near future there'll be about 5-7 different ais

AI is like sex! The more people involved, the more fun you have!

the relation between a player and an AI is less intimate during FFA orgies though .

krogothe wrote:AI is like sex! The more people involved, the more fun you have!

my girlfiriend disagrees...

1 TAI - alantai*
2 NTAI - alantai
3 ZCAIN - cain*
4 JCAI -zaphod*
5 AAI - submarine
6 OTAI - veylon
7 KAI - krogothe
8 MyAI - beryon
9 5MatrixAI - Triaxx

* AI is discontinued or on pause.

We have 9 AI projects and counting.

If you want the ball rolling, release source code, dont even wait for people to ask for it, just bundle the source with every release and update.

submarine wrote:

krogothe wrote:AI is like sex! The more people involved, the more fun you have!

my girlfiriend disagrees...

But she isnt an AI programmer either is she?

<jk>I don't think she was talking about the AI...</jk>

actually she didnt refer to multiple ais :)

Hey, you forgot to put me on that list! LAI will be coming out in a year or so, once I know C++.

I'm actually serious, an AI for spring will be my first project.

as far as a tourney goes, why not have each AI face off against each other in a series of 6 games. This way, one AI is truely shown to be the better one, and any adaptive or learning AIs have a chance to learn about their new foes in the first few games.

I would really enjoy seeing that, replays especially. Any suggestions for a map? B. Battlefields apparently is uneven, so a different map is in order.

That might eb a problem.

OTAI for example, has a chance of beign either 2 things.

A brilliant expansionist AI capable of causign NTAI major bother..
Or a pansy that builds mexes around the startpos tyrign to get metal and palces them everywhere but the mex spots.

AAI has flukes where it goes straight to lvl 2 then stalls halfway.

NTAI has maps it doesn't like e.g small divide.

Only NTAI 0.28.10 final (see AI forum in next 20 mins) is even capable of building a somewhat decent sea base.

I'm not up to date on the Brazilian Battlefield controversy, but I wouldn't mind seeing an AI tournament.

We should make the matches on fair simmetrical maps, unless you rotate the startpos, having N games for N AIs