Spring RTS Engine

This is a only a small bugfix release that mainly fixes a few aircraft related crashes. The "AI going idle after a few buildings"-bug should be fixed as well.

Full changelog:
AAI v0.42:
- Added a general.cfg holding information that is used for all mods allowing users to adjust how much cpu-power AAI takes

- Fixed a bug when AAI stopped building after completing a few buildings

- Fixed a few crashbugs

http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=2203

Cool, I'll check it out

now get us some battleships

first testing was nice, ai swept through Altored Divide without stalling and the short air battles were nice.

Well just wasted 3 hours of my life playing a 9v1 game, the comps placed putted up a nice fight, the air was kinda annoying, think the mecury's work better than the core counterparts, anyways the endless zerging was somewhat amusing, started losing at one point when the Gaat and Vipers started dying, but by then the Doomsdays were up and the rest of the game ended with 6 Vulcans firing across the map with aerial Krow support. The ai did however figure out I was an aerial whore and built enough AA units to take out 5 Krows though even with 50% hp retreat, meh, vulcans lag and so does mass contruction aircraft.

2 AAI running mod AASpring13S.sd7 on Map: Evergreenhaven-v02.smf
against me all playing as Arm.
Much improvement of last version Great work!
Heres what I observed:
Game lasted just over 110 minutes, no lockups, no cpu hogging, no sync error of any kind so it is alot more stable. AI was not very agressive at attacking, built mostly level 1 bots and hovercraft, always attacked my base mostly with peepers but it did build bombers, liches and brawlers but seemed to keep them for defience mainly. Bases lacked defences as I was able to just walk in pretty easly. It did build level 3 gantrys but never any bots from them. Ai likes to just stall out after a while and not build anything. ,seems to build units but kept most of them at it bases till attacked then begain building again.
I hope this helps will test it more later :)

AAI 0.4 is not compatible with NanoBlob, and crashes immediately on the map Two Valleys. It also didn't handle my current hacked-up version of XTA, either. I wrote a custom cfg for NanoBlob, but it still crashed

Sorry, both you and AF's current AI's fail to even be stable and non-crashing with NanoBlob. I don't know why, but this is what I'm seeing here. I tried the one map that has always been consistently crash-free with AAI, Eurogreen, and it still died.

alaney3 wrote: AI was not very agressive at attacking, built mostly level 1 bots and hovercraft, always attacked my base mostly with peepers but it did build bombers, liches and brawlers but seemed to keep them for defience mainly.

the problem with peepers: they are armed (in aa) and thus will be considered as air assault by default. since you are using and old aa version and my cfg-file was written for version aa 1.41 it didnt read it and used standard configuration.

download and updated aa version or rename the cfg-file. remebember to delete your mod-learning file, otherwise aai will not determine unit categories again.

Ok fine LOL Will do it I hope my other test helped some any way

submarine is the AI KING!
hail to the king!

I'd very much like to know who's bright idea it was to arm the Peeper, and Finks in AA. And with the Bomber laser.

NTAI test build 5 works with blobz, hwoever I have no idea why AAI ro NTAI crash on that map. First I'd have thought ti would be closestbuildsite() which crashed NTAI and anythign else that sued it on small divide and a few others, btu AAI uses its own building placement algorithm.

Could I have a copy of AILog.txt for that aswell as the hacked up XTA version?

OK, See what you done LOL. Your Ai works better with AASpring13 and doesn't crash.
I had no lockups, no sync errors and no Cpu hogging.
Basicly attacked me same as before except more peepers peeping me more often. game ended to quuickly for me to tell you any more

Same map as before me against 2 ai's we were all playing as Arm
AAI 0.35 running mod AASpring141S.sd7 Map: Evergreenhaven-v02.smf

Base has now 2 neighbouring sectors Playing as Arm
Looking for factory to build Peewee Added Kbot Lab to buildque
Looking for factory to build Eraser Added Advanced Kbot Lab to buildque
Looking for builder to build Advanced Kbot Lab Added Construction Kbot to buildque

Adding sector 7,1 to base; base size: 2
Base has now 3 neighbouring sectors
Looking for factory to build Phoenix
Added Advanced Aircraft Plant to buildque
Looking for builder to build Advanced Aircraft Plant
Added Advanced Construction Aircraft to buildque
Looking for factory to build Phalanx
Added Advanced Vehicle Plant to buildque
Looking for builder to build Advanced Vehicle Plant
Added Advanced Construction Vehicle to buildque

Adding sector 6,1 to base; base size: 3
Base has now 4 neighbouring sectors
Looking for factory to build Freedom Fighter
Added Aircraft Plant to buildque

Adding sector 6,0 to base; base size: 4
Base has now 4 neighbouring sectors
Looking for factory to build Wombat
Added Hovercraft Platform to buildque
Added Floating Hovercraft Platform to buildque
Looking for builder to build Floating Hovercraft Platform
Added Construction Hovercraft to buildque
Looking for factory to build Flash
Added Vehicle Plant to buildque

Adding sector 5,0 to base; base size: 5
Base has now 4 neighbouring sectors
Looking for factory to build Tornado
Added Seaplane Platform to buildque
Looking for factory to build Marauder
Added Experimental Gantry to buildque
Looking for builder to build Experimental Gantry
Added Advanced Construction Kbot to buildque
Added Amphibious Complex to buildque
Crash With Contact AI maker

Your ai is getting good.
I test played a game with total porcing and it played 150+ min without crashing.
i noticed it has a very interesting attack code and its very very little cpu consuming (3.0 sec at the 100min mark ).
however somethings are still strange, At the end it had about 150 planes standing over its base for more than a hour!
and yes i know it doesnt grow yet, but its starting to look good.
(Note: ive noticed that in some maps it doesnt build anything at all. (does it have to do with very hilly terrain ?))

How's things progressing? :D

very hilly terrain could be a problem, since aai makes sure there is enough free space around factories (too steep terrain is not considered to be free space)

this should prevent aai fom building its factories (and especially the entrances) too close to cliffs where units would get stuck


unfortunately, there hasnt been much progress the last few weeks. i'm busy to keep up with university stuff and prepare for my exams.

however i did some code cleaning/optimizations and multiple instances of aai share some common data (reduces aais ram-usage and saves initialization time when running multiple aais)

i also changed/improved buildtable, which enables aai to support aata (i'll release the improved version when an official aata version will be released)

Could you PLEASE fix the fact that it crashed on 80% of the map i try it on while initializing?
It doesnt matter one bit if your ai doesnt find space for factories if it never even manages to get started.

Just get a map, try if it crashed on startup.
If no pick another.
If yes, look why and fix it.
That should have priority over _EVERYTHING_ else, imho. (at least ai related. University goes first, of course).

could you give me the names of some of those maps?

i played aai on about 15-20 different maps now and it never crashed due to the map. if it is not able to find enough free buildspace, it's just doing nothing (and reporting error messages to the ai log) but it does not crash.

4skulls : unhandled exception
core prime: does nothing
wideopencombat: unhandled exception
speedmetal: unhandled exception
prime's ghetto: unhandled exception

Ok, maybe 80% was a bit of an exaggeration, but i wanted to pit aai vs otai yesterday and had a hard time finding a map where not one of them crashed or did nothing.
So i guess i should post my original message in the otai thread, too :)

ok thx, i've never played one of those maps, i'll download and test them when i get some free time..

edit:
i usually play the following maps:
- comet catcher (+remake)
- river dale
- painted desert
- pathways
- plains and passes
- evergreen haven

edit:
ok i ran a quick test on 4skulls and it seems there is a problem with the metal spot finder (its reporting negative coordinates of metal spots)

however it doesnt seem to be a bug in krog's metal spot class but the conversion of unit to map coordinates reports negative positions if z-coordinate is 0

I know, OTAI sometimes didn't do anything. It usually beat AAI when I played them against each other, though.