Spring RTS Engine

Sorry but i found some bugs in aai 0.5 (some of them crashing the game others causing erroneous behaviour) so i decided to release a fixed version

I hope AAI is running stable again....

edit: AII0.52
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=2445

Just a question: i didnt compare the hash, but the binary of the 0.51 was exactly the same size than the 0.50 (which is not very likely to be per chance)...
So was the bug just in the buildtable somewhere, or did you mix up something...
(because i _had_ another of this late game crashes just now in a FF game, while an AA game ran flawlessly)

no clue but there were only slight changes in the code (perhaps adding a dozen of lines of new code)

however, aai is still not stable. there's another bug concerning ressource management which may crash aai.
the good news are: it's fixed and i know whats causing aai to build rows of sensor towers in sw:ta

expect another bugfix release soon

Hm

I noticed that in AA 1.43, it also once build an array of radar jamming towers (3*2 block)...

Another thing:

is it only me, or did AAI somewhere doring the betas lose its adaptive defense positioning?
It rarely builds any defenses at all, at least during those 3 test i did with the newest version, while 0.4x violently reacted to attacks on the base with defense structure building in the appropiate places...

.51's not auto gening AA 1.44 cfg files I think

just rename the filename.

AAI doesnt "autogenerate" any cfg files, and as not that much has changed between the AA versions, it shouldnt cause problems.

spring crashed 2/2 times on altered divide and riverdale. .51 also seems to be bit laggier than the other ones, though production rate seems to have been boosted alot.

.51 just did a complete, crash free 144 minute FF AAI vs AAI game, which was nice as it wasn't able to do that before.

AAI+AAI vs AAI+AAI on XTA gave me a "error in the AI.dll" crash within 17 minutes.

EDIT: just did a sucessfull allied AAI vs allied AAI, the only times i've gotton a crash with this is if I put myself on the same team as an aai and didn't cheat my way into spectator. When I wasn't on the same team it didn't crash, when I stayed on the team it crashed

so for people who actually play ta and not watch the ai play, it crashes?

ok i think i know what causes aai to crash:

the problem is adding/subtracting floats - eg. 100-100 sometimes differs slightly from zero, since i need some square roots aai crashes if these values are negative. sorry i didnt know that, i'm testing a fixed version and upload it if it more stable

Oh yeah, that can be a bitch if you dont think about is ... (/me temembers his brin-hut nbody algorithm doing seriously wrong stuff at times...)

Was one of the first things in the numerical mathematics lecture: always define :eps: and discard results <eps :)

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But is it only my imagination, submarine, or did i play the wrong maps, or did the focus just move away from defenses?

I ran a test of AAI 0.51 vs KAI 0.0 vs OTAI 1.08 on altored divide udner XTA 0.66

AAI was crushed by OTAI after ten minutes of letting KAI trample all over it. It simply didnt expand aggressively enough.

Then KAI swamped the map with lvl 1 units and crushed KAI into a pulp, then spent 40 minutes looking for a toaster KAI had in the corner, even though it kept attacking and being attacked by a sumo which then got recalled to an attack point.

I also saw that AAI would do something silly such as build a long row of solars, then put the defences behidn them so they couldnt fire at incoming enemy forces. Though AAI didnt make the horrendous mistakes KAI and OTAI made such as building a radar tower ontop of a mex spot, or leaving idle builders & aircraft doing nothing.

I dunno what it is with AI's but every AI playtest I've done in the last 5 days has gone wierd with every AI commander being blown up because at the time it was attacking another AI commander and was in a deadlock where it wouldnt bugger off. Just a thought.

first of all i dont think it makes sense to test more than two different ais in a game, otherwise the result depends very much on which player is attacked first etc.

second, if you use a fresh version of aai defence building placement is usually silly. aai needs some time (or training) to learn which defence buildings are suitable for what purpose.

mwha, I have a title ?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Anyways, I can see why, but AAI let both KAI and OTAI trample it. KAI blew up AAI's commander pretty close to AAI's base loosing its own in the process, and OTAI scouted AAI causign minor problems at the beginning. AAI allowed KAI to expand right up to its doorstep before it lost its commander, and It didnt expand south either. OTAI then picked up the remnants of AAI easily. AAI seemed more concerned with solar plants at the time, both KAI and OTAI where building more factories and progressing to lvl 2.

The point was it exposes holes in AAI's strategy, and ignoring them because it was a 1v1v1 game is blasphemy to your own AI.

Hi, I've been playing with the AAI for alittle while, mainly with final frontier since its the only ai that supports it and it does a pretty good job at it. I like the fact that this AI "learns" as it progresses, using previous situations to adapt. There are a few things I personally think is holding the AAI back that I noticed:

1. The aai really needs to have a higher priority on building mexxes. It seems to be more interested in building more energy or a second plant before building more then 3 mexxes, leading to major nano stalling due to lack of metal. There never seems to be a lack of energy since the ai builds more then enough energy producers (almost to a obsessive point). As AF pointed out in his simulation, it hurts the AI bigtime early on, though I have to point out once the aai gets going its vicious in the waves of units its sends its enemies way.

2. The aai builders will sometimes go silly distances to build something when its not necissary, like for example after building a mexx a few screens from the starting point, a bulding will go all the way back to the base to build a single solar collecter. Also sometimes a builder will walk right past 2 metal spots to build a mexx on one thats further away.

3. Also if its base is decimated, the aai wont bother rebuilding, instead it takes all of its last builders and sets them all on its last plant and just builds as many offensive units as it can and sends them in waves towards the enemy untill the aai is finally wiped out. Not a totaly bad strategy since it slows the enemy down, but if it put a couple builders on rebuilding economy and defense it could put up a much better fight.

I think the aai is a good ai with lots of potential, definatly my fav to use since it seems to be the most stable (i've had problems with like every other ai) and it works quite well with FF. If it were to build a stronger metal enconomy it would be quite a force.

hmm, in theory, aai should have highest priority building further mexes/metal makers if low on metal. anyway there has still a lot of work to be done :)

concerning rebuilding a destroyed base: it should work in theory, but i'v to admit i didnt test that very much, so i'll probably have to tweak the algorithm again

the sometimes long distances between two buidlings are a result of aai's building algorithm. e.g. power plants will be placed in less dangerous sectors, factories are built closer to the enemy (not always..)

Hmm.. well I belive my learn and cache files have been carried over for a few versions now. Could it just be that I just need to clear the files and let the ai relearn from scratch?

Anyways, out of curiosity I pitted the aai against the otai. Well the aai slaughtered the otai pretty quickly despite still having metal problems (though it did a better job at building mexxes this time). I think it might be prioritising unit production alittle much, idle construction units are more likly to be put on helping factories then building more mexxes. Though i dont think the fact that it uses costruction units to help factories is a bad thing(thats how it wiped out the otai), just could use more balance between production and economy building. Also the aai again built lots of solar collectors, but was still reluctant to build more mexxes for some reason.

For the long distances, well that makes sense, just seems like constuctors are waste time moving from place to place alot. I guess the results cant be disputed though, since seems to work for it

Anyways off to play more spring..

The lern file format changed between 0.4 and 0.5, so its surprising it worked at all :)

what version is aai up to now? it says on fileplanet .51 and on the news in spring it says .52

.52
http://www.fileuniverse.com/?p=showitem&ID=2445

suppose to fix some crash bugs, but I haven't tried it yet.

would be a bit better if submarine would edit the posting like AF instead of creating a new topic for each minor update. However, I'm all for creating new topics for major updates, having a 20 page thread isn't too good.