When I played against Behemoth, I found the micro terribly lacking. I built a few Mutalisks, and he countered with Phoenixes, but he never really tried to engage very well. Afterwards, when I was harassing his base, he moved his sentries / stalkers / void rays to defend. It wasn't hard at all to drag the Void Rays away, to where I could easily mop them up. And once Mutalisk numbers sufficiently outweighed Phoenixes, his Phoenixes just spread out and ran whenever my Mutalisks approach.
Also, burrowed Roaches with a little bit of timing completely wrecked his base. When Brood Lords approached, he didn't try to focus on the Brood Lords either.
I think the only part of micro that was at all impressive was the use of Force Fields. However, I found it amusing that it surrounded my Ultralisks with Force Fields. That's not micro, that's a waste of energy. Similarly, it seemed to enjoy forcefielding my choke to split up my army, when I only had 4 Zerglings and was relying on Spine Crawlers.
I realize it's not ready, but as a player who barely fought his way into Diamond near the end of the beta, I don't think it has good micro or macro right now.
I don't doubt it, but it's already almost good enough to be useful for practicing. The drone/queen thing was just me messing around, but I actually don't think the AI had a large enough army to attack me at any point.
Because I didn't code in a counter for queens :P Who masses queens?
This isn't an entry, but it's an example of both of my current entries being implemented. I turned them into a boss fight, a remake of the Thaddius fight in WoW, but for one player.
Keep in mind Behemoth isn't done. The only reason it exists outside of my computer was as an entry to the contest. When it's officially released it will be much better at both micro and macro.
As with the first spell, Shocking Grasp is done entirely in the data editor.
The ability is cast on one target, who is paralyzed by electricity for 5 seconds and takes damage over time. Any units that get too close to the target will also become paralyzed for 5 seconds. This can set off a chain reaction. A unit can't be affected by the same Shocking Grasp twice. Players will want to keep their units out of range of any unit under the influence of Shocking Grasp.
This ability is made entirely in the Data Editor, there are no triggers. When cast, an area of units randomly receive positive or negative charges. After 10 seconds, if any units are within range of their polar opposite (positive is next to negative) the charges will explode with electricity dealing damage to each other and all nearby units.
You might recognize this mechanic from Naxx in WoW. :)
If it beats you, it'll only beat you the first time - but it was really only meant to fight other AI and people that don't pay close enough attention; while I haven't tested this, I doubt that the other competitors will be able to adapt to my unorthodox strategy, though the rush-friendly terrain modifications might almost be considered cheating, especially as I was too lazy to make it 100% symmetrical. Not that it matters, the way WOPR fights, and not bad for a single day's work.
I'll set it up against Behemoth, I'm fairly certain your "strategy" wouldn't stand a chance. This took you a day of work?
I did a 14-pool into 15-gas, thinking about going 1-base roach. I changed my mind and decided to grab a lair and then a hatch at about 20 or so, transitioning into 2 base muta. It rushed me with LOTS of sentries and 3-4 zealots. I lost my expansion to it, but I pooled the 7-9 mutas from the larva at it, and destroyed the attacking force. I eliminated the pylons powering its stargate and won en masse with mutas.
The thing I thought was buggy was that it didn't rush me because I had no defending units early game at all. I built no zerglings, spinecrawlers, etc.
Additionally, the 3 phoenixes it did manage to build never attacked me. They played defensively; they only attacked when I moved to attack them. When I did this, their AI was superb, although their chances would have been a lot better if the 3 phoenixes had grouped up. The point is, I just ignored them and destroyed all the buildings to win the game and they never attacked me back. If they had been harassing my mutas from different directions with their extreme micro already implemented into their AI, I probably would have lost (I'm not very good at all).
I'd send you a replay, but yeah... Battle.net... I think the reason I won was that I was soooooo bad that it didn't know what I was doing until it was too late.
Edit: The first game I tried mass speedling was a disaster. He completed DESTROYED me with his sentry AI. I think I managed an amazing ONE sentry kill to nearly 50 speedlings versus 6-8 sentries.
Yeah a lot of work still needs to be done on the phoenix AI. Though, I'm not sure why the phoenixes weren't defending their base against you while you were attacking, as even the default AI should be telling them to do that. I will definitely look into that.
rrowland, I did some messing around with your AI today, and the computer seems to have no idea what to do if you trap it in its main and macro up a larger army. It would be awesome if you incorporated some drop-tech expansion rules, or some economy harassment to prevent the player from winning the game by keeping the computer at the choke.
I'm not sure if this helps, but I played it as pvp, went 2gate zealot push into 4gate stalker/zealot and destroyed the expansion. Then I just sat at his expo and macro'd up. The only things that left his base were the occasional probes, in addition it didn't appear that he was creating very many units at that point.
On another note, the first game I played against it, where I didn't destroy the expansion, was awesome. I went mass roaches and he did a stalker/zeal/sentry/VOID RAY timing push. I was impressed. :)
The AI is only programmed for PvZ right now, so if you were protoss it probably didn't build any units past its initial build order including 3 zealots and a couple sentries. That being said, it's also at a very early point in its alpha stage as I mentioned in my entry post, so a lot of possibilities such as drops and harassment are not yet implemented. Thank you for the feedback though, I'm glad someone has tried it and I'm always open to suggestions. :)
Edit: Updated my entry post to show PvZ only in bold :)
Don't store anything that isn't a 256-bit value. Don't store redundant data.
Quests:
One byte can hold 8 quest flags: 0x10101010
Levels:
Three bytes can hold an EXP value up to 16777216 (You don't need negatives for EXP). You don't need to store both EXP and level, it would be redundant.
Skills/Talents:
Depends on how many levels they have. If they have 3 max levels each, you can store them 4 per byte: 0x 00 01 10 11 would represent 4 skills with levels 0, 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
Items:
With under 256 items you can store each item in a byte by a reference number.
Everything else:
You name it, I'll tell you how to shrink it down. It's really not that hard.
Have you seen the serialization project that TheLaughingMan is working on? With serialization you can potentially convert hundreds of integers and other variables, simple or complex, to and from strings.
0
It's not a human.
0
Because I didn't code in a counter for queens :P Who masses queens?
0
Hah those are cool, are they done in the data editor?
0
This isn't an entry, but it's an example of both of my current entries being implemented. I turned them into a boss fight, a remake of the Thaddius fight in WoW, but for one player.
You can download the map to play here: http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/custom-unit-spell-polarity-shift/files/4-thaddius-boss-fight/
0
Keep in mind Behemoth isn't done. The only reason it exists outside of my computer was as an entry to the contest. When it's officially released it will be much better at both micro and macro.
0
Shocking Grasp
Description:
As with the first spell, Shocking Grasp is done entirely in the data editor.
The ability is cast on one target, who is paralyzed by electricity for 5 seconds and takes damage over time. Any units that get too close to the target will also become paralyzed for 5 seconds. This can set off a chain reaction. A unit can't be affected by the same Shocking Grasp twice. Players will want to keep their units out of range of any unit under the influence of Shocking Grasp.
Video:
Download:
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/custom-unit-spell-polarity-shift/files/2-custom-unit-spell-shocking-grasp/
0
Polarity Shift
Description:
This ability is made entirely in the Data Editor, there are no triggers. When cast, an area of units randomly receive positive or negative charges. After 10 seconds, if any units are within range of their polar opposite (positive is next to negative) the charges will explode with electricity dealing damage to each other and all nearby units.
You might recognize this mechanic from Naxx in WoW. :)
Video:
Download:
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/custom-unit-spell-polarity-shift/files/1-custom-unit-spell-polarity-shift/
0
The surprising results:
0
I'll set it up against Behemoth, I'm fairly certain your "strategy" wouldn't stand a chance. This took you a day of work?
0
You can make command card buttons activate triggers so it shouldn't be a problem.
0
Yeah a lot of work still needs to be done on the phoenix AI. Though, I'm not sure why the phoenixes weren't defending their base against you while you were attacking, as even the default AI should be telling them to do that. I will definitely look into that.
0
The AI is only programmed for PvZ right now, so if you were protoss it probably didn't build any units past its initial build order including 3 zealots and a couple sentries. That being said, it's also at a very early point in its alpha stage as I mentioned in my entry post, so a lot of possibilities such as drops and harassment are not yet implemented. Thank you for the feedback though, I'm glad someone has tried it and I'm always open to suggestions. :)
Edit: Updated my entry post to show PvZ only in bold :)
0
Don't store anything that isn't a 256-bit value. Don't store redundant data.
Quests: One byte can hold 8 quest flags: 0x10101010
Levels: Three bytes can hold an EXP value up to 16777216 (You don't need negatives for EXP). You don't need to store both EXP and level, it would be redundant.
Skills/Talents: Depends on how many levels they have. If they have 3 max levels each, you can store them 4 per byte: 0x 00 01 10 11 would represent 4 skills with levels 0, 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
Items: With under 256 items you can store each item in a byte by a reference number.
Everything else: You name it, I'll tell you how to shrink it down. It's really not that hard.
0
Have you seen the serialization project that TheLaughingMan is working on? With serialization you can potentially convert hundreds of integers and other variables, simple or complex, to and from strings.
0
I will be attending blizzcon.