It's very hard to create an AI that is challenging to good players without cheating.
If you are mister perfect, go write an AI that can compete with diamond (well, let's just say good) players without cheating. It's really not an easy thing!
It's not easy, but meanwhile they had YEARS to do this, and the AI is laughable. If it's not Insane, all you need to do is build enough Base D to fend off the starting two (Sometimes only one) assaults, then build a good number of some Air unit, and you win. The only exception is when they are in a Team Game, at which point the AI does gather together intelligently. The problem is, however, is that the AI instantly knows everything about you, and after the attack for 4 seconds the instantly know if they will win or lose. If they will win, you don't have a chance no matter what you do, and if they will lose they will run, build a few more units, and repeat. The problem is that by the time they build those more units, you should have a hefty force ready to whomp them, and any good player does.
I've been playing against the AI a lot, and there are several things wrong with it that I believe should never have been wrong:
1) All the AIs cheat. Not in the way that Insane does, but all AIs instantly know everything about you. They have no FoW. You can build a base in another resource camp, and without ever seeing another unit at all, their ENTIRE force is attacking that base within 2 minutes. How is this even remotely fair? It makes the Melee maps that came with the game beyond annoying to play high level CPUs in. It's not hard to win if you are good at short term turtling, however you can't really practice any game techniques because the AI magically knows everything ever.
2) The AI builds no defense. None. Except for a rare occurrence where they build one or two towers, otherwise they build none. So if you're in an Allied game, they attack your Ally, you can send your fleet, and before their units get to turn around the entire base is destroyed without any challenge at all. I don't imagine many players play like this. I know whenever I try to it's a dire mistake. If the AI is supposed to compete with players, they need to be able to actually have defense. The entire AI goes under the quote "A good offense is a great defense" which is absolutely not true in this type of game. All you need to do is make enough defense to hold them while your own units get around to hit them, and by the time the AI goes into a retreat, their base is gone.
No, I cannot create a better AI, however I have no experience in AI either. Blizzard has more than "a few" RTS games to go on for experience in this type of thing. SC1, BW, Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, and any other games they made that has intelligent AI. They should be a lot better than this at this point.
One of my programming teachers said something very smart to me. "If you're going to make AI, it has to follow the rules everyone else has to follow. Making an AI cheat is just an excuse for poor AI development." They spent too much time on making the game look nice, and while it does, graphics are nothing compared to an acceptable play experience.
The worst part about the AI is that I'm not even a nearly good player! I'm terrible, and yet I can destroy a Very Hard AI in a 1v1. Imagine how the Diamond players would feel should they have been set into a 1v1 versus a Very Hard or even Insane AI. The Insane AI just seems like the Very Hard AI + Cheating, so they would be able to destroy either in minutes.
I'm using always Insane diffuculty.... Insane difficult is always make 2 barracks and 1 factory and does not make an bucker to defend there base....
and someone says they put a lot of in condition in trigger editor....
I wouldn't use Insane if you want a legit computer. There are all kinds of things that the Insane AI does that you cannot, like ignore supply rules and some other annoying crap. There were some threads on the Official SC2 forums a while ago about what the Insane AI does, it's a tad disturbing that Blizzard decided to make broken AI instead of making one that can be challenging and play legit.
I would use the Very Hard AI if you want a legit one...I think it's basically the Insane AI except not a cheater.
Thx for the detector tip for the spidermine it worked.
I also figured out how to get neural parasite to work, since removing requirements didnt do anything I added a requirement instead. I put have spawning pool, and just placed a spawning pool in my map and now I can use neural parasite.
I didn't give you the detector tip, PSGMud did.
Thanks for that info about Neural Parasite. So setting our own Requirement will override the invisible one from the game. Good to know.
I'm having some issues using the Player Properties Teams.
I know that I can set it up via triggers, that's not the point.
I'm trying to use the Team Placement (Advanced). I set every team (Only 1 player in each based on Start Location apparently (Only option)) to be enemies with the rest of the teams, but when the game starts online, the teams are set up by the team layout in the Lobby, regardless of how I set it up.
The problem with this is that when I begin testing, [Allies] is the main channel, and it becomes a hassle to chat with the rest of the testers (Especially when I've been PMing them a lot and still have the windows up). I have to tab like 8 times to get to [All].
Is there a way I can either
1) Set [All] as the default channel for all players instead of [Allies]
2) Fix the Team Placement. No one is supposed to have allies in my map at this time (I'm thinking of adding an option to make the game 3v3v3 at start up, but that's a bit away) unless they choose to make one (So I don't want them locked either). Anything dealing with Teams outside of Triggers seems to not work in any B.Net Game.
Agreed. Especially in the US Region, Americans are generally assholes (Fact. Not everyone is, but a good majority is.) They would prefer to make everyone else miserable than just have fun with everyone else.
It freezes because the first item on the list is the "engineering bay" and it has like 30 slots so idk, the game loads it or w/e but that's what's causing the lag im sure. It happens to me too and even with a high end computer takes like 5 whole seconds to display the info, really, really annoying I agree.
Yeah I understand that, that's why that type of menu shouldn't be part of the main information. It should be a thing you open up, otherwise you get the problem I do, you click the wrong thing and you're waiting for double the time...drives me insane. Thankfully I think I'm finished with the section for the time being.
Well, just a random idea from me here: Go to the requirements tab and search for "neural parasite". If you find that requirements, just make it blank, or have it be something like number of units for player > 0, or something else that will always work. That might solve it :/
Unfortunately this doesn't work either. Went to the Requirements Tab, put Neural in the Search with Data Source: All Data, and nothing shows.
This is beyond annoying. This type of issue shouldn't exist. That's like if they left out the Triggering Player option in Actions, or left out certain conditions, it's part of the game I don't understand how this type of an issue can exist if it's taking all the data directly from the game's packets.
Starting Camera X, Starting Camera Y, that I could set.
I'll just do it with Pan Camera, but for my map it's suboptimal, since I can't put it at the begin.
Why can't you just make the Pan Camera Actions the first ones in the Initialization? The game runs these actions in order, if you insist you need it to happen right away, just start off the trigger with the Pan Camera Actions.
I had the same problem, I was using the Engineering Bay's ability for research. The issue is a bug in the editor that remembers what the barracks/engi bay does in the campaign/real game (aka build marine, research armor). The easy workaround is A)Make a whole new research ability and then add the upgrades to it, or B) (even easier), move your upgrades down to slots 15+, so like move the upgrade down to slot 30 then test it, should work.
-ViG
I think I got it working. Thanks a lot.
PS, I hate the Upgrades stuff in the Editor, everything I click makes it freeze for like 15 seconds it's sooooooo annoying.
I'm trying to lower the cost of some Upgrades I made after testing proved that they are way too high. Nothing I do will respond.
I'm in the Upgrade section, I select my Upgrade, then when the menu opens, there's "Technology Research Cost [Minerals]: 100" I originally had it at Add 100 (So it would be 100, 200, then 300). I tried changing it to Add 50, but the number doesn't change in the option. I change it to Set 50, still no change. What's going on here? It's ignoring everything I do. Am I in the wrong menu? I remember a different menu when I originally set it up, but suddenly I am unable to find it. The Upgrade only has: An Ability, an Upgrade, and a Button. The only one that has anything to do with costs as far as I can find is the Upgrade, but I cannot get it to change. I've tried resetting the Editor, even resetting my computer, nothing I do is fixing it.
Just my personal opinion after using the Editor for a little over a week.
1) Stability. I can leave the Editor on over night, nothing happening, and come back to an error report window. How does it crash while I'm doing absolutely nothing?
2) Better Data Menus. These are absolutely getting to me. The data is in such obscure places 99% of the time. The Naming is completely off on some things, or it makes sense once you KNOW why it's named that, but meanwhile if you're trying to do things on your own you're screwed. Other things are embedded in other menus and takes you hours to find for simple things (Like Interceptor Build Time. I took me 4 hours to find it, and only then because I asked on the forums about it).
3) Better loading. Opening a personally made Ability with 2 changed parameters should not, in any way shape or form, take 30+ seconds to load. This is absolutely inexcusable.
4) Large Trigger issues. When you have a larger trigger, the menu becomes more and more non-responsive the larger the trigger. I had a quite large trigger, and when I started to change it for the better, one click would take a 5+ second response, and actually doing anything took even longer. I know for a fact this is not my computer, because I can be running 30 thousand things at once and get a better response on just about anything, but the second I have a large trigger it bugs out beyond my ability to imagine why.
5) Missing...things. There are a lot of missing features, and I have no idea why. Some things, like especially Neural Parasite seems to not exist in the Editor at all (Except for the Ability itself, but it has no requirements while in game it does, and other things like this), but in game it does. This is absolutely infuriating when you want to edit any type of thing with this issue.
6) Buttons need to be moved around. I don't think something like "New Document" should be in every single menu. Then when I want to do something simple, like create a trigger or a variable, I click the "NEW" button and it turns out it's a freaking New Map, and now I have to spend a minute+ waiting for it to load everything it wants to before I can actually get back to what I'm doing. The stuff like New, Load, and some other things (Save should stay) should not be in every single menu. If you really want to Open another file, or make a New one, it's not that hard to press the freaking File button. Add to this the fact that all the Shortcuts that actually DO matter are on the far right, and if you have a lower resolution or have the window small, are completely missing. There's not even an arrow to access them. This is a foolish design.
7) Some type of reference is required. I want to find something simple like changing the Cost of a Research, and I've forgotten which of the 30 thousand objects I've created for this single research holds the Cost value. Now I need to check every single one, and if it's embedded in one of the values, double that, or even triple it searching every single thing finding it. Add this to the insane loading times for some of these objects (Like Upgrades, Abilities, and other things that take a long time to load) and it takes me an hour to change the Cost of a SINGLE Upgrade. Even a small help file like "Objects that have X are..." and X is something you can define and get a quick reference to what you need to check.
It seems to me that Blizzard has replaced user-friendly interfaces with obscure (but versatile) ones. This is a bad exchange. I'd rather have the old school editor with it's insane limits than this one, as it's simply too overwhelming and too confusing. It's easy to get lost for hours looking for something simple because it's not organized as far as I can tell.
I'm not having this issue and my Dependencies are set up as:
Liberty Story (Campaign)
Liberty (Campaign)
Liberty (Mod)
Liberty Multi (Mod)
I would suggest trying to put them in that order and see if that helps.
I had an issue when I first started one of my maps where some of the Story units weren't even available, and I moved my dependencies around to that order and it fixed the issue. Hopefully it's the same for you.
I think that it's utterly bad design that the order will effect things in such a magnitude. I could understand if the units were different in each Mod and it took the highest priority first, but sometimes when the Mod that has the unit you want is the only Mod that has it, it bugs out.
0
It's not easy, but meanwhile they had YEARS to do this, and the AI is laughable. If it's not Insane, all you need to do is build enough Base D to fend off the starting two (Sometimes only one) assaults, then build a good number of some Air unit, and you win. The only exception is when they are in a Team Game, at which point the AI does gather together intelligently. The problem is, however, is that the AI instantly knows everything about you, and after the attack for 4 seconds the instantly know if they will win or lose. If they will win, you don't have a chance no matter what you do, and if they will lose they will run, build a few more units, and repeat. The problem is that by the time they build those more units, you should have a hefty force ready to whomp them, and any good player does.
I've been playing against the AI a lot, and there are several things wrong with it that I believe should never have been wrong:
1) All the AIs cheat. Not in the way that Insane does, but all AIs instantly know everything about you. They have no FoW. You can build a base in another resource camp, and without ever seeing another unit at all, their ENTIRE force is attacking that base within 2 minutes. How is this even remotely fair? It makes the Melee maps that came with the game beyond annoying to play high level CPUs in. It's not hard to win if you are good at short term turtling, however you can't really practice any game techniques because the AI magically knows everything ever.
2) The AI builds no defense. None. Except for a rare occurrence where they build one or two towers, otherwise they build none. So if you're in an Allied game, they attack your Ally, you can send your fleet, and before their units get to turn around the entire base is destroyed without any challenge at all. I don't imagine many players play like this. I know whenever I try to it's a dire mistake. If the AI is supposed to compete with players, they need to be able to actually have defense. The entire AI goes under the quote "A good offense is a great defense" which is absolutely not true in this type of game. All you need to do is make enough defense to hold them while your own units get around to hit them, and by the time the AI goes into a retreat, their base is gone.
No, I cannot create a better AI, however I have no experience in AI either. Blizzard has more than "a few" RTS games to go on for experience in this type of thing. SC1, BW, Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, and any other games they made that has intelligent AI. They should be a lot better than this at this point.
One of my programming teachers said something very smart to me. "If you're going to make AI, it has to follow the rules everyone else has to follow. Making an AI cheat is just an excuse for poor AI development." They spent too much time on making the game look nice, and while it does, graphics are nothing compared to an acceptable play experience.
The worst part about the AI is that I'm not even a nearly good player! I'm terrible, and yet I can destroy a Very Hard AI in a 1v1. Imagine how the Diamond players would feel should they have been set into a 1v1 versus a Very Hard or even Insane AI. The Insane AI just seems like the Very Hard AI + Cheating, so they would be able to destroy either in minutes.
0
I wouldn't use Insane if you want a legit computer. There are all kinds of things that the Insane AI does that you cannot, like ignore supply rules and some other annoying crap. There were some threads on the Official SC2 forums a while ago about what the Insane AI does, it's a tad disturbing that Blizzard decided to make broken AI instead of making one that can be challenging and play legit.
I would use the Very Hard AI if you want a legit one...I think it's basically the Insane AI except not a cheater.
0
I didn't give you the detector tip, PSGMud did.
Thanks for that info about Neural Parasite. So setting our own Requirement will override the invisible one from the game. Good to know.
0
Updated with a lot of balance changes after some testing as well as implementing some other suggestions.
Still no AI working, so at the moment still no solo play however.
0
I'm having some issues using the Player Properties Teams.
I know that I can set it up via triggers, that's not the point.
I'm trying to use the Team Placement (Advanced). I set every team (Only 1 player in each based on Start Location apparently (Only option)) to be enemies with the rest of the teams, but when the game starts online, the teams are set up by the team layout in the Lobby, regardless of how I set it up.
The problem with this is that when I begin testing, [Allies] is the main channel, and it becomes a hassle to chat with the rest of the testers (Especially when I've been PMing them a lot and still have the windows up). I have to tab like 8 times to get to [All].
Is there a way I can either
1) Set [All] as the default channel for all players instead of [Allies]
2) Fix the Team Placement. No one is supposed to have allies in my map at this time (I'm thinking of adding an option to make the game 3v3v3 at start up, but that's a bit away) unless they choose to make one (So I don't want them locked either). Anything dealing with Teams outside of Triggers seems to not work in any B.Net Game.
0
Agreed. Especially in the US Region, Americans are generally assholes (Fact. Not everyone is, but a good majority is.) They would prefer to make everyone else miserable than just have fun with everyone else.
0
Yeah I understand that, that's why that type of menu shouldn't be part of the main information. It should be a thing you open up, otherwise you get the problem I do, you click the wrong thing and you're waiting for double the time...drives me insane. Thankfully I think I'm finished with the section for the time being.
0
Unfortunately this doesn't work either. Went to the Requirements Tab, put Neural in the Search with Data Source: All Data, and nothing shows.
This is beyond annoying. This type of issue shouldn't exist. That's like if they left out the Triggering Player option in Actions, or left out certain conditions, it's part of the game I don't understand how this type of an issue can exist if it's taking all the data directly from the game's packets.
0
Why can't you just make the Pan Camera Actions the first ones in the Initialization? The game runs these actions in order, if you insist you need it to happen right away, just start off the trigger with the Pan Camera Actions.
0
I think I got it working. Thanks a lot.
PS, I hate the Upgrades stuff in the Editor, everything I click makes it freeze for like 15 seconds it's sooooooo annoying.
0
I'm trying to lower the cost of some Upgrades I made after testing proved that they are way too high. Nothing I do will respond.
I'm in the Upgrade section, I select my Upgrade, then when the menu opens, there's "Technology Research Cost [Minerals]: 100" I originally had it at Add 100 (So it would be 100, 200, then 300). I tried changing it to Add 50, but the number doesn't change in the option. I change it to Set 50, still no change. What's going on here? It's ignoring everything I do. Am I in the wrong menu? I remember a different menu when I originally set it up, but suddenly I am unable to find it. The Upgrade only has: An Ability, an Upgrade, and a Button. The only one that has anything to do with costs as far as I can find is the Upgrade, but I cannot get it to change. I've tried resetting the Editor, even resetting my computer, nothing I do is fixing it.
Can anyone give me a hand on this?
0
@_@. Did you check the terrain settings in the Map info?
Map -> Map Textures...
Just a suggestion, never heard of that happening before =/
0
Just my personal opinion after using the Editor for a little over a week.
1) Stability. I can leave the Editor on over night, nothing happening, and come back to an error report window. How does it crash while I'm doing absolutely nothing?
2) Better Data Menus. These are absolutely getting to me. The data is in such obscure places 99% of the time. The Naming is completely off on some things, or it makes sense once you KNOW why it's named that, but meanwhile if you're trying to do things on your own you're screwed. Other things are embedded in other menus and takes you hours to find for simple things (Like Interceptor Build Time. I took me 4 hours to find it, and only then because I asked on the forums about it).
3) Better loading. Opening a personally made Ability with 2 changed parameters should not, in any way shape or form, take 30+ seconds to load. This is absolutely inexcusable.
4) Large Trigger issues. When you have a larger trigger, the menu becomes more and more non-responsive the larger the trigger. I had a quite large trigger, and when I started to change it for the better, one click would take a 5+ second response, and actually doing anything took even longer. I know for a fact this is not my computer, because I can be running 30 thousand things at once and get a better response on just about anything, but the second I have a large trigger it bugs out beyond my ability to imagine why.
5) Missing...things. There are a lot of missing features, and I have no idea why. Some things, like especially Neural Parasite seems to not exist in the Editor at all (Except for the Ability itself, but it has no requirements while in game it does, and other things like this), but in game it does. This is absolutely infuriating when you want to edit any type of thing with this issue.
6) Buttons need to be moved around. I don't think something like "New Document" should be in every single menu. Then when I want to do something simple, like create a trigger or a variable, I click the "NEW" button and it turns out it's a freaking New Map, and now I have to spend a minute+ waiting for it to load everything it wants to before I can actually get back to what I'm doing. The stuff like New, Load, and some other things (Save should stay) should not be in every single menu. If you really want to Open another file, or make a New one, it's not that hard to press the freaking File button. Add to this the fact that all the Shortcuts that actually DO matter are on the far right, and if you have a lower resolution or have the window small, are completely missing. There's not even an arrow to access them. This is a foolish design.
7) Some type of reference is required. I want to find something simple like changing the Cost of a Research, and I've forgotten which of the 30 thousand objects I've created for this single research holds the Cost value. Now I need to check every single one, and if it's embedded in one of the values, double that, or even triple it searching every single thing finding it. Add this to the insane loading times for some of these objects (Like Upgrades, Abilities, and other things that take a long time to load) and it takes me an hour to change the Cost of a SINGLE Upgrade. Even a small help file like "Objects that have X are..." and X is something you can define and get a quick reference to what you need to check.
It seems to me that Blizzard has replaced user-friendly interfaces with obscure (but versatile) ones. This is a bad exchange. I'd rather have the old school editor with it's insane limits than this one, as it's simply too overwhelming and too confusing. It's easy to get lost for hours looking for something simple because it's not organized as far as I can tell.
0
I'm not having this issue and my Dependencies are set up as:
Liberty Story (Campaign)
Liberty (Campaign)
Liberty (Mod)
Liberty Multi (Mod)
I would suggest trying to put them in that order and see if that helps.
I had an issue when I first started one of my maps where some of the Story units weren't even available, and I moved my dependencies around to that order and it fixed the issue. Hopefully it's the same for you.
I think that it's utterly bad design that the order will effect things in such a magnitude. I could understand if the units were different in each Mod and it took the highest priority first, but sometimes when the Mod that has the unit you want is the only Mod that has it, it bugs out.
0
You need an event? Possibly add an event if a unit is issued an order, and if that unit is an SCV and the order is to Build. (Or whatever unit it is)