Before i can get started making the map i want i need to learn how to develop an AI and i've been browsing the forums like crazy for any sort of guidance / reference material and i've unfortunatley been unable to find _anything_ that even remotley helped. I'm new to the editor aswell and all i really need is a nudge in the right direction, if i just can get started i think i can figure the rest out for myself. The thing is that i don't know where / how to start. All i can figure out is how to initialize the built in ai for a melee map which is'nt even slightly helpful.
I've been looking for a tutorial or some kind of mentor / nice guy who'd like to help me out. I've noticed that the interest for developing an ai is very low so my hopes of finding someone with any expertise in this area are very low, but ANY help is greatly appriciated and i will love you long time. <3!
Yeah i've been looking at the GUI a bit and it seems like i'll start there for now and see how it goes, i have a lot of other things to implement though so yeah. I think i'll be starting with the custom interface i need. because without that everything else kind of falls flat.
I do have some programming experience, i'm not sure how simmilar it is to "scripting". Up until now i've just been one of "those gamers" haha :D. I'm ready to put down a lot of work because it's something that interests me a lot. And from what i can tell building an ai from triggers alone greatly limits what you can do, or did i missunderstand that?
I'm interested in how to actually start creating an ai, i've got pretty high expectations so i prolly want to script it manually or so. However this is my first go at the editor or any editor at all so a little nudge in the right direction could be nice, i've been searching the forums a bit and i can't seem to find what im looking for :(
So last night i was randomly browsing the TL forums and i came across a thread about a really old game based on the original starcraft. It's called MyStarcraft which essentially is a football manager like game but set in the starcraft proleague. Which in itself is pretty amazing and interesting since i love management games. So this sparked an idea in my head about something simmilar but a custom map or a series of them featuring different ladder maps or maybe even GSL maps and what not. I'm very interested in artificial intelligence in general so it feels like a good project for me. The difference is that i'd like a map where you "manage" an ai, instead of a team i'll get more into details in another section. But in short you "build up" an ai, with a lot of different features and pit it against your opponents. I'm not sure i should be sharing my ideas like this but whatever, if someone steals this idea and makes a great map out of it i'd prolly love it.
Features and ideas
So, here i'll go a bit more in depth about features and ideas that i'd like to implement.
Ranking System
Ingame you should see a point standing compared to other players in the same game as you you gain points by winning games, you loose points by loosing games, simple as that.
Player Management
This map is all about creating and managing a player, you decide if you want a agressive, defensive, macro oriented, micro oriented player. Winning games will gain you experience, loosing games will gain you a bit less experience. You use the experience to improve your player, there should be a lot of different aspects that you can improve to encourage diversity to what strategies you use.
Live Management
You will have the ability when a game is going on to manage your player in preparation for the next match, you will also be able to spectate games and what you do with the information you see is up to you.
Balance and game modes
The standard game mode will be the same as the latest patch on live ladder. I might add additional game modes for fun later, with crazy abilities and other fun stuff, but first i'm gonna work on the standard game mode which will be essentially 1v1 with ai.
Customizeability?
I want it to be a complex map, there should be a lot of options and management options to have a really diverse gameplay and a lot of different strategysets / builds etc should be viable.
Last Words
Since this is just in the idea stage right now i'd welcome ANY type of feedback and or suggestions.<3
Development Blog
05/07-2011
I wanted to outline the way your player improved and leveled up and define the variables that i would like to see in the "skill tree" that i imagined would be a window where you spend the accumulated experience your player gained by playing his or her matches. Some of the variables are a bit vague, such as the "build" section, i want to support infinitly complex builds, but at the cost of experience, if you wanted to define every action up to 200/200 then you could. But at the cost of other mechanics, so a balance would be prefered? I have currently devided the imagined skill tree in 4 sections, Reaction / strategy is the section where you control how if you scout something specific then your player should act in a certain way. This is also where you control eventual timing attacks, scouting timing stuff like that. Then we have micro, it's a tiny section right now i've just put two things there for the time being, unit control / abilities and scouting. This section controls how you want your player to use their abilities and how they should scout. The third section is called macro, i plan on limiting the ammount of workers you can build from scratch and this is where you can improve that, say you start off fresh and you're limited to 8 workers. If you spend some of your accumulated experience in this "skill" then you might end up being able to have 10. Other abilities in this section are apm which naturally increase the ammount of actions per minute possible by the ai, this goes hand in hand with the micro department which will take a great toll on the apm. The last thing in this section is called "expanding" and this is where you get the ability to expand and take other bases. The experience needed for each level of this skill is greatly increased for every skill, and only one extra base should be available for each skill level. The last section is the build section, this is a bit of a science if you want to time it out flawlessly, just like in the live ladder version of the game the builds are dependant on timings and economy, if your econ is delayed your build will get delayed, your build can be infinitly complex but the more advanced it gets the more "conditions" it has. To make my thoughts easier to understand it's easier to time out when to build that 10 depo, than having a super duper complex build which is timed out to the fastest possible second to get fast battlecruisers or whatever, loosing one worker in a complicated and flawlessly timed is a big deal.
Tonight i will begin working on the ai, first step is to get the ai to build workers, maybe a structure and a unit or two.
User feedback / Suggestions
Changelog
05/07-2011 : Working on skillset / Rough draft of how the ai should be "leveled / improved"
So i'm new here, i've recently became very interested in the art of mapmaking etc, and it would be really fun to be a part of this community. I just have a question or two for you guys. First and foremost how careful should i be of sharing my ideas here? Do people generally snipe ideas and take credit for it later? or is this a really nice place to be? And does this community have any sort of project management tools?
I've recently become more interested in mapmaking and to be honest i've never really done any map development previously so i'm starting from scratch. I do have a few ideas and features that i would like to implement and i would like to know if you more experienced mapmakers think it would be possible to do something like this.
Features i would like
Naturally i'm not interested in the standard ai provided by blizzard, and i've not quite seen anything like the ai i'm imagining in my mind.
Limits or skill levels
First and foremost i would like to be able to somehow limit the "skill level" of the ai, and i'd like to be able to easily distinguish an ai on say a scale from 1 - 100. I know it's most likley an easy task to just make an ai that's really good, and one that's really bad and say well this is what you're looking for. But i have to disagree on this point, i'd like to be able to improve certain aspects of the ai gradually. Say for example there are some "statistics" that i would like to be able to benchmark and change. Maybe i'd want the ai to have really good macro, but really bad micro. Pitting that against an ai with really good micro and bad macro. These are the things i'm looking for. More specifically here are some of the "statistics" that i might want to have to distinguish the skill levels of the ai.
I guess the easiest way to deschribe this is to say that i'd like to be able to change the aspects of the ai, comparable to say a bronze player, and a high masters player. Without cheating naturally, to shorten it out i'd like to know if you can create an ai that could play even with a masters league player without giving it advantages.
Macro (This also includes different build orders, expanding, unit producing structures and generally the "game plan")
Micro
Multi-tasking
Something like APM to some extent, limiting the ammount of actions to possibly do for the ai
Some room for screw ups? (I don't want the ai to "perfectly" execute whatever it's doing every time i want to add some kind of randomness to it, so it does not play out _exactly_ the same every time.
Easy modifications
I've not fiddled with the map editor at all to be honest, so this section here might be a bit, dumb. But i want to easily be able to change things in the ai, like the stuff i listed above.
Last Words
This is all i could think of for now, i hope someone at least tries to give me a decent reply and i have high hopes to be able to complete the project that i've envisioned.
0
Reserved for space.
Additional Notes
Currently looking for someone to get me jumpstarted in ai development
0
Before i can get started making the map i want i need to learn how to develop an AI and i've been browsing the forums like crazy for any sort of guidance / reference material and i've unfortunatley been unable to find _anything_ that even remotley helped. I'm new to the editor aswell and all i really need is a nudge in the right direction, if i just can get started i think i can figure the rest out for myself. The thing is that i don't know where / how to start. All i can figure out is how to initialize the built in ai for a melee map which is'nt even slightly helpful.
I've been looking for a tutorial or some kind of mentor / nice guy who'd like to help me out. I've noticed that the interest for developing an ai is very low so my hopes of finding someone with any expertise in this area are very low, but ANY help is greatly appriciated and i will love you long time. <3!
0
@EternalWraith: Go
Ah thank you, as you can see im new here and i guess i got lazy, i'm sorry it wont happen again <3
0
@zeldarules28: Go
Yeah well i'm not looking for a campaign ai, i'm gonna make a really good / complex melee ai.. but its gonna take a LOT of time :P
0
@Kueken531: Go
Yeah i've been looking at the GUI a bit and it seems like i'll start there for now and see how it goes, i have a lot of other things to implement though so yeah. I think i'll be starting with the custom interface i need. because without that everything else kind of falls flat.
0
@s3rius: Go
I do have some programming experience, i'm not sure how simmilar it is to "scripting". Up until now i've just been one of "those gamers" haha :D. I'm ready to put down a lot of work because it's something that interests me a lot. And from what i can tell building an ai from triggers alone greatly limits what you can do, or did i missunderstand that?
0
I'm interested in how to actually start creating an ai, i've got pretty high expectations so i prolly want to script it manually or so. However this is my first go at the editor or any editor at all so a little nudge in the right direction could be nice, i've been searching the forums a bit and i can't seem to find what im looking for :(
0
Introduction
So last night i was randomly browsing the TL forums and i came across a thread about a really old game based on the original starcraft. It's called MyStarcraft which essentially is a football manager like game but set in the starcraft proleague. Which in itself is pretty amazing and interesting since i love management games. So this sparked an idea in my head about something simmilar but a custom map or a series of them featuring different ladder maps or maybe even GSL maps and what not. I'm very interested in artificial intelligence in general so it feels like a good project for me. The difference is that i'd like a map where you "manage" an ai, instead of a team i'll get more into details in another section. But in short you "build up" an ai, with a lot of different features and pit it against your opponents. I'm not sure i should be sharing my ideas like this but whatever, if someone steals this idea and makes a great map out of it i'd prolly love it.
Features and ideas
So, here i'll go a bit more in depth about features and ideas that i'd like to implement.
Ranking System
Ingame you should see a point standing compared to other players in the same game as you you gain points by winning games, you loose points by loosing games, simple as that.
Player Management
This map is all about creating and managing a player, you decide if you want a agressive, defensive, macro oriented, micro oriented player. Winning games will gain you experience, loosing games will gain you a bit less experience. You use the experience to improve your player, there should be a lot of different aspects that you can improve to encourage diversity to what strategies you use.
Live Management
You will have the ability when a game is going on to manage your player in preparation for the next match, you will also be able to spectate games and what you do with the information you see is up to you.
Balance and game modes
The standard game mode will be the same as the latest patch on live ladder. I might add additional game modes for fun later, with crazy abilities and other fun stuff, but first i'm gonna work on the standard game mode which will be essentially 1v1 with ai.
Customizeability?
I want it to be a complex map, there should be a lot of options and management options to have a really diverse gameplay and a lot of different strategysets / builds etc should be viable.
Last Words
Since this is just in the idea stage right now i'd welcome ANY type of feedback and or suggestions.<3
Development Blog
05/07-2011
I wanted to outline the way your player improved and leveled up and define the variables that i would like to see in the "skill tree" that i imagined would be a window where you spend the accumulated experience your player gained by playing his or her matches. Some of the variables are a bit vague, such as the "build" section, i want to support infinitly complex builds, but at the cost of experience, if you wanted to define every action up to 200/200 then you could. But at the cost of other mechanics, so a balance would be prefered? I have currently devided the imagined skill tree in 4 sections, Reaction / strategy is the section where you control how if you scout something specific then your player should act in a certain way. This is also where you control eventual timing attacks, scouting timing stuff like that. Then we have micro, it's a tiny section right now i've just put two things there for the time being, unit control / abilities and scouting. This section controls how you want your player to use their abilities and how they should scout. The third section is called macro, i plan on limiting the ammount of workers you can build from scratch and this is where you can improve that, say you start off fresh and you're limited to 8 workers. If you spend some of your accumulated experience in this "skill" then you might end up being able to have 10. Other abilities in this section are apm which naturally increase the ammount of actions per minute possible by the ai, this goes hand in hand with the micro department which will take a great toll on the apm. The last thing in this section is called "expanding" and this is where you get the ability to expand and take other bases. The experience needed for each level of this skill is greatly increased for every skill, and only one extra base should be available for each skill level. The last section is the build section, this is a bit of a science if you want to time it out flawlessly, just like in the live ladder version of the game the builds are dependant on timings and economy, if your econ is delayed your build will get delayed, your build can be infinitly complex but the more advanced it gets the more "conditions" it has. To make my thoughts easier to understand it's easier to time out when to build that 10 depo, than having a super duper complex build which is timed out to the fastest possible second to get fast battlecruisers or whatever, loosing one worker in a complicated and flawlessly timed is a big deal.
Tonight i will begin working on the ai, first step is to get the ai to build workers, maybe a structure and a unit or two.
User feedback / Suggestions
Changelog
05/07-2011 : Working on skillset / Rough draft of how the ai should be "leveled / improved"
0
@b0ne123: Go
That's nice :D i'm in the process of making a big thread in "project workplace" about what i'm thinking and what i'd like to do :)
0
So i'm new here, i've recently became very interested in the art of mapmaking etc, and it would be really fun to be a part of this community. I just have a question or two for you guys. First and foremost how careful should i be of sharing my ideas here? Do people generally snipe ideas and take credit for it later? or is this a really nice place to be? And does this community have any sort of project management tools?
Thanks in advance <3
0
Introduction
I've recently become more interested in mapmaking and to be honest i've never really done any map development previously so i'm starting from scratch. I do have a few ideas and features that i would like to implement and i would like to know if you more experienced mapmakers think it would be possible to do something like this.
Features i would like
Naturally i'm not interested in the standard ai provided by blizzard, and i've not quite seen anything like the ai i'm imagining in my mind.
Limits or skill levels
First and foremost i would like to be able to somehow limit the "skill level" of the ai, and i'd like to be able to easily distinguish an ai on say a scale from 1 - 100. I know it's most likley an easy task to just make an ai that's really good, and one that's really bad and say well this is what you're looking for. But i have to disagree on this point, i'd like to be able to improve certain aspects of the ai gradually. Say for example there are some "statistics" that i would like to be able to benchmark and change. Maybe i'd want the ai to have really good macro, but really bad micro. Pitting that against an ai with really good micro and bad macro. These are the things i'm looking for. More specifically here are some of the "statistics" that i might want to have to distinguish the skill levels of the ai.
I guess the easiest way to deschribe this is to say that i'd like to be able to change the aspects of the ai, comparable to say a bronze player, and a high masters player. Without cheating naturally, to shorten it out i'd like to know if you can create an ai that could play even with a masters league player without giving it advantages.
Easy modifications
I've not fiddled with the map editor at all to be honest, so this section here might be a bit, dumb. But i want to easily be able to change things in the ai, like the stuff i listed above.
Last Words
This is all i could think of for now, i hope someone at least tries to give me a decent reply and i have high hopes to be able to complete the project that i've envisioned.