Ok, just been thinking about this for a few minutes and I'm wrong aren't I?
It's had for me to visualise all the files when I don't have anything to look at (I'm at work) but now it's a bit quieter I've just been mulling it over and realise that the ai doesn't default to the w40k folder for Chaos if the Skirmish doesn't contain a Chaos race....it'll just sit there and not build..duh.
Too used to everything else in Dow reverting to w40k and forgot that the ai doesn't do this. Why can't the ai do this? can it be built in in some way? Can the paths in the cpu_manager point at other folders?
Skirmish MOD Vs. Vanilla AI
Started by Quitch, Jul 29 2005 12:18 PM
44 replies to this topic
#25
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Posted 25 August 2005 - 03:51 PM
If you really want to test the two AIs one against each other, why are you not using the online facility provided with the game ?
Finding a friend that installed the Skirmish AI, and playing an online game 2vs2, "Your friend with a Skirmish AI teammate" vs "You with a Vanilla AI teammate" should do the trick without involving coding... (except if version incompatibility problems occur...)
You and your friend just need to be sleeping on the map, watching at the battle going on on the screen...
Any opinion on that ?
Finding a friend that installed the Skirmish AI, and playing an online game 2vs2, "Your friend with a Skirmish AI teammate" vs "You with a Vanilla AI teammate" should do the trick without involving coding... (except if version incompatibility problems occur...)
You and your friend just need to be sleeping on the map, watching at the battle going on on the screen...
Any opinion on that ?
#26
thudo
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Posted 25 August 2005 - 04:23 PM
Errr its even easier than that (Larkin found this out and its shear brillance).
1) Start a normal 2vs2 game
2) When it starts, delete your HQ then press YES
3) Click the CHANGE PLAYER button on the bottom-right (view will shift to next player)
4) Go to top-right, click "Restart", it'll restart the same game
5) Done! Damn.. this saves me TONS of time debugging early AI behaviours!
Also.. change the game speed in the console so it runs super-fast and you'll see the action happen faster and thus tests will go quicker.
1) Start a normal 2vs2 game
2) When it starts, delete your HQ then press YES
3) Click the CHANGE PLAYER button on the bottom-right (view will shift to next player)
4) Go to top-right, click "Restart", it'll restart the same game
5) Done! Damn.. this saves me TONS of time debugging early AI behaviours!
Also.. change the game speed in the console so it runs super-fast and you'll see the action happen faster and thus tests will go quicker.
Edited by thudo, 25 August 2005 - 04:24 PM.
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#28
thudo
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Posted 25 August 2005 - 05:51 PM
Not sure if that'll work. It might as I've noticed if you have multiple AI folders in multiple mods running (one \AI with MOD A and and another \AI in MOD B) if both are connected using the my_mod,module file linking the two mods then run it the \AIs don't conflict. Its bloody odd. Hope that "anomly" stays with the expansion. Anyone else with a theory on this. I should test it using the original \AI folder from the master .sga file in v1.30.
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#29
Danimator
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Posted 26 August 2005 - 11:40 AM
I'm pretty sure this won't work.
When I was testing Blood Angels and Rhinoz combination mods (Blood Angels requires Rhinoz to work) the ai was still sending out vanilla space marines squads and not compiler's space marine squads i.e. bog standard rhino and no razorbacks.
So his ai was in the mix as Rhinoz was listed in the module file but not being referenced. By changing the module file order yuo can get Rhinoz ai being used but instead of, not as well as Blood Angels via the module file method.
You can get it all working as a combination but not by just using module files.
The only way to get the ai to reference different ai folders is to change the paths in the cpu_manager, I've had this working on a couple of really simple examples but nothing that brings all the extra scripts in skirmish ai into play or new races etc.
@DenizAsker Interesting idea but surely this would just show up as an error of some sort as I thought people playing online had to have the same mods and files on their pc's ...and Skirmish ai is a mod so surely this wouldn't work (never play online so not really sure about this). Can you give this a try?
If it did somehow appear to be working it might just be a case that one or other of the ai's has been selected, whichever is listed first - but not one of each.
You could put some code in the strategy folder to show this i.e. give the 'standard' strategy troop line up a different name i.e. 'skirmish standard' and see what loads up onto each computer. I think you'll find it's the same on each.
Can somebody please try this?
Thud, any news on the other stuff?
When I was testing Blood Angels and Rhinoz combination mods (Blood Angels requires Rhinoz to work) the ai was still sending out vanilla space marines squads and not compiler's space marine squads i.e. bog standard rhino and no razorbacks.
So his ai was in the mix as Rhinoz was listed in the module file but not being referenced. By changing the module file order yuo can get Rhinoz ai being used but instead of, not as well as Blood Angels via the module file method.
You can get it all working as a combination but not by just using module files.
The only way to get the ai to reference different ai folders is to change the paths in the cpu_manager, I've had this working on a couple of really simple examples but nothing that brings all the extra scripts in skirmish ai into play or new races etc.
@DenizAsker Interesting idea but surely this would just show up as an error of some sort as I thought people playing online had to have the same mods and files on their pc's ...and Skirmish ai is a mod so surely this wouldn't work (never play online so not really sure about this). Can you give this a try?
If it did somehow appear to be working it might just be a case that one or other of the ai's has been selected, whichever is listed first - but not one of each.
You could put some code in the strategy folder to show this i.e. give the 'standard' strategy troop line up a different name i.e. 'skirmish standard' and see what loads up onto each computer. I think you'll find it's the same on each.
Can somebody please try this?
Thud, any news on the other stuff?
#31
thudo
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Posted 29 August 2005 - 07:33 PM
Anyone wanting to test this? Bets are our AI hands the vanilla "has-beens" a new one! Muhahahahaha!Skirmish AI mod vs regular AI mod will work the way DenizAsker described.
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#32
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Posted 30 August 2005 - 05:14 AM
Wouldnt all the AI just get calculated by the host machine?? Does DoW somehow intelligently assign different AI to different players to split the load when you have more than one computer Ally? From my own personal experience of coding games it would fly in the face of everything i thought to be true. Please enlighten me if I'm wrong though It would be nice if all games could do that. I'm curious as to what would happen to the ally if the player leaves the server though?? Does the ally leave to or is it taken over by the remaining machine and thus uses whatever ai was cached...
You could always just copy the Space Marine race keeping all the inheritance, rename them Space_Marine_Vanilla_Race and then have them utilise the original AI...
Not exactly the nicest solution but it would definately work. And I'd assume with at least less effor than the brute force method.
You could always just copy the Space Marine race keeping all the inheritance, rename them Space_Marine_Vanilla_Race and then have them utilise the original AI...
Not exactly the nicest solution but it would definately work. And I'd assume with at least less effor than the brute force method.
#33
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Posted 30 August 2005 - 04:12 PM
Skirmish AI mod vs regular AI mod will work the way DenizAsker described.
I really can't get my head round how this works although I admit I know little about how online multi-player games work.
In a skirmish game the ai is playing all sides but is govened by one cpu_manager over-seeing the ai folders - broadly speaking (I know there is more than the cpu_manager involved but I'm using this as an example).
So are you saying in an on-line game the cpu_manager is playing against the cpu_managers on the other player's pc's? I would have expected some different code somewhere to be used if this was to happen against when it's just in skirmish mode playing all players simultaneously - surely this is quite different?
Can anybody explain this in a bit more detail please, I'm intrigued.
#34
Excedrin
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Posted 30 August 2005 - 05:49 PM
Yes, in a multiplayer game against computers, some AI processes run on each of the player's computers. If you bring down the console in a game that has computers and type "listplayers" it will say "alive, computer, remote" or "alive, computer, local" or something like that.
Ok, I just ran a game between the two AIs on a big map:
http://dow.lerp.com/...0830.112302.rec
I shouldn't ruin the surprise by saying here who won.
I think you'll need this map:
http://dow.lerp.com/...ad_Basilica.zip
It's a good map and It's probably worth it just to watch the game. It wasn't an interesting game from a DoW perspective, but it was interesting from an AI perspective.
Settings were standard on harder AI difficulty.
One additional detail, you have to copy the AI directory from the mod into W40k/Data for this to work, you can't play with an instance of DoW that was started with -modname dowai vs one that wasn't.
Ok, I just ran a game between the two AIs on a big map:
http://dow.lerp.com/...0830.112302.rec
I shouldn't ruin the surprise by saying here who won.
I think you'll need this map:
http://dow.lerp.com/...ad_Basilica.zip
It's a good map and It's probably worth it just to watch the game. It wasn't an interesting game from a DoW perspective, but it was interesting from an AI perspective.
Settings were standard on harder AI difficulty.
One additional detail, you have to copy the AI directory from the mod into W40k/Data for this to work, you can't play with an instance of DoW that was started with -modname dowai vs one that wasn't.
Edited by Excedrin, 30 August 2005 - 07:09 PM.
#37
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Posted 02 September 2005 - 08:22 PM
Happy that you were able to make my idea work ! I did not have enough technical knowledge to put this in place, but it is great !
Did you try only on a big map or on smaller maps as well ? And did you repeat the same test 4 or 5 times to know if the issue is always as the one seen in the replay you posted ?
On a big map, the basic vanilla AI could have an advantage as it is really bully in collecting strategic points forgetting any tech-up... Smaller maps could give something different...
Also, team play could be checked to know if two Skirmish AIs are beating two Vanilla ones...
Just let us know !
An happy DenizAsker
Did you try only on a big map or on smaller maps as well ? And did you repeat the same test 4 or 5 times to know if the issue is always as the one seen in the replay you posted ?
On a big map, the basic vanilla AI could have an advantage as it is really bully in collecting strategic points forgetting any tech-up... Smaller maps could give something different...
Also, team play could be checked to know if two Skirmish AIs are beating two Vanilla ones...
Just let us know !
An happy DenizAsker
#38
Excedrin
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Posted 02 September 2005 - 08:56 PM
I haven't done that since it takes a lot of time. Here's how to do it if you want to:
Install the Skirmish mod.
copy ...\Dawn of War\ai_mod\Data\ai to ...\Dawn of War\W40k\Data\ai
you might need to make a few directories to make the above step work. Also, replace ... with the directory your DoW is installed in.
Now play a game against a friend without the AI mod, both players can delete HQs at the game start and answer yes to "look around the map." Then you can have a cup of tea and chat about the AI as it plays.
Install the Skirmish mod.
copy ...\Dawn of War\ai_mod\Data\ai to ...\Dawn of War\W40k\Data\ai
you might need to make a few directories to make the above step work. Also, replace ... with the directory your DoW is installed in.
Now play a game against a friend without the AI mod, both players can delete HQs at the game start and answer yes to "look around the map." Then you can have a cup of tea and chat about the AI as it plays.
#39
thudo
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Posted 03 September 2005 - 12:02 AM
So does our AI on large maps.. There is no difference. The main difference: Our AI is brutal,tactically.. He does tech up but its debatable how much it "retards" his preformance. Not much at all or else the feedback wouldn't have been remotely stellar to this point.On a big map, the basic vanilla AI could have an advantage as it is really bully in collecting strategic points forgetting any tech-up... Smaller maps could give something different...
Still.. anyone have a Vanilla vs Advanced AI showdown? Try 2p_MountainTrail with 2vs2 Harder. Then run three full AI games and see what happens.
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