SSCAI is a student tournament of artificial Intelligence bots in Brood War. Right now we're starting a 2012 year and invite you to watch the LIVE STREAMS 24/7 or submit your own bots at www.sscaitournament.com.
There is some prize money to be won, lots of fun to be had, and some reputation and valuable experience to be gained. We're coding bots in C++ using the BWAPI.
I'll submit more to the prize pool if someone can build me a bot for each race with proper timings that I can practice verse. In fact, I'd be willing to donate a few hundred to someone who could do that and was available to make edits to the bot upon my request.
SC is like sex. You should play often, but never too hard. And you should only try hard when it matters.
On May 01 2012 10:03 Game wrote: I'll submit more to the prize pool if someone can build me a bot for each race with proper timings that I can practice verse. In fact, I'd be willing to donate a few hundred to someone who could do that and was available to make edits to the bot upon my request.
Interesting... I just sent you a reply in PM.
Release United States. May 01 2012 11:02. Posts 3972
Question: do these bots play like humans, in the sense that they have to scout/obtain information, or do they play like computer and have all the information without scouting?
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Skwid1g United States. May 01 2012 11:10. Posts 916
On May 01 2012 10:03 Game wrote: I'll submit more to the prize pool if someone can build me a bot for each race with proper timings that I can practice verse. In fact, I'd be willing to donate a few hundred to someone who could do that and was available to make edits to the bot upon my request.
If something like this was made public it'd be incredibly helpful, but I can't imagine how difficult it would be to create. I'd chip in a bit if it was good though, not too much (broke college student, etc.) but I wouldn't mind paying $10 or $20 for a bot that's actually worth practicing against.
With that being said I'll probably take a look at the stream, AI vs. AI is pretty fun to watch in small doses.
On May 01 2012 11:02 Release wrote: Question: do these bots play like humans, in the sense that they have to scout/obtain information, or do they play like computer and have all the information without scouting?
They play like humans in this sense. They need to scout, since they don't have any extra information available. No cheating is allowed Just check out some streams - they scout.
On May 01 2012 11:10 Skwid1g wrote: If something like this was made public it'd be incredibly helpful, but I can't imagine how difficult it would be to create. I'd chip in a bit if it was good though, not too much (broke college student, etc.) but I wouldn't mind paying $10 or $20 for a bot that's actually worth practicing against.
You guys just tell me what it should be able to do and I'll decide if it's possible (and maybe create it for you).
Easy part: - Build orders for the bot read from external text file, so you're able to customize what he plays. - The same goes for army compositions.
Hard part: - Micro and army control. Is there any sense making a training bot that just attack-moves your base when he's got sufficient army? I guess that it can still be useful to train against certain timings on certain maps.
What do you think? Should I start this project?
SpaceFighting New Zealand. May 01 2012 20:29. Posts 679
haha this is always fun and interesting to watch, gl to everyone who enters ^^
edit: think theres going to be a sscai 2013? xD thats when we start learning C++ at my university i think... this could be some sort of revision and having fun competition... the live stream is pretty awesome to!
double edit: just curious, as im not that good of a programmer, can u make ur bot just know what the opponent has and what not, and then decide on that whether to attack or not?
On May 01 2012 20:29 SpaceFighting wrote: haha this is always fun and interesting to watch, gl to everyone who enters ^^
edit: think theres going to be a sscai 2013? xD thats when we start learning C++ at my university i think... this could be some sort of revision and having fun competition... the live stream is pretty awesome to!
double edit: just curious, as im not that good of a programmer, can u make ur bot just know what the opponent has and what not, and then decide on that whether to attack or not?
Thanks man! There will definitely be [SSCAI] 2013, so I hope you'll enter then As for your second question: no cheating is allowed, so the bot needs to scout in order to know what the opponent has. Just like human players. Anyway, programming the scouting is fun!
SpaceFighting New Zealand. May 01 2012 22:06. Posts 679
On May 01 2012 20:29 SpaceFighting wrote: haha this is always fun and interesting to watch, gl to everyone who enters ^^
edit: think theres going to be a sscai 2013? xD thats when we start learning C++ at my university i think... this could be some sort of revision and having fun competition... the live stream is pretty awesome to!
double edit: just curious, as im not that good of a programmer, can u make ur bot just know what the opponent has and what not, and then decide on that whether to attack or not?
Thanks man! There will definitely be [SSCAI] 2013, so I hope you'll enter then As for your second question: no cheating is allowed, so the bot needs to scout in order to know what the opponent has. Just like human players. Anyway, programming the scouting is fun!
oh thats epic, so it is possible.. but its just against the rules? seeing this just made me even more interested in programming than i originally was! xD
kuz pro
KonekoTyriin United States. May 01 2012 22:28. Posts 54
You should probably mention that this is for students only; I'm interested but not eligible because I graduated from university last year. Pretty big disappointment, really.
THIS COURAGE OF MINE BURNS WITH AN AWESOME COURAGE
On May 01 2012 20:29 SpaceFighting wrote: haha this is always fun and interesting to watch, gl to everyone who enters ^^
edit: think theres going to be a sscai 2013? xD thats when we start learning C++ at my university i think... this could be some sort of revision and having fun competition... the live stream is pretty awesome to!
double edit: just curious, as im not that good of a programmer, can u make ur bot just know what the opponent has and what not, and then decide on that whether to attack or not?
Thanks man! There will definitely be [SSCAI] 2013, so I hope you'll enter then As for your second question: no cheating is allowed, so the bot needs to scout in order to know what the opponent has. Just like human players. Anyway, programming the scouting is fun!
oh thats epic, so it is possible.. but its just against the rules? seeing this just made me even more interested in programming than i originally was! xD
It's possible in general, but our tournament system prevents it. We're using the BWAPI, that has a function which enables full map vision. However, when the bot is in our tournament, this function doesn't work (doesn't do anything).
On May 01 2012 22:28 KonekoTyriin wrote: You should probably mention that this is for students only; I'm interested but not eligible because I graduated from university last year. Pretty big disappointment, really.
That's right. Anyway, you can still send me your bot and I'll include it as a non-competitive player. This way it will play, but it won't be able to score any points (just like my own bot). What do you think?
On May 01 2012 22:32 ddengster wrote: Dont you have an observer player? If all I see is a drone attacking the neutral building, then there's nothing that you asked us to watch.
Sorry about that, it's a minor bug - our observer is also a bot ;-) We'll fix it as soon as possible - but keep in mind, that such neutral buildings are only in 1 or 2 maps out of 15, so this happens rarely.
snakeeyez United States. May 02 2012 09:17. Posts 750
I think a bot called bthai basically has text files it reads for build orders that you can make yourself. The problem is no bot following a scripted build order is really going to be very good because the bots need to react and adapt instead of just blindly following a build order. The only thing that stops me from playing brood war is no good opponents, but playing online the opponents are too good. Also lag is very annoying. I hope a good bot pops up this year that can actually make and use all the units to play a decent game.
On May 02 2012 09:17 snakeeyez wrote: I think a bot called bthai basically has text files it reads for build orders that you can make yourself. The problem is no bot following a scripted build order is really going to be very good because the bots need to react and adapt instead of just blindly following a build order. The only thing that stops me from playing brood war is no good opponents, but playing online the opponents are too good. Also lag is very annoying. I hope a good bot pops up this year that can actually make and use all the units to play a decent game.
Hi. Yep, I know bthai. But it's really quite hard to make it do what you want. I think I'll do a training bot with clickable user interface, where you can tell him what build orders to use and which units to focus on. That is handy only for training purposes, where you want the opponent to only do one build/play style over and over again and practice counterstrategies (I guess you'll hardly convince a human player to do something so boring for him). Such bot will adapt to situation - but only in order to be able to produce units that he is supposed to (so you won't end up playing against something that you don't want to practice).
Such bot is not at all meant to be an amusing/interesting opponent. He should only be a practice opponent, that doesn't get bored
AleXoundOS Russian Federation. May 02 2012 22:52. Posts 82
On May 01 2012 11:10 Skwid1g wrote: If something like this was made public it'd be incredibly helpful, but I can't imagine how difficult it would be to create. I'd chip in a bit if it was good though, not too much (broke college student, etc.) but I wouldn't mind paying $10 or $20 for a bot that's actually worth practicing against.
You guys just tell me what it should be able to do and I'll decide if it's possible (and maybe create it for you).
Easy part: - Build orders for the bot read from external text file, so you're able to customize what he plays. - The same goes for army compositions.
Hard part: - Micro and army control. Is there any sense making a training bot that just attack-moves your base when he's got sufficient army? I guess that it can still be useful to train against certain timings on certain maps.
What do you think? Should I start this project?
I had the same ideas of creating such a training bot, since the time I got BWAPI working under Linux, but unfortunately I was too busy and had no free time for that.
On May 02 2012 09:17 snakeeyez wrote: The problem is no bot following a scripted build order is really going to be very good because the bots need to react and adapt instead of just blindly following a build order.
It depends on what is the aim of your bot. If you need something more than BO execution you can add learning mechanisms, so that it will evaluate the results of it's decisions for further usage. Yes it's hard but possible. StarCraft BroodWar is a great environment for developing AI that is capable of learning and BWAPI gives full control of the game.
What's more, you can compete bots against each other in order to refine build orders or research perfect micro tactics in different conditions and initial data like Berkeley Overmind bot did with mutalisk micro against high templars.
http://code.google.com/p/bwapi/ - An API for interacting with Starcraft: Broodwar (1.16.1)
On May 02 2012 22:52 AleXoundOS wrote: It depends on what is the aim of your bot. If you need something more than BO execution you can add learning mechanisms, so that it will evaluate the results of it's decisions for further usage. Yes it's hard but possible.
Exactly. Actually, right now my own bot is learning some micro with genetic algorithms It's been training for couple of weeks now. And as you said, it's all serious science, but it's also fun (at least for me). That's why I'm currently getting my Phd. in AI.
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Just check out some streams - they scout.
