It was 20 years ago when a stupid machine won against the Strongest Grandmaster in chess. Nobody believed it could happen. The computer was calculating way ahead and far many positions but still it was just a strong calculator and thats it. But it won. Same is happening now in game starcraft Few years ago even strongest starcraft bots could easily lose to amateurs and even noobs. Even today bots are still rule-based, which means they are extremely stupid once they encounter something they are not coded to respond. But... that started to change little bit by now. And thanks to improved makro, micro and other aspect of the game... bots started to win games against humans. And not just noobs. They have started to win against decent amateurs with pretty good understanding and experience of the game. Still human will remain the smartest and better for upcoming couple years at least.. but that does not mean bots are bad. They are coded by smart humans, dont forget that. Today top bots have decent opening, very good makro skills and good micro skills. They have thousands of APM. Reaction time is pretty much instant. Bot does not get tired or slow. He is everywhere at any time and can control many things at once. So human vs human tactics like make distraction with this unit so you attack with other unit over there does not really work. If the bot is coded to do this thing if tha happens it will do it. Example storm dodging. Even pro humans lose units to storm in PvZ. But they can predict when other human could storm. But a bot can storm dodge instantly. Bot can seperate irradieted mutalisk from the stack instantly. They are better than pro humans in that scenario. You see where im going. Little by little bot do things better than even pro humans. And now is pretty much the time to test and see how much those bot things can help the bot to win games... And i can tell you that... even tho bots have critical holes which can cost them the game pretty much instantly... they are getting stronger and stronger. If you are D- D D+ C- Iccup rank player or Under 1400 at europe server you will have heck a lot of hard time winning against the bot. I can say that because i have seen better players lose to bots. That does not mean bot skill is equal to human skills.. no no.. Bots could stil lose to D+ rank.. and beat say B- rank player. The gap is big and this topic could help us see where exactly today bots stand. If you are interested playing them and stream the games post a comment and we will do it.
On December 11 2018 22:14 Modesty00 wrote: Example storm dodging. Even pro humans lose units to storm in PvZ. But they can predict when other human could storm. But a bot can storm dodge instantly. Bot can seperate irradieted mutalisk from the stack instantly. They are better than pro humans in that scenario. You see where im going. Little by little bot do things better than even pro humans. And now is pretty much the time to test and see how much those bot things can help the bot to win games...
If you make a "fair" bot, restrict it with human limitations like response time of ~150ms and max 400 apm, it is not going to do that well
well.. but AI is cheating, it needs no control device. its just controlling the game with its "brain". I like googles take on this way more, but its not convertible to the average user. At least i think it was google who want to build robot arms and let the machine only see whats on the screen. but then again, they chose SC2 if i'm correct.
Perfect micro and macro is irrelevant, that's hardly an "AI" thing. Of course you can expect that from a computer. What is interesting is of course if AI can start to match humans when it comes to strategy, tactics, deception etc.
On December 11 2018 22:14 Modesty00 wrote: Example storm dodging. Even pro humans lose units to storm in PvZ. But they can predict when other human could storm. But a bot can storm dodge instantly. Bot can seperate irradieted mutalisk from the stack instantly. They are better than pro humans in that scenario. You see where im going. Little by little bot do things better than even pro humans. And now is pretty much the time to test and see how much those bot things can help the bot to win games...
If you make a "fair" bot, restrict it with human limitations like response time of ~150ms and max 400 apm, it is not going to do that well
I thought a lot of bots are doing apm caps no? Latency isn't exactly easy to quantify, since some human reflexes vs cognition/judgement happen on very different latencies. I would be more than happy to have a bot that can "instantly" storm dodge as long as it's apm limited.
The only context in which a bot could beat a [decent] human in broodwar is if it breaks the physical limitations of the game and micros' each unit a million times a second or something else absurd. Which, really, is not impressive from an artificial intelligence stand point, nor would it be fun to play against. So in short, yawn. Come at me when you can actually make an ai that engages in reasonable strategy.
To the bot, what's the difference between pressing F3 and clicking on the minimap at (345, 188)? For humans, using camera hotkeys is better than clicking on the minimap since it's faster and centers the camera perfectly while clicking on the minimaps is imprecise and is slower. But to the bot, it has perfect precision. It can click on the minimap wherever it wants. It effectively has infinite camera hotkeys.
It doesn't matter if you cap the bot's APM or force the bot to play on a physical keyboard and mouse. The bot will always have perfect execution and mechanics, and that alone will beat the top pros. The world's best BW bot could consistently beat top pros by just worker rushing with the starting 4 workers.
Here's another example. Tastosis mentioned that Flash counts drones in one of the ASL casts. Obviously, Flash doesn't count each individual drone in the mineral line, he just eyeballs it. Are there a small number of drones or a lot of drones? From there, Flash can determine what the zerg is doing. How many frames does Flash need to count the drones? 20? 30? 100?
How many frames does a bot need to count drones? Just 1. And it will know the exact number of drones. Capping APM or hardware won't stop the bot from being better at scouting than Flash.
What's more interesting in regards to AI is how the bot learns the strategies. What are the best machine learning models to teach the bot micro and macro? How does training the bot work? How will the bot respond to weird strategies and playstyles? The programming questions are more interesting to me at least than wondering whether or not a bot can perfectly dodge storms or use lockdown.
On December 11 2018 22:14 Modesty00 wrote: Example storm dodging. Even pro humans lose units to storm in PvZ. But they can predict when other human could storm. But a bot can storm dodge instantly. Bot can seperate irradieted mutalisk from the stack instantly. They are better than pro humans in that scenario. You see where im going. Little by little bot do things better than even pro humans. And now is pretty much the time to test and see how much those bot things can help the bot to win games...
If you make a "fair" bot, restrict it with human limitations like response time of ~150ms and max 400 apm, it is not going to do that well
Currently bots are done to compete against other bots. The field is pretty difficult already so doing that will increase the difficulty for coding even more for lonely hobbyists. That will be done I'm sure by Deepmind in few years from now. But I don't remember deep blue being limited to only 100 positions per second vs Gary Kasparov or AlphaGo being limited vs the Go champion. Why should they do that in starcraft and how is not fair? If you are playing vs human and he has 6 finger then is not fair... What's next.. Oh I lost to human who plays the game 5 years me only 2 that's not fair.. I heard a comment where bot should have play with mouse and see only part of screen just like human... Really.. Does the plane fly like a bird or does submarine really swim?
On December 11 2018 23:55 odeSSa wrote: Perfect micro and macro is irrelevant, that's hardly an "AI" thing. Of course you can expect that from a computer. What is interesting is of course if AI can start to match humans when it comes to strategy, tactics, deception etc.
Well no much inteligence from rule based bot, but still... On the clip above Saida did tactical tank push in the intro, also cherry pi a Facebook bot has pretty good zerglings surrounding enemy units. Bots has some advanced a. I technics is not just do that if this.. More like do analyse of the situation, do calculation, take decision based on this and that etc... Deep stuff. But what you are looking for is a some kind of Machine learning, reinforcement learning/deep learning..neural nets and etc.. Self learning.. That is still to come, but Saida I think will have some Machine learning stuff inside next year, also cherry pi has been trained on human Replays for building placement I heard. And not sure what do you mean... Even 2 years ago bot can do reaver drop. The shuffle needs to find safe path to enemy base, find mineral line, drop reaver if there is no turrets in range or sieged tanks or any enemy unit that can kill it instantly.. To avoid wraiths etc.. Then that reaver has to find the best target for splash damage.. Should be pack of scv or pack of Marines.. Etc.. Then needs to pick reaver again, do shuffle micro avoid obstacles, find new target, and so on so on... Isn't that Impressive???
On December 12 2018 00:27 Dazed. wrote: The only context in which a bot could beat a [decent] human in broodwar is if it breaks the physical limitations of the game and micros' each unit a million times a second or something else absurd. Which, really, is not impressive from an artificial intelligence stand point, nor would it be fun to play against. So in short, yawn. Come at me when you can actually make an ai that engages in reasonable strategy.
What do you mean by reasonable strategy? Correct decision making in strategy game by bot will be very impressive. A bot does not have memory yet like human, which knows things by past experience and with one look to instantly know is it good or bad time to engage. Aka patterns. That's why bot needs to calculate every second. But to calculate correctly on a game with fog of war, unit change, position change, angle change of units and who knows what more it's very difficult task for computer. On top of that to know should it attack this expo or that expo or retreat units to defend his base? Or should he sac his units to slow down opponent because bot have better economy? Very difficult, even for super computers of Google. That's why when we see such things done correctly by luck or not by bot is very impressive. Anyway... What should we call artificial inteligence? They call Google image recognition smart and intelligent... But is it really? Just recently the system recognises a dog instead of a perfect looking wolf.. Because knows its unlikely to be wolf if there is no snow in picture... Extremely stupid reason..
On December 11 2018 22:14 Modesty00 wrote: Example storm dodging. Even pro humans lose units to storm in PvZ. But they can predict when other human could storm. But a bot can storm dodge instantly. Bot can seperate irradieted mutalisk from the stack instantly. They are better than pro humans in that scenario. You see where im going. Little by little bot do things better than even pro humans. And now is pretty much the time to test and see how much those bot things can help the bot to win games...
If you make a "fair" bot, restrict it with human limitations like response time of ~150ms and max 400 apm, it is not going to do that well
Currently bots are done to compete against other bots. The field is pretty difficult already so doing that will increase the difficulty for coding even more for lonely hobbyists. That will be done I'm sure by Deepmind in few years from now. But I don't remember deep blue being limited to only 100 positions per second vs Gary Kasparov or AlphaGo being limited vs the Go champion. Why should they do that in starcraft and how is not fair? If you are playing vs human and he has 6 finger then is not fair... What's next.. Oh I lost to human who plays the game 5 years me only 2 that's not fair.. I heard a comment where bot should have play with mouse and see only part of screen just like human... Really.. Does the plane fly like a bird or does submarine really swim?
Well, if were going to compete against one another, and if there is supposed to be some basis of comparison at all, starcraft is a physical sport, so expect demands on physical limitations, or simple disinterest from the community. Why would it be any other way? It's a bit like creating an A.I runner who competes in marathons against humans, but its powered by a car like engine and on wheels. Wtf is going on?
On December 12 2018 00:27 Dazed. wrote: The only context in which a bot could beat a [decent] human in broodwar is if it breaks the physical limitations of the game and micros' each unit a million times a second or something else absurd. Which, really, is not impressive from an artificial intelligence stand point, nor would it be fun to play against. So in short, yawn. Come at me when you can actually make an ai that engages in reasonable strategy.
What do you mean by reasonable strategy? Correct decision making in strategy game by bot will be very impressive. .
Correct choices based on the information presented. I.e something that would actually work if it were not for the fact that the computer is using 400k apm to offset its otherwise idiotic choices. And your right, it would be impressive if the ai made the correct decisions: Just like it isnt impressive if an ai plays well by abusing the mechanics of bw absent strategically correct decisions. Which, atm, is what bots currently are in bw.
On December 11 2018 22:14 Modesty00 wrote: Example storm dodging. Even pro humans lose units to storm in PvZ. But they can predict when other human could storm. But a bot can storm dodge instantly. Bot can seperate irradieted mutalisk from the stack instantly. They are better than pro humans in that scenario. You see where im going. Little by little bot do things better than even pro humans. And now is pretty much the time to test and see how much those bot things can help the bot to win games...
If you make a "fair" bot, restrict it with human limitations like response time of ~150ms and max 400 apm, it is not going to do that well
It will be cool when they can build a bot that can win with these conditions.
On December 12 2018 02:01 Dazed. wrote: Well, if were going to compete against one another, and if there is supposed to be some basis of comparison at all, starcraft is a physical sport, so expect demands on physical limitations, or simple disinterest from the community. Why would it be any other way? It's a bit like creating an A.I runner who competes in marathons against humans, but its powered by a car like engine and on wheels. Wtf is going on?
Starcraft isn't physical, it works on function calls. That humans deliver them mechanically through keyboard/mouse combinations which lead to physical fatigue doesn't matter to the engine. So its not really anything like your robot car/runner analogy.
Here's the basis of comparison: who wins the game? When the AI starts winning then it's better at the game.
It's really great to see how far these bots have come! Honestly, if you think it's trivial to make a bot play this well, try programming one yourself. This is incredible progress.
To those who are asking why an AI should be limited in APM or lag, a bad analogy would be tennis. In a competition against a human, a tennis ball launched at 200 m/s by an air gun with a camera to aim anywhere that wouldn't injure Roger Federer on contact with said tennis ball, that machine will always take the point overr Roger Federer (or whoever the human is) every time. Is that exciting? Does that truly fulfil the strategic sport aspect of tennis? It does not.