Suggestions for the AIIDE competition and/or ladder

[chriscoxe]

Suggestions for the AIIDE competition and/or ladder

[davechurchill]

Thanks Chris! Appreciate the feedback. We'll get to this list as the work on the ladder progresses

[chriscoxe]

FYI, I edited the Description to add suggestion # 10.

[chriscoxe]

Added more suggestions to the Description.

[chriscoxe]

@davechurchill @richard-kelly it might save you quite a bit of time/effort if I go through what I have and make some updates to a fork based on what I have. If you'd like me to do that, please let me know. If you're agreeable, I am also wondering whether I could add map/BWTA2/BWTA files for some other maps that the community has been using, e.g. AITT, pro season maps used for AIST, and perhaps the BGH map that SSCAIT uses on April Fool's day. The downside is that it does take longer for clients to download the ZIP file from the server because each BWTA or BWTA2 file is about 1-2 MB uncompressed. I added just the SSCAIT and CIG data to my "Required_BWAPI_420.zip" file and it is now 7,351 KB rather than 2,012 KB. It would be even larger with the other maps/data. If you want to keep the competitions lean and mean, I could create a separate ZIP file and people could rename the ZIPs if they want to use it, e.g. "Required_BWAPI_420_extras.zip". CIG could rename it and delete the map/data files for the non-CIG maps so their comp is lean and mean. Or implement the separate storage feature in suggestion # 13 so that the maps etc don't need to be downloaded every game.

[chriscoxe]

After some investigation, debugging, fixes and testing in my fork (I will push to my fork soon), I have updated the Description for points 2 and 7 accordingly and moved them into a separate issue: #32. Similarly, I moved point 6 into #34.

[chriscoxe]

I have moved point 3 into a separate issue: #37.

[richard-kelly]

Summary:

• Resolved: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7
• Will do soon: 11, 13
• Will look at/do later: 5, 8, 9, 10, 12
• Unsure: 14

1. Rules/logic for Current Working Dir and run_proxy.bat

I agree with you on this and have made this change so that the working dir is the Starcraft dir.

2. Ensure the Tournament Module allows some permissions for some versions of BWAPI

Fixed by @chriscoxe

3. Game Speed slider setting in game lobbies

This will be Normal, to be updated soon on the competition website

4. Ability to disable bots (not just ignore their results)

I made some changes to this feature so that now excluding a bot prevents future games with the bot from being played, and removes it completely from the results summary and detailed results. Server restart is required, obviously, and you can re-parse the results of a completed tournament with the standalone result parser.

5. Better checks for why some games fail to start

I accounted for everything I could think of without changing the TournamentModule when I added the Game "End Type" that now appears in the detailed results. I'll have another look at this.

6. Request a new official BWAPI 4.x release

BWAPI 4.4.0 has been released and is now supported.

7. TournamentModule.dll allows all permissions for BWAPI version 4 (e.g. 4.2.0, 4.1.2, 4.0.1 Beta)!

Fixed by @chriscoxe

8. Add a Win Percentage Per Map Cycle Graph & 9. Add a Win Percentage Over Time by Map Cycle Graph

I'll add these.

10. Add an ability to pick race randomly out of Terran/Protoss/Zerg in the game lobby

Shouldn't be hard to do, but I'm missing how this is easier for authors than just picking "Random" in the lobby.

11. Add support for BWAPI 3.7.5

I'll do this soon.

12. Add remaining SSCAIT & CIG maps with BWTA2/BWTA data

I will look at this after doing 13.

13. Separate storage

I'll do this soon.

14. Add dependencies for BWAPI/bot-related libraries

I'm not sure if you're asking for something to be added to the project, since we don't provide the SC environment. Do you want us to have a list of libraries that will be available in the competition?

[chriscoxe]

Thanks! Comments:

10. Add an ability to pick race randomly out of Terran/Protoss/Zerg in the game lobby

There's actually an important strategic difference: If an opponent picks Random race from the drop-down in the game lobby then you don't know which race they are using until one of your units comes into sight range of one of their units. Conversely, if either Terran or Protoss or Zerg is picked from the drop-down at random (with 1/3 probability each) then you know their race at the very start of the game. If you know their race then it cuts down the types of opponent strategies you need to prepare against or scout for (e.g. zerg rush, cannon rush, bunker rush) and may make it easier to decide whether to wall off, whether/where to place a bunker, what build order you want to use against that race, how early to send out a scouting worker etc, if you have not seen one of the opponent's units yet.

14. Add dependencies for BWAPI/bot-related libraries

I wasn't talking about the files installed by the Starcraft / Brood War installers/patchers - I was suggesting to add (and occasionally update) the set of BWAPI-related and bot-related library DLL or other kinds of library files that are common requirements by many bots, e.g. the BWAPI bridge and Qt DLLs that I mentioned, the client-bridge, gmp/libgmp/mpfr DLLs from sc-docker that I mentioned. And config files used by some bots like Aiur to configure where the correct locations of the read and write folders are (directories.txt and file_settings.txt files in the Starcraft program folder) to stop them updating files in the Starcraft folder itself. Aiur and other bots like that look for those kinds of files in the current working directory, which should normally be the Starcraft program folder. I expect it's easier for competition organizers and users that want to test their bots if a set of files was maintained rather than having to trouble-shoot to identify the missing files / try to find them online. As I said, I can add the files I have to a fork if you like. Note: for Java bots, I'm not sure about whether JAR files for BWMIRROR, JNIBWAPI, JBWAPI, BWAPI4J etc should be included in this set of files because I'm not sure whether they are supposed to be included within the bot's JAR, or must be in the bwapi-data/AI folder alongside the bot's JAR.

[davechurchill]

10. Will not be a priority for us as it will not be a feature in the AIIDE competition. I'd rather Rick spend as little time as possible on extra features outside the scope of AIIDE since we're running short on time getting the ladder up and running