The New Alliance Ships

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The New Alliance Ships

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JonoPorter
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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #30 on: February 25, 2003, 12:29:07 am »

but cant chang the weapons just the speed, accel, rate of fire, recharge, and aspects of the weapon but not the weapons or special itself.


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #31 on: February 25, 2003, 12:31:30 am »

Well, you're not gonna end up with a whole lot of differnt ships then, if you restrict yourself to just using the weapons used in the original game. I mean, what's the fun in designing a ship if all you can do is swap it's weapon with something else, swap its propulsion system with something else, swap its turning jets, its secondary weapon. you'll just be making a limited number of souped up versions of the old ships. The whole point of NEW Alliance (and other) sships is not just combining them, but technological innovation!


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #32 on: February 25, 2003, 12:37:15 am »

true but it has to be done in a way that it does not make the older ship obsolite or you get the DBZ effect of stuff becoming so powerofull that a stray shot wipes out a solar sytem.


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #33 on: February 25, 2003, 12:39:13 am »

What is the DBZ effect?

Yeah, but that's exactly what I'm saying! That's why you need ppl to test the new ships and the new weapons, to make sure they are balanced enough! No mere computer can do that. It's the whole "balance" issue I've been opushing against your invincible ship, and restrictive editor...


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #34 on: February 25, 2003, 12:45:10 am »

DBZ is a japanesse anime that has super heros that get a hundred time more powerfull each time they need to deafeat the newest enemy

first you have to have poeple devise a lot of new weapons and specials then make the editor to balance them. it is so you can have a custom ship to play.


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #35 on: February 25, 2003, 12:51:28 am »

But the editor wouldn't be able to balance them out, because soem of the weapons rely on tactical advantages that the AI wont realize. Aw, nevermind, just go download timewarp will you? Play it for a while and then tell me that you/anyone could possibly design an editing program that can tell you exactly how much ships would be worth based on theitr comparative strength of weapons/ their abilities compared to those of all the dozens if not scores of other ships in the game. If someone can do this and prove that it works properly, I'll stand corrected.

On alighter note, you should try out Timewarp anyway, it is a lot of fun.


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #36 on: February 25, 2003, 12:57:58 am »

I did and i still think its possible but hard


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #37 on: February 25, 2003, 01:20:04 am »

Quote

but I might as well say something before this topic becomes a vacuous waste, since I believe the topic is very weak if non-existant.

but you NEVER know the direction a new post would take. this one change into the direction of.... well the same subject.
but its more of editors and how to balence new ships.


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #38 on: February 26, 2003, 10:34:41 pm »

AI can be programmed into the game to be many times "smarter" than the Awesome capability. Did you play Quake 1 at the time the bot phenomena started? yes, they sucked at first, but then they became, well, lean-mean-killing-..bot Tongue


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #39 on: February 26, 2003, 11:45:24 pm »

I did, and yeah, they did

But (and seeing as I'm not a programmer this might be complete and utter c**p but still...), the weapons in Qauke were always the same, so there weren't really that much of a tactical situation, was it? for humans, it'd be hiding, running and fighting, trying to get to places where you'd have the advantage while fighting. the bots would learn to kill you, dodge your tricks, but they'd always just be adapting, not really being innovative like humans can be.. Or am I completely wrong?


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #40 on: February 27, 2003, 01:22:59 am »

You're aiming at the "Humans will always, eventually, beat the machine" ideal, aren't you? Tongue

I'm not working as a programmer (studying currently) but I have done quite a bit of it (hey I had my own mod to Quake1 and 2 on planetquake Wink

) and especially in a 2D melee game such as SC2 it would be much easier to program an unbeatable AI than in Quake.. It won't be easy, but in relation to a successful Quake bot it's much much easier.


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #41 on: February 27, 2003, 01:28:22 am »

Well, I rather like that idea, but no, that's not what I'm aiming at. I'm saying that with the resources we have today, at this very momnet, I think it'd be extremely hard, if not impossible to do so. In a fwe years, maybbe not, in 20, most probably. But right now? that is the question that concerns us, sin't it Wink


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Death 999
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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #42 on: February 27, 2003, 01:53:39 am »

We might be able to implement a genetic algorithm that would take the tactical decisions off our hands.
The fitness criteria would be pretty obvious.
The problem would be designing a shape for the genetic code.

What battlefield information is available to an AI? We could develop a framework within that raw data level, perhaps working off of the existing AI code, cutting it up into interchangeable parts.

Anyone know how the AI is put together?


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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #43 on: February 27, 2003, 09:27:11 am »

LET ME JUST EXPLAIN. Computers think totally differently. Actually they don’t think they process. Computers are given a set list of instructions which they follow to the bit. EVERYTHING they do is program so precise that a single character could cause it to not compile. Then if there is a problem with data types you can get a bug. They do not adapt unless they are programmed too and that is very very very very difficult. The reason people think that computers are smart is that they are fast, very fast but as dumb as a very dumb thing. They are fast idiots. Just wanted to say that, not to insult your intelligence.

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We might be able to implement a genetic algorithm that would take the tactical decisions off our hands.

I am pretty sure there is no such thing as a genetic algorithm. Have you ever written a line of code? Because your techno non-sense makes me want to smack you.

But if you want a computer opponent you cannot defeat, just ask the creators of SC3 to make one, they made one that was darn annoying to defeat. The only thing it did was run away!!!!


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Flewellyn
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Re: The New Alliance Ships
« Reply #44 on: February 27, 2003, 09:27:34 am »

Here's something I can actually comment about, as I am doing some (personal) research into artificial intelligence, and do some programming as well.

Okay, an AI as a game player is quite feasible, even though, given where AI is right now, it's not going to be as much of a challenge as a human being. Given a finite set of constraints, such as the rules of the game, you can make a robotic player that can present a moderate challenge.

Using an AI to help design ships, though? You'd be asking a program to think on the same level of abstraction, with the same degree of complexity and same ability to "jump outside the box" as a human being. We just don't have the technology for that yet: current AI is on the level of bacteria, able to react to changes in the environment, incorporate new strategies, and even anticipate a little bit...in a very primitive way. (Bacteria can do all of these things, yes, though again, very primitively.) AI cannot, at present, plan ahead, think creatively, realize that its current mode of operation is getting it nowhere, have flashes of intuition, etc.

Even gameplaying AI is very limited. People point to the Deep Blue victory over Gary Kasparov in chess as a victory for AI, but it isn't. Deep Blue was actually a rather primitive AI, which did "brute force" checking of decision trees (analysing possible moves and their consequences), with some "pruning" of the tree for moves that quickly became bad ones. But nowhere near the sophistication of a human's ability to think. Deep Blue only won because of the power of its hardware, and because it was allowed to study Kasparov's games (and only his games) ahead of time, and develop reactive strategies analogous to the genetic strategies a bacterium develops against antibiotics.

Given all of this, asking an AI to work within the ship design system and anticipate problems of game balance (which is outside the system) is impossible with current technology.

For more info on all of this, I would highly[/i] recommend a reading of Douglas Hofstadter's book Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, which goes into great detail about all of these matters and more. Plus, it's just a fun read, and goes quickly, which is surprising given its length (1700 pages or so).


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