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Presentation of AI bots

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GBrank[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
I suppose this is a suggestion for lobby design.

Currently where you select Bot, you have a choice of ~6 chicken variations, CAI, and a submenu of other AIs. Most the AIs in the other menu dont work with ZK. Its totally confusing. The two best AI for ZK are not packaged with the game at the moment.

Can we please

> Package the latest working Circuit and ZKGBAI with each release of ZK, where both work with the latest version.
> Put (Easy) in the name of CAI.
> Put (Hard) in the name of ZKGBAI & Circuit.

> Structure the Add bot menu to show CAI (Easy, Circuit (Hard), ZKGBAI (Hard), Chickens - where Chickens is a sub-menu that allows the selection of Chicken difficulty.
> Hide all the others AIs that we know do not work with ZK.

This would make getting single player working a little more approachable for new players and help direct people to one of the best single player features of ZK - three good, non-cheating AI opponents.
+2 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
Why not sort the menu like this instead? Remember it can include unclickable text and horizontal lines.

________________

Regular AI player

CAI (medium)
CircuitAI (hard)
ZKGBAI (hard)
________________

Chicken mode

Easy
Medium
Hard
More honkhonk ▶
________________

Misc. / Untested

Spring AIs honk ▶
________________


"Easy" would be the old "very easy" or whatever is required to make sure even the nubbest nub can survive. "Medium" could be between the old "easy" and "medium". "Hard" could remain unchanged.

The "More" option on chickens would show a list of 10+ difficulties. That gives players a way to fine-tune difficulty without needing to go through 10 modoptions. It could look like this:

______________________

Chicken difficulty

1 (Easy)
2
3
4 (Medium)
5
6
7 (Hard)
8
9
10

Custom (use modoptions)
______________________


Modoptions could also include an input field to access the numbered difficulty so players can try 1.2 or 20 or whatever they can think of.
+0 / -0
DErank[2up]knorke
8 years ago
https://springrts.com/mantis/view.php?id=2923
+0 / -0
DErankBrackman
8 years ago
I would call CAI (medium), because it won't be so easy for a new player. And I would show that RAI does something at least.
+1 / -0
UArankq2015
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
Installing custom bot (circuit) on linux in a non-standard lobby datadir didn't work anyway (I assume due to hardcoded ~/.spring - based paths).
+0 / -0
Skasi
8 years ago
Gosh how didn't I think of that. Good point DErankBrackman!
It should probably also be clear which of the other AIs is the stronger or more interesting to play against. That'll probably be hard to find out and might happen to change every few updates.
+0 / -0
USrankQrow
8 years ago
quote:
Installing custom bot (circuit) on linux in a non-standard lobby datadir didn't work anyway (I assume due to hardcoded ~/.spring - based paths).


Mono seems to be very picky about what it lets you put in directories.
+0 / -0


EErankAdminAnarchid
8 years ago
quote:
Installing custom bot (circuit) on linux in a non-standard lobby datadir didn't work anyway (I assume due to hardcoded ~/.spring - based paths).

Hardcoded where?
+0 / -0


GBrank[GBC]1v0ry_k1ng
8 years ago
back we are again - can we at least remove all the bots that don't work from the download ZK installer?
+0 / -0
DErank[2up]knorke
8 years ago
(edited 8 years ago)
The problem of filtering unsuitable AIs is as old as spring. The problem is that validAIs.lua was never implented in engine. One could imagine some hackish non-unitsync-workaroundish solutions, all it needs is the mod-archive to contain a list of suitable AIs that the lobbies can read and interpret. (An idea might be abusing a modoption-"constant" table that lobbies can already read) But that is all hackish and the chances that community could agree on standard for such things are zero.

The other solution option are of course lobbies that are only meant to work with one game, like zero-K-lobby since the split. Such lobby does not need to take care if maybe some other game needs those AIs, it can just display its own list.
This would be one of the few situations where the zeroK/spring seperatation could actually have turned out to be something useful, if only in a detail.
+0 / -0


EErankAdminAnarchid
8 years ago
IMO:
1) Blacklist is a better approach than whitelist in case non-officially-approved challengers enter the AI scene.
2) Blacklist is trivially implementable UI-side. In fact, Evo branding of SWL does that, i think.
+1 / -0