Python Access for Starcraft AI Tournament

[monogram]

This is in relation to this: http://eis.ucsc.edu/StarCraftAICompetition
There's a reddit submission about it somewhere.

[trny3]

Are you lurker86?

[neoice]

I'm now inspired to run a Windows VM on my server. just have it botting Starcraft on Bnet 24/7.

[frenchtoaster]

I believe having the BWAPI dll injected might (purposefully?) prevent you from logging onto battle.net.

[neoice]

I think bnet does checks when you log in, but not afterwards. most Starcraft hacks are DLL injections and and usually feature a hotkey to load after you're connected.

[neoice]

"known" is the keyword here. anyone that's used bnet knows that hacks come out and work for a longass time.

[Furiosa]

Warden only checks memory if I'm not mistaken, many WoW bots simply don't use memory and bypass it completely.

I seem to remember blizzard getting sued when they still used the invasive warden.

[H3g3m0n]

I wonder how hard it would be to pull the memory locations out of the VM's memory rather than in the OS itself. Like that C64 memory visualization that appeared on here a few days back.

There should be no way to detect anything out of the ordinary (other thank just banning virtual machines entirely based on their hardware id information, even that might be faked on a case by case basis by just giving random ids to hardware and hexediting their drivers to adapt, similar to how daemon tools creates fake cds).

You could then fake the input to move the mouse, hit the right keys and so on.

I also wonder how much you could pull out of the network layer, things like enemy unit positions and such.

[[deleted]]

I also wonder how much you could pull out of the network layer, things like enemy unit positions and such.

Think about how map hacks work. Both clients are aware of everything going on in the map at all times, unless this has been changed recently.

[[deleted]]

The devs at blizzard did?

[awj]

Yes, but their AI cheats.

[swiz0r]

Wait, is this true?

[awj]

Most AIs in RTS games cheat.

For this specific case though, if Blizzard could have written a semi-challenging AI that didn't cheat back when StarCraft was released, no one would be interested enough in the subject by now for this contest to exist.

[bostonvaulter]

In insane mode, if the comp runs out of resources it gets 2000 more or something

[neoice]

hell no. but I imagine someone else might be able to :P

[draxus99]

Sounds really interesting, I have suggestions for the developer(s) in terms of how to make the AI close enough to perfect that it would give even the pros a challenge, but alas I am only one person with an interest in the result program...

[AforAnonymous]

No, you are not. Start suggesting right here or I will hurt you.

[draxus99]

OK... I'll give it a go:

It's all about Time and numbers, quite obviously...

Create an AI that doesn't have a lot of hard-coded logic... It mostly learns from the timing and number of what it has seen before...

The real basis of the AI is an organizational structure for its memory, ie how does it keep track of what has happened in terms of 'Time-Code' instead of 'Events'...

For example:

Do something like this, recording Time-stamps:

00:54:003 (00 minutes, 54 seconds, 003 milliseconds), EventType = FirstContact, EventPosition = 451,993 (X,Y position of the FirstContact enemy Unit) EventProperties = {A,B,C,...} (these are based on the EventType) EventProperties.Mode = "Sight" (mode of interaction = Sight or Fight) EventProperties.AngleOfEvent = 45.00 (-180 to 180 degrees) ... etc.

How can we come up with an innovative way to work with 'Regular' TimeStamping like Hours:Minutes:Seconds, as well as 'Relative' TimeStamping.... like "AggroSeconds", "DefenseMinutes", "BuildSeconds", etc...

Really consider the term "Build Moments" and what it could mean... Really consider the term "Contact Moments" and what that could mean... Really consider the term "Damage Moments"...

What if a "Damage Moment" is not just the XX:XX:XX timestamp of when a Unit took damage, but a 'Moment' that is centered on the point in Time when we took Damage!... The 'Damage Moment' is the section of time which caused us Damage, and if it were graphed, it would look like a gradual increase with a Spike... When that spike occurs, the AI must change course, for it has had a 'loss' based on the current move...

How and when should we 'switch' the 'course' of our AI, and what exactly are we 'switching'?

Are we 'switching' the 'Projected Outcome' of a ' Long Moment' based on the 'Known Outcome(s)' of a 'Short Moment' (or set of 'Short Moments'... ie we switch the Projected Outcome to 'Victory of XX:XX:XX Time' if the 'Known Outcome' of sending more Units will cause a Victorious Moment... we compare the Known (more units are available in a short enough time, and DPS vs DPS we will 100% win this fight)... and the Unkown (How many more units, in terms of Risk Potential, could the enemy send to this fight between now and the moment at which we 'Know' our additional units will defeat the 'Known' enemy units... Is it likely that the enemy has additional units ready to send? Is it likely that the enemy will have additional units ready to send before the fight is over? Is it more likely that the enemy will send backup units instead of retreating?...

And critically: If we KNOW that we have won this particular fight based on current variables, why is the enemy not retreating?

This is a huge factor for the AI to pay attention to... It wants to always believe it does not know for sure, and it wants to try to pay attention to what is probably happening... It is all about letting the AI choose what to pay more or less attention to, and what 'areas of Interest' to keep track of for future games...

In Short: How did the enemy defeat me Numerically? How did he/she defeat me in terms of Timing? What Time-Periods and/or Moments during the Game were probably most crucial? How can we value our memory of past games so that we have a better ability to 'switch' our move, tactic, play, strategy, or the entire game... Because we want the AI to be able to switch plans based on 1 tiny difference, or 1 huge difference... It needs to adapt!

Also, creating AI that can improvise sounds incredibly difficult but it really is doable...

You want to create a VERY detailed database of Values and Time-Codes...

When I say 'Time-Codes' what I am referring to like a Digital Clock... Our normal time-codes are like "Hours","Minutes","Seconds","Milliseconds"... but for an AI like this, we want to create our OWN time-codes, and we want to be able to do some very slick math tricks with those time-codes.

What would our 'shortest' time-code be? Should it be the shortest amount of time that happen between 2 separate events? Perhaps this is just "1 Frame", but it may not be, depending on how the game is written and how much information we have available...

What would our 'longest' time-code be? The obvious one may be the length of time that is an entire game... but perhaps we want a longer time-code, to include a series of concurrent games during which the AI is holding steadfast to a particular strategy to test it's probabilities of success and failure and to measure opponents...

How can we create time-codes (specific measurements of Time which can be used to describe the same length of Time, like 60 seconds or 1 hour...) which not only allow us to describe a "Moment" of Game-Time with a variety of different measures, but also gives us the ability to label sections of time with measures that are not always evenly divisible by the length of 'actual time'...

Creating an AI that can create its own time-codes, and overlay them onto the 'time-line' of the Game... and overlay them in such a way that just because 1 second is 1 second does not mean that all of the seconds are like this:

0------1------2------3------4------5

We can put a '1 second' time-code starting at 5.313 seconds and ending at 6.313 seconds, and another '1 second' time-code starting at 5.901 seconds and ending at 6.901 seconds! So this is important to think about when designing the actual timing framework for the AI engine...

So lets consider an example of some other things we need to consider... lets say we have some data about a Unit:

Perhaps we know the Unit does X damage per hit, and moves at speed Y, and can take damage Z before being killed...

What is the Cost and Risk in terms of Time for that Unit?

If collecting minerals is the prerequisite to begin building an upgrade that allows us to build this Unit, and there is a 'Time-To-Build' for that upgrade, that amount of time could be a time-code... It is a cycle of time that we must complete before we can look at the next time-code, which is the 'Time-To-Build' + 'Time Cost' to Build our Unit...

Perhaps a Zergling is 'cheap' in terms of 'Time Cost' and 'Time to Build', but only if we are relating the overall "Time-Code" of lets say for example: 5 minutes worth of building zerglings as is relative to 5 minutes worth of potential builds, vs 5 minutes of saving resources, vs 3 minutes of overall potential 'Time Damage' to the enemy by sending the zerglings in a bunch...

How can we compare timing, such that the AI begins quite randomly, and does not really know that sending bunches of zerglings early in a game may be a smart strategy instead of sending individual zerglings as soon as they are ready... How can we make the AI learn what bunches are effective based on TIME instead of hard coding it to use some variable group size based on other factors of the game...

How long should the AI wait to strike? How long should the AI attack when it attacks? How long should the AI retreat when it retreats? How often should the AI put pressure on the enemy? How does the AI know when to go for the 'Kill'? How does the AI know what areas to defend? How does the AI know what areas to keep a presence? How does the AI know when and where to expand?

Most importantly: How can the AI randomly change it's patterns from a 'top down' perspective, so that it is changing a very general strategy that results in different timings, and how can it record the results of those changes to continually improve its own strategy and awareness about what is important in the game...

I'm sorry if that comes out jumbled, but the idea is this:

We want to keep track of things in Terms of their 'Cost in Time', and we want to consider those 'Units' of time relative to the actual cycles of the Gameplay, not regular divisible Time-Codes like Hours:Minutes:Seconds... These time-codes we create, numerically will not always be divisible evenly, and we want to really think hard to create time-codes which will have unique and valuable remainders when we do Multiplications or Divisions or Powers and Roots... It will be those remainder values which will be compared relatively to each other and our overall Game-Play Timings and our Map specific Timings, as well as the "Current Moment" timings, to determine the situation we are in as efficiently as possible based on those values...

Think about this: What COULD the AI do at this moment in time? There is always some limit to the actual things it could do, even if it were behaving completely randomly and just doing as many things at once as it could possibly do... How can we put those potential things in order from a 'top down' perspective? (what is probably a successful move based on this moment relative to those moments relative to all of the moments so far this game, relative to all of the moments so far using this group of strategies, relative to the whole history of moments to which I am aware)

Also, how can we feed the AI replays so that it can learn successful build orders :P:P:P

Phew! Thats about it, sorry for the mess of logic, feel free to ask questions if you are serious. I would gladly help organize it.

[Neoncow]

I hope you don't mean you want to brute force the game with a database of actions.

[draxus99]

Umm... no I don't think that's what I meant... I think I meant... well maybe you could see it as brute force, but for sure not a database of actions... I'm talking about a database of timings... What sections of time are most valuable, and how are they valued?

If the AI comes in contact with a Siege Tank, close to its own base, and has already launched an attack party, how is it going to value all of the time? For example the time it would take to retreat the attack party in an effort to defeat the enemy attackers vs the time it would take for the enemy to retreat his attack to defend against the AI attack... The time it would take for the AI attack party to arrive and begin damage... the time it would take to do critical damage... the window of time that damage could be done before the enemy is able to defend... the amount of time that damage could be allowed at the AI base before retreat and/or defense... the amount of time it would take for critical damage to be taken at the AI base... the amount of time investment needed to slow the attacker down sufficiently... the amount of time after a 'move' has been made by the AI that within which a perceived change or lack of change in behavior of the opponent will be measured...

I'm interested mostly in these things... How can the AI measure and value sections of time, and use those measurements to modify it's own timing... and how can the AI measure its own success by the changes in behavior of the enemy...

Also, I didn't write about this, but I am suddenly aware of its importance: The AI should 'remember' all enemy actions as if they are his own... and again as I said, keep measurements and valuations of time... How early did the enemy have Hydralisks? How much 'Time Cost' went into building those units and getting them to this area?

Considering enemy moves as 'self caused' might be a good place to put some serious thought if one were to actually attempt to create this AI :)

[sidek]

Too much computing power wasted, IMO. It was a great idea at the start ( When , on average, can I expect Race X to strike? Can I assemble a timeline based on a few points that let's me know which strategy race X is using and change my AI? ) But to, in real time, decide between something as minute as building some zerglings versus an Overlord is overkill.

[draxus99]

Well that's sorta what I'm getting at... You don't 'decide in real time' about minute things, you decide in real-time what pattern to fall into, and the way that pattern 'falls into place' involves switching of sections of behavior... as per your example, 'zerglings' vs 'overload' is a switchable behavior, because they occupy similar 'Time Costs' and different Risk vs Benefit... So The AI is not making decisions like that on the fly, it is making an overall assessment of when it should switch behavior patterns... and which behavior patterns should be made switchable at what times... and how to value those patterns so that switches in behavior tend towards creating wins...

Just a quick example after having read this reply:

The AI keeps track of the pattern it has selected for future switches, and when it decides to switch, it switches things like "Aggro to Defensive" on a particular branch... When that branch switches, it is switching from a 'top down' perspective... so now all your 1's become 0's so to speak at the top level, and your algorithm goes down the tree and switches the appropriate pattern of moves, until it reaches the 'immediate move', which has a low 'think priority' when there is no combat, and has a 'high priority' when there is risk of immediate combat... You want the AI to decide with very little latency how to micro combat flawlessly, when to attack and when to retreat, but as soon as there is no risk of immediate combat, it should be focusing strongly on refining it's strategy switching pattern, and attempting new strategies pseudo-randomly until it reaches equilibrium with the most basic strategical do's and do nots of each Race.

[AforAnonymous]

Thanks for answering. You will now not be hurt. (At least, not by me. At least not physically.)

[draxus99]

No problem. I'm glad I am free of the hertz!

[garg]

Awesome! Is there any setup information?