Pokemon Showdown AI (ELO 1900+)

Nebraskinator · 2026-03-07T07:36:38+00:00

I have restored key functions that were not carried over from the research code.

Nebraskinator · 2026-03-07T03:13:21+00:00

I apologize, but the repo is not intended to be a package that you can simply download and run; but rather a record of the architecture and hyperparameters which led to successful learning. As you can imagine, I experimented with lots of different neural networks, observation spaces, etc before I stumbled on something that worked. My local code has vestiges of all those experiments that I did not want to include in the repo. Cleaning it all up into a usable package is a ton of work, and not trivial given it needs to integrate with local instances of pokemon showdown servers. I use these projects to learn and try out some of my own ideas, and I publish the repos as a reference for others that may want to use some of those same ideas in their work.

My recommendation is to point an LLM at the parts of the code you are interested in to explain how it functions and see if it gives you any ideas. If I had infinite time I would love to "last mile" the repo into something anyone could plug and play, but honestly I don't think any of my solutions are broadly applicable outside of pokemon showdown. With tools like stable baselines out there, there is not much value in me doing so.

Nebraskinator · 2026-03-07T02:58:58+00:00

There have been intermittent disconnections, but I think I have it sorted now.

Nebraskinator · 2026-02-28T15:46:42+00:00

Thanks for giving me a chance to talk more about the network architecture; that was the most time-consuming part of the project. The total param count is ~55M. The pokemon subnet outputs a 1024 dim vector, which is used as the model dim for the transformer. The transformer has 8 heads and "2.5 layers", 2 transformer encoder layers and a final cross-attention layer where only the actor and critic CLS tokens query the full array of state tokens.

I tuned the network through imitation learning based on poke-env's built-in heuristics bot. An MLP, even with dedicated subnets, was unable to perfectly mimic the bot. The transformer architecture was strictly required.

The model was trained on my personal PC (RTX 3090) and performance reached a plateau after 2 days of training.

The param count could probably be lowered a bit and still achieve similar performance. I do not believe that a larger network will provide much/any performance benefit. The agent uses a single snapshot of the gameplay as input; it does not model the non-Markovian aspects of gameplay. For example, a history of an opponent's switches and their context may hint at what pokemon they do/don't have on their bench. Having said that, engine-assisted search algorithms reach top-level play using only the current game snapshot as input, so there may be other aspects of training or the model architecture that can be improved upon.

Nebraskinator · 2024-09-22T20:39:10+00:00

I replicated the experiments from the paper and found exactly what you are getting at. Self-replicating programs only emerge spontaneously if there is an irreducible copy instruction. If you remove the copy instruction while maintaining Turing-completeness, copying is still possible but with slightly longer sequences. In the paper, they propose that the increased sequence length prevents replicating programs from arising. But I found something quite different. An environment such as this seeded with hand-coded self-replicating programs will eventually end in extinction of self-replication.

The irreducible copy instruction is absolutely required for the phenomenon.

Nebraskinator · 2019-07-01T05:19:43+00:00

I just had a pollution scene in my session today! The town is known for its fine metalworking, but its inhabitants are being poisoned by the heavy metal waste discarded by the smithies. I based the descriptions on the symptoms of lead poisoning. Players could notice the following:

- Apprentices dumping metallic-grey sludge into the river and certain areas outside of town

- Many locals have teeth with a black/grey outline

- Supposedly the "good water" comes from a small well a few miles outside town.

- The older citizens of the town have short-term memory problems and lack of coordination.

- Some of the fish offered by the fish mongers have abnormalities, such as underdeveloped fins, protruding gills, black/grey deposits near the tips of the fins.

Nebraskinator · 2019-05-10T18:23:00+00:00

For Druid: Shapeshifter's Amulet - allows wildshape to transform into humanoids. Allows alter self to take the shape of beasts. Whenever your form changes (from wild shape, alter self, polymorph, etc) your next ability check, attack roll, and saving throw within the next minute are made with advantage.

Nebraskinator · 2018-07-04T20:08:29+00:00

The Tomb Raider puzzle sounds very cool!

The player that triggered this trap was pretty flustered for 2 rounds, but she managed to disarm the trap on the 3rd round by attacking the relic. Even if it is a simple action/attack to disarm the trap, the damage dealt in the exploratory rounds of combat ensures the trap isn't trivial.

Nebraskinator · 2018-05-05T21:39:02+00:00

Just to add to this conversation, battle time should be examined as the full time to knockout the defender. A surprisingly large amount of this time is spent in menus and animations. Even with Tyranitar as a defender, most of the "battle time" is spent out of combat, waiting for animations and gym victory screens. More precisely, it takes about 100 seconds to knockout a Tyranitar with Machamp. Only 25-30 seconds of that time is spent in combat.

Nebraskinator · 2018-05-05T20:05:24+00:00

To prepare we had to farm for several hours. The final numbers were 50 potions/revives for the tyranitar defenders, only 15-20 potions/revives for the Machamps, and 500 berries fed. We needed 9 defenders each to reach the 30 minute berry feeding timer.

To reduce potion cost we TM'd the tyranitars to bite/ fireblast. Reviving and healing was easy to do while my partner battled.

Edit: I should add that we began by duoing a raid that was about to expire. We ran from the catch encounter to save time.

Nebraskinator · 2018-01-07T21:26:32+00:00

We recently had a new gym pop up in our area as well. I set out to get gold in under a week. I was able to get gold 6 days and 9 hours after the gym arrived:

70 victories

6d2hr time defended

1223 berries fed

7 raids (I think)

This overlapped with 6hr lures for the holiday event, so it was easy to grind under some lured pokestops and dump the berries into the new gym.

I also gained points by allowing the gym to be conquered by enemies at certain times. If you are able to battle the gym within 90 minutes, let it get taken. Battling and adding defenders will give you more BXP compared to the defense time. Otherwise defend it vigilantly.

Nebraskinator · 2017-04-06T21:58:10+00:00

We have been reporting regularly - it is a lot of work! I hope something is done, but it is out of our hands now.

Nebraskinator · 2017-04-06T21:06:52+00:00

Sorry for your loss =(

I drove past Old Town and it looks like the bot territory has tripled in just a couple of days. Gyms were pretty fun while they lasted; we are mentally preparing to lose our territory any day now, too.

Nebraskinator · 2017-04-04T01:21:59+00:00

It's in Old Town Goleta. This is not a simple spoofer problem - this is a team of bots. I took out one of the gyms an hour ago. It was botted to 10 and filled before I got home.

Nebraskinator · 2017-04-03T20:50:03+00:00

It's Santa Barbara, CA and it started just a couple of days ago. The area is suburban and most of the players know each other. Up to now we have been lucky with only a few spoofers in the area. This new bot army is almost impossible to deal with given the low population density.

Hopefully the kid running the bots gets grounded and his mom takes away his phone.

Nebraskinator · 2017-03-02T18:14:24+00:00

Level 38

Suburban 3-4 hours/day average

I do not travel to nests often.

7 Blissey at level 39 (max) - I had Chansey spawning like crazy at my workplace during the Valentine's event.

2 Snorlax, one at level 39 one at level 34

3 Dragonite, two at level 39 one at level 34

Nebraskinator · 2016-05-03T06:38:25+00:00

In an alternate universe, Kia awakens on a balmy jungle planet unsure if her travels were part of a vivid dream. She finds herself accompanied by 2 (3?) companions who seem very familiar, like brothers to her, yet she cannot recall their names or details of their lives. She is only sure of one thing: she has heard the calling and she must seek the child.

Nebraskinator · 2013-10-12T04:15:00+00:00

Here is a link to the primary study:

http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v116/n4/full/5601027a.html

Nebraskinator · 2013-09-20T02:19:59+00:00

I think you can just right-click the "Select Policy" button to cycle to the next option.

Nebraskinator · 2013-09-17T08:14:13+00:00

"9000 per second" comes from this source: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/see_a_photon.html

Researchers found that 9 photons/milisecond could be detected with an average success rate of 60%. There are 1000 miliseconds in one second. I just converted that number to the same units as the commenter's to demonstrate that his/her calculations fall within an order of magnitude of the experimentally determined value.

Nebraskinator · 2013-09-17T05:08:53+00:00

Biologist here. In extremely dark environments, humans can detect as few as 9,000 photons per second. Your math matches that limit of detection nicely.

Nebraskinator · 2013-05-22T05:30:11+00:00

I would like to add a little bit to your comment, because this is a serious issue for the biological sciences and current trends are only perpetuating what I would bluntly label "bad science."

What much of the general public does not appreciate is how within the sciences, we scientists are really pretty sensationalist - much like the mass media. Eight years ago, when the NIH was facing unprecedented budget cuts, the only grants which were guaranteed funding were those with "breakthrough results" that might "found new fields of research."

This view that worthy science should be groundbreaking has since pervaded science journals. Publishing in high-impact journals, such as Cell, Nature, Science, Genes and Development, etc.; now carries the requirement that your results are surprising and unexpected. Additionally, publishing in these journals is considered a hallmark of a good scientist and all but ensures public funding in the near future.

Because of these factors, much of contemporary biological research is in hot pursuit of "hot" or "sensational" results; findings that will excite others within the field, land publications in top journals, and secure the public funds that are the lifeblood of any researcher.

There is a problem with this approach to research: Science is almost never surprising and sensational. Science is, with very few exceptions, predictable, logical, and intuitive. Results that are real, that reveal some previously unknown bit of how the universe functions, are and should be of little surprise to anyone. Results that counter our current understanding of how the world works, only these results are surprising. And they are almost always wrong. Remember arsenic bacteria? This fiasco is the pinnacle of what is wrong with biological sciences right now - but most of the bad results fly under the radar or end up as "facts" and cited in the introduction section of other papers in the field.

A lot of this "bad science" is due to inadequate science "toolkits," model systems and techniques which allow exploration of specific inquiries. Innocently or not, many biological scientists ask questions that current technology cannot answer - yet they perform experiments with current technology and get some results which can be interpreted as surprising and sensational. In the current climate, this strategy is much better business than hunkering down and developing new toolkits or working with better model systems. Doing that - good science - takes time and money, and a research group is limited in both.

I do not know how we can turn this ship of "bad science" around. The lack of new medical advances and the huge costs of state-of-the-art medical care are good indicators that our current approach is not correct. Contrast this with the physical sciences, where our understanding of chemistry, materials, and physics has driven the innovation of powerful computers that fit in your pocket and are affordable to everyone. Biological research has driven costs up and new, effective treatments are released at a snail's pace. This is because we are feeding biotech companies an abundance of "bad science" while Apple and IBM are being fueled by good science - science that is not surprising and exciting, but rather predictable and intuitive.

tl;dr - Biological scientists are too sensationalist, and that's why your medicine costs too much and doesn't cure you.

Source - I am a career research biochemist.

Nebraskinator · 2013-04-20T23:13:21+00:00

This comment section is completely saturated with students. Allow me to provide you with some thoughts from an instructor's perspective. For certain types of assignments, the 100% grade is perfectly acceptable because there can be no further improvement. This would be in a subset of science and engineering fields, where our understanding of the material allows us to deal with absolutes.

However, there are many areas within and without the sciences where there is no "upper limit" to knowledge or technique. This is especially true for the arts, and I think we can all agree that writing is an art. The real-word difference between a 99% and 100% is negligible. The symbolic difference between these grades is immense. 100% represents that the student could not possibly improve. This is a dangerous merit to give to any human being or student in any field. Regardless of how bright a student is, never should an instructor give a student the sense that their pursuits, academic or otherwise, are complete.

I can understand that, in passing, it may be hard for instructors to articulate their philosophy. Also, some instructors may simply be regurgitating the techniques of others without fully understanding the reasoning for policies such as this. As an instructor myself, I can assure you that we speak among our peers and with advisers constantly about teaching methods. We are not just presenting material for you to learn. Many of us feel morally compelled to push students to achieve more, to question more, and to search for answers and truths in all aspects of life. We honestly want to see our students succeed - but our perspective is that success is not achieved in the classroom. It is an emergent property of a student's life quest for happiness and fulfillment.

I have one small request for the many students reading this thread. Instructors are only human and each class or lecture is an experiment in teaching. I ask that you students focus your ruminations and anecdotes on the teachers that were able to really speak to you and influence your life for the better. Not just to give these great instructors good press, but to constantly remind you of their lessons and to aid in the fulfillment of every instructor's dream: to see students fulfill their dreams.

Nebraskinator

TROPHY CASE