AI:Links

AI Development Skirmish AI's, are what the Computer Opponents in games are called. Developing a good Skirmish AI is a major undertaking, and requires quite a bit of know how. As the SY's have more important things to do than develop an AI, they have left this job up to the community. The community has risen to the challenge remarkably well, releasing quite a few AI's. There are currently 4 major skirmish AI's, AAI (by submarine), NTai(by AF), OTAI(by veylon), and KAI(by krogothe). KAI is not currently available to the public. There is also talk of Epic AI which will be the future successor of NTai and promises along with KAI to dwarf the existing AI's. Some people may have JCAI, which was bundled with spring but is out of date. AAI 0.63 and NTai XE4 are bundled with spring atm....

Code greenai A page with basic documentation for the Global AI interface. Global AI Interface Jouninkomiko has a topic on the Global AI Interface running here. Metal Handler Class Cain has developed and released a Metal Handler Class that succesfully finds metal spots on maps, which can be a major stumbling block for many AI developers. Information about it can be found in this thread. Since then a new algorithm has been written by krogothe that greatly improves upon this,a nd is used by all 4 major skirmish AI's

Research AI:MAID Useful existing documentation on the Spring unit AI can be found in K-man's Spring AI documentation, however this is not related to the Global AI. AF has a lot of theory on the topic on his site, including details on his NTAI project. Triaxx had a topic about the '5 Matrix AI 1,2,3', and also some information at Alantai Firestar's site.

Relevant research

• Seminar course on "Topics on AI and Computer Game Programming": The lecture slides give a great overview of advances in game AI, with plenty on RTS games

• Forbus et al 2001, "How qualitative spatial reasoning can improve strategy game AIs"

• D. Fetter (project report), "Real-Time Strategy Game Decision Making with Support Vector Machines": A project which tried using SVMs to learn unit production decisions in Warcraft III, based on replays of top players.

• R. Laursen & D. Nielsen 2005, "Investigating small scale combat situations in real time strategy computer games": 164-page Master's thesis on using game trees to determine near-optimal unit behaviors in combat scenarios (unit placement and target selection), which was implemented in the Stratagus warcraft clone. This also gives an overview of the AI techniques used by many popular games.

• N. Imrei, "Reinforcement Learning in Real-Time Strategy Games" (>final presentation link, thesis available by email): Honours project used reinforcement learning to develop both overall strategies and agent behaviors in RTS games

• S. de Jong, P. Spronck & N. Roos 2005, "Requirements for resource management game AI": This is about how to do resource management in games like Sim City, but it should also be applicable to TA-style games. There's also a 77-page Master's thesis

• Michael Buro's lab: Much of his lab's research is focused on "real-time planning and learning AI with applications to RTS games." They've actually created an open-source RTS called ORTS, in order to experiment with various AI techniques. With any luck, they might even be persuaded to switch their focus to TA Spring, or perhaps try implementing some of their algorithms. Also, it might be worthwhile to use elements of ORTS in TA Spring.

• • M. Chung, M. Buro, and J. Schaeffer 2005, "Monte Carlo Planning in RTS Games"
  • M. Buro 2004, "Call for AI Research in RTS Games": Gives a nice overview of the current state of AIs in RTS games
  • M. Buro and T. Furtak, "RTS Games and Real-Time AI Research"

• L. MacDonald 2005, a final-project report on Moving Target Search (MTS). Basically, MTS seems to be an extension of something called Learning Real-Time A* (LRTA*).

• N. Mehta et al 2005, "Transfer in Variable-Reward Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning": Develops reinforcement-learning techniques and tests them in a simple RTS

• Forum posts
  • Post by Gabba describing "Research about Pathfinding, AI and Voronoi diagrams"
  • Post by NeuronExMachina on Academic research papers on AI in RTS games

See also

• Wikipedia:Artificial intelligence