Any start point for AI development?

[analca3]

Hi! I'm new playing 0ad =). I'm a Computer Sciences and Mathematics student in Spain and I need to do a BIG BIG work with AI. I thought I could develop an AI for this game because it's open source and it's easy to develop to it. But AI development documentation in 0ad is NULL... How could I begin to learn? Beggining reading code is difficult... Any link or useful resource?

Thanks!

Regards!

[niektb]

Hi

I'd say, begin with this tutorial (though it isn't really extensive):

http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19218

You also can try to ask questions in the IRC dev channel: https://kiwiirc.com/client/irc.quakenet.org/0ad-dev

[Teiresias]

The question of getting involved with AI development comes up from time to time. General consensus seems to be that indeed you start by digging through the sources and modify the existant bot to your needs.

You say you "need to do a BIG BIG work with AI" - is this a master thesis or similar? If so, i suggest to check with your mentor before starting:

1. The AI API is not stable and requires adjustment of the bot script code from time to time. See here. If you are doing a thesis work with a deadline, it may be advisable to check out and freeze a specific revision to prevent your module from getting broken at an undesirable time.
2. Will your work have to become part of the official code base to be accepted in studies? If so, approach #1 is probably not feasible.

Regarding the non-existant documentation, this has been discussed before - and it seems consensus that the difficulties caused by having to "read the code" are neglectible compared to building up your own concepts. The ultimate goal of an AI is to give the user (player) a challenging and fun experience. This is more of passing the turing test than building algorithms/structures.

Besides the tutorial already mentioned, additional information may be gathered in the forums by searching for "AI", "petra", "aegis", "jubot" etc.

[analca3]

Sorry for the delay. Thank you both!

I'm thinking about this topic and I'm not decided yet, but it's possible that I'll decide for another RTS (Possibly StarCraft)...

Thanks again!

[gajop]

Starcraft's probably best (BWAPI), but if you want open source, the other alternative is SpringRTS. The documentation isn't great, but it's often slightly better than "read the code", although that's oft-suggested, just like in any open source community.

[wraitii]

Note that our AI is almost purely javascript and fairly documented so it's quite readable code, for an AI.

[historic_bruno]

Hi! I'm new playing 0ad =). I'm a Computer Sciences and Mathematics student in Spain and I need to do a BIG BIG work with AI. I thought I could develop an AI for this game because it's open source and it's easy to develop to it. But AI development documentation in 0ad is NULL... How could I begin to learn? Beggining reading code is difficult... Any link or useful resource?

You don't say exactly what you need: a detailed guide on how to write an AI in 0 A.D., or a very basic skeleton of an AI where you insert whatever logic you imagine it needs? Do you need a very high level API that has most of the functions already implemented, or a low level API that provides data and you implement the rest?

For 0 A.D.-specific questions, you could ask one of the other AI devs.

[FeXoR]

In the current stage a "basic skeleton of an AI" would be most useful.

However, this shouldn't be needed if the AI AIP is "fairly documented", as wraitii stated, IMO.

(IMO with a nice API a basic skeleton of an AI should contain just the needed files (.json, .js) with the .js file just containing a few (like 10) lines to get the gamestate, send the AIs commands and serialized AI state)

At least I find the AI API troublesome to handle.

I'm a bit confused how to put these statements together (but maybe: everything you have done and can do is trivial to you, but maybe not trivial in general).

I like the AIs but I can't get myself to love the API.