|
| Thread: New (unofficial) patch for ToE / AI mod |  This thread is pages long: 1 ... 6 7 8 9 10 ... 20 30 40 46 · «PREV / NEXT» |
|
Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
|
posted March 31, 2011 05:13 PM |
bonus applied by Galaad on 28 Aug 2017. |
|
::Wizard Quantomas comes out of his lab, tired, dirty and exhausted, but with a smile on his lips and a first sample of a cure in his hands::
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok, guys, we have a new beta. This new 3.1.n beta release (11.0 MB) is a completely refactored version of the improved AI.
The AI code has been migrated to its own process to achieve two goals: first, having the AI computation in a different process minimizes the stress put on the original application by requiring less resources. Second, the application can fully recover from any crashes in the AI process without the user noticing.
The results are improved stability, particularly under Windows 7, and faster processing times while the animations still show fluidly.
Technically, this work involved the refactoring of 35,000 lines of AI source code. Not bloated but highly optimized and fine-tuned code, where everything fits into its right place. Sort of this craftmanship that you can see in the buildings that endured millenia in Egypt, Greece and Rome, and that hardly anybody could afford today.
Don't ask me how I did this work in a single month. I don't think it's possible.
In crunch mode I am ten times faster than your regular programmer. Add to it the fact that I know every bit of the code whereas a team would somehow need to partition the tasks, and you can imagine how long this work would regularly take.
If I wouldn't do this in crunch mode this work would take forever. But it also requires from me to be very disciplined, hence the lack in communications. I read all your posts and the answers to the design and gameplay topics along with a bit more vision will be coming soon. I just have to take a bit of a break and restock on my favourite chocolate bar and other things that have dwindled in my kitchen during crunch time.
This work also marks a milestone from the original prototype code to production level code. The base we have now is very flexible and extensible and many more things become possible. This was also the very big chunk of work that needed doing first. Everything else should be downhills from now on and considerably faster.
That said, it was kind of a strain, but now seeing how the animations are playing fluidly while the AI does its processing in the background makes every bit of it worth the effort. If you don't have a multicore CPU, get one, it's worth the investment. Seeing how the game has actually a bit of idle time, makes me think of looking for a way to enable anti-aliasing for the 3D view only.
@Cepheus: Do you have already the complete set of interfaces required for the 8 skills enhancement? If yes, that's the next thing I will implement along with a lot of bug fixes and improvements.
|
|
Cepheus
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Far-flung Keeper
|
|
posted March 31, 2011 05:45 PM |
|
|
A thousand kudos on completing this absolutely monumental work.
I'm afraid I don't have a finished version of the new interface - I will return to work on it after Monday (important exam) and hopefully finish it that week.
____________
"Those who forget their history are inevitably doomed to repeat it." —Proverb, Might and Magic VIII
|
|
proxeeus
Hired Hero
|
|
posted March 31, 2011 07:29 PM |
|
|
Holy crap, that's amazing to read. Downloading right now ! Thanks a lot for your efforts once again ! 
|
|
PyroStock
Adventuring Hero
|
posted March 31, 2011 08:23 PM |
|
|
Great. I will start testing this new beta.
One other gameplay suggestion with the AI in combat. The original and 1st beta AI seem to love deflect missle too much when it doesn't have mass deflect missle. It's especially silly for the AI to cast it when the opponent doesn't even have any archers (except maybe a weak ballista).
____________
|
|
undead_assault
Adventuring Hero
Armageddoning
|
|
posted March 31, 2011 09:29 PM |
|
|
hmmm, wow! This is too good to be true, I hope this is not some kind of April Mop joke 
Downloading it right now! Thanks, Wizard Quantomas!
|
|
rpgyay
Known Hero
|
|
posted April 01, 2011 01:17 AM |
|
|
|
First off I want to thank you for your time on this, I've been testing out the new beta release with Windows 7 64-bit and I noticed that without any modifications it doesn't crash after ending your turn, with your other version I used the 3GB Enabler to fix that issue. One thing I did notice is that the turns do take a little longer with this version, with the old version I tested out an impossible size map with 7 computers and after the first turn the A.I took about 35 seconds, with the newer version the A.I takes about 55 seconds however I did notice that you can see the progress bar on turns for all the computers now, with the older version it wouldn't always show a computer taking it's turn.
|
|
rpgyay
Known Hero
|
|
posted April 01, 2011 04:09 AM |
|
|
|
I'm not sure if anyone else has had this problem but when generating a random map using the normal client (non ai modded) when you try to network a game I get a "RMG MAP Failed" message or something to the effect, so I generated a map using the modded version and it works but it doesn't generate strong enough monsters even when choosing "very strong" monsters in the options.
|
|
magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
|
|
posted April 01, 2011 09:34 AM |
|
|
Amazing work!  Unfortunately I will be off next week, so I won't be able to post much.
I was wondering if the current build has the 3 small hex edits implemented I sent you information about? (RPE, NCF, bad's levels)
If not, please consider maintaining a clean version of the mod with only the above mentioned modifications, because I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in having the AI & Bugfixes mod without any modifications to the game or only combinations of NCF+AI or RPE+AI or NCF+RPE+AI.
Thank you very much for this great work!
____________
MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
|
|
Pushtiu
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted April 03, 2011 08:18 AM |
|
Edited by Pushtiu at 08:18, 03 Apr 2011.
|
Hi all,
Amazing work indeed !
It now works on windows 7 (still crashes, but to a lesser extend)
You said something about multicore? It seems to use both my cores up to maximum now. Would the application use any number of/all cores now?
Also posted some isues to the bugs and issues section.
Thanks
|
|
Pushtiu
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted April 03, 2011 08:25 AM |
|
|
Also, as a suggestion, I think it would be helpful to have the first post updated. It should now contain the link for the splitted exe version too.
Thanks
|
|
Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
|
|
posted April 05, 2011 12:41 AM |
|
|
Two cores should do fine. There is the issue with the operating system interrupting the processes but the OS should be reasonably efficient for this not to be a big burden, so I doubt that more cores will provide much of a performance gain. Still, there is much room for further concurrency in the future.
While the processing is performed concurrently, access to the memory can be contentious. That means the CPU architecture still matters here, not so much how many cores it has, but the design of the processor cache. So it might be worth to look at a CPU that has more level 1 and level 2 cache.
The primary link will be updated when we have a fully stable release. Right now it's just a beta.
I have updated the beta to 3.1.3 which fixes a number of critical issues and which can be found here:
3.1.n beta release (11.0 MB)
Bug fixes will be coming fast now. After this I will see to it that the AI gets up to speed again.
|
|
proxeeus
Hired Hero
|
|
posted April 05, 2011 08:48 AM |
|
|
Great news - I haven't been able to test much of the previous beta release due to the AI hanging forever during its turns, does this release attempt to fix this issue?
The turns would take up to 3-4ish minutes each with the AI doing nothing, I would assume it may be related to a crash from the AI process itself, but I didn't have much time to investigate further.
|
|
stachnie
Known Hero
|
|
posted April 05, 2011 12:44 PM |
|
Edited by stachnie at 12:10, 06 Apr 2011.
|
About 3.12: certainly a step ahead. The game may still crash but these crashes are avoidable (I have not noticed any crash after reloading from autosave and replaying the turn). However, when playing "Questing for Peace" it happened to me that the game freezed during some AI turn and there was no way to avoid that. I will try to reload it under 3.13. My guess is that AI tried to get somewhere and there were two paths of equal length, so it could not decide to choose one or another.
In general, at hard AI beats me if the border guards are not very strong - it appears with greater armies and stronger heroes. But when I have more time to develop town(s) and main hero, it has no chance. The AI seems to be still unable to effectively attack strong monsters, which are beatable when using tricky tactics (size 1 stacks stealing retaliations, proper spells etc.).
S.
Edit: it freezes also under 3.13. I have encountered this problem two times in similar situation - when my hero is approaching the last town of some AI and he is much stronger than the garrison and wandering AI heroes.
Edit2: Necropolis has a similar bug to the bug with Haven Training: the last slot cannot be transformed in the Undead Transformer and it is necessary to press Esc to exit. I guess it may apply to special buildings of the other towns as well (apart from Fortress and Sylvan).
|
|
Pushtiu
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted April 06, 2011 09:08 PM |
|
|
Also look here for bugs
[url=http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=34733]http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=34733[/url]
Quote:
Edit: it freezes also under 3.13. I have encountered this problem two times in similar situation - when my hero is approaching the last town of some AI and he is much stronger than the garrison and wandering AI heroes.
Edit2: Necropolis has a similar bug to the bug with Haven Training: the last slot cannot be transformed in the Undead Transformer and it is necessary to press Esc to exit. I guess it may apply to special buildings of the other towns as well (apart from Fortress and Sylvan).
|
|
Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
|
|
posted April 06, 2011 11:03 PM |
|
|
The beta has been upgraded to 3.1.4. This should be a good, stable and fast build. The lookahead depth has been limited to four game days (turns) to facilitate fast turn processing in the beta as speed appears to be an important issue for many folks. AI turns should be a breeze now even on impossible sized maps. In general this should become a function of the difficulty settings to adapt to the player preferences in the future.
Please don't sent HC messages with bug reports to me. These go here:
Bugs and known issues. Thanks, Pushtiu.
If you wish to help and have identified a position where the AI gets stuck, what I ideally need to look into this bug is a savegame from which to reproduce this behaviour. If it is not a standard map, the map is also necessary to reproduce the bug.
I will also put two more reference maps on the project website, Island Hoppers rev. 2 and My Home Is My Castle rev. 2. Markkur has done a brilliant job to beautify the maps and add extra features. They are not yet perfectly finished, but I'd recommend to use these reference maps along with Icy Defence and Dread Realms for beta testing. This way we can also shake out the remaining bugs in the maps to have some full reference maps for play testing along the road.
Reference maps:
Heroes 5.5 - Eternal Essence - reference maps
Current beta:
3.1.n beta release (11.0 MB)
|
|
PyroStock
Adventuring Hero
|
|
posted April 07, 2011 05:17 AM |
|
|
I would rather have a smarter AI than a faster AI. Perhaps in a non-beta release there could be options. A faster AI can always be obtained as people upgrade & technology improves.
My only concern with a 7 day AI scan is the AI hero avoiding all fights/rewards to get to a location 7 days away, but I'm sure you factored in the importance of very close victories/items.
____________
|
|
stachnie
Known Hero
|
|
posted April 07, 2011 07:47 AM |
|
|
Quote:
If you wish to help and have identified a position where the AI gets stuck, what I ideally need to look into this bug is a savegame from which to reproduce this behaviour. If it is not a standard map, the map is also necessary to reproduce the bug.
O.K. I would like to send a game saved just before it freezes: do I have to attach it to a post sent to this thread or to the other one?
It happened to me three times. Always there were 2 AI's left, one of them was down to 1 town and a strong hero (not necessarily my own) was approaching.
S.
|
|
Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
|
|
posted April 07, 2011 11:09 AM |
|
|
Making the AI smarter is the top priority, the fixed lookahead cap is for the beta only.
Quote:
do I have to attach it to a post sent to this thread or to the other one?
Always in the bug thread. Can you upload the savegame into some webspace for later retrieval?
|
|
atheist
Hired Hero
|
|
posted April 07, 2011 08:34 PM |
|
|
Quantomas you did not answer on whether you can make the AI play fair..(start with same resources), as long as the computer cheats it steals from the value of what intelligence it might emulate.
Makers of AMAI (advanced melee ai for warcraft 3) made a version where you could put Normal Ai vs AMAI to see how much better is the new AI. It was very cool feature. I was wondering if you can do something similar with your AI. For example when you choose a player at startup to have option Normal AI or Modded AI for that player.
Now some observations from play on Key to Victory map.
AI is too afraid to attack enemy heroes in castles. Old AI was too reckless and got his ass kicked, but this one is a huge coward.
AI does not take easily beatable mines fast enough. he takes wood and ore mines too late even vs peasants.
AI greatly suffers in longer games if he uses both upgrades. He ends up having a smaller army. Make it stick to 1 upgrade only.
Also, sometimes AI ignores enemy EMPTY castle even when he is next to it, and the week just passed. sometimes he takes it afterwards but after the castle's troops are recruited and he thus loses even more units and can't resupply.
Some nice things to do if possible to implement them:
-don't set a limit of heroes to AI. why? theoretically, if his tavern has a high level hero weilding good items, he won't even buy it if he is restricted. Also make sure he buys heroes that have items (then sell or use them)
-Dungeon and Inferno creeping enhancement : 1 blood fury/cerberus can easily take out 1000 zombies, and footmen/mountain guards too, in No morale Week. I'm guessing this is probably impossible to do by AI because AI fights in Quickcombat.
-AI should take Flaming arrows, First Aid, and Triple Ballista whenever he can.
|
|
Quantomas
Responsible
Famous Hero
AI Wizard
|
|
posted April 07, 2011 10:27 PM |
|
|
Updated the beta to 3.1.5 which fixes a critical bug that disables opposition tracking, e.g. town defense, hero engagement and retreat.  Upgrading urgently recommended.
Quote:
Quantomas you did not answer on whether you can make the AI play fair..(start with same resources), as long as the computer cheats it steals from the value of what intelligence it might emulate.
Makers of AMAI (advanced melee ai for warcraft 3) made a version where you could put Normal Ai vs AMAI to see how much better is the new AI. It was very cool feature. I was wondering if you can do something similar with your AI. For example when you choose a player at startup to have option Normal AI or Modded AI for that player.
The difficulty setting will be changed to allow resource handicaps and AI difficulty to be set independently for each player. It's easy to do, the difficult part is to upgrade the dialog interface.
The last build had indeed the AI modified to be more cautious. In general this and many other AI performance issues will be significantly improved with the strategic end stage that is missing so far. A first version of this should be coming fairly quickly.
The AI hero hiring and creature upgrade selection will be revised entirely soon. The same is true in respect to the hero skill selection. Changes will be coming with the RPE mod integration.
Regarding the 1 blood fury vs. hordes of footman exploit, the plan is to have the AI split its forces into seven stacks against weak opponents. Even with their low speed and initiative they will catch up to the fast and quick one fairly soon.
|
|
|
|
