very good, hats off to Kidd

so when is the next AI wars Rasher?

or waiting for the community to develop more?

This tutorial is a really good start!
The only feedback I can give about the tutorial is that it is (so far) not as clear as the Conquerors AI Tutorial. I mean still not everything is explained. But it is not complete as you mentioned, and a lot of things are still unrevealed.
I would be pleased to check things out if my processor didn't have a meltdown yesterday
You will probably hear from me again when the tutorial is finished THANKS A LOT!

Part of the chapter 1 file above didn't show up properly in that post. I had to remove the braces to make it display properly on this web site. It should look like this...but the actual TXT file includes the braces.

Your playerdata section....

singleplayerrandommapdata
playerdata
playerid0/playerid
aiscriptdefault/aiscript
type1/type
civilization9/civilization
/playerdata

Much more to come. Next I'll add a short summary of "what's different in AoM" for AoK scripters, which should help...the entire approach has changed radically. After that, progression plans, research, defend plans, attack plans and so on.

This should be enough to get you started and using the tools. Have fun.

[This message has been edited by Captn_Kidd (edited 11-22-2002 @ 11:21 AM).]

Quote:

Patience, my friend... patience is a virtue.

Translation: I have no sweet clue, but I wouldn't hold your breathe. There won't be any AI-related contests or events until people have been given a chance to adjust to AI-scripting in AoM.

A big thanks for helping people get started with AI's, Captn_Kidd. I can't wait to see what people produce.

[This message has been edited by TheShadowDawn (edited 11-22-2002 @ 12:19 PM).]

MUWHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Thanx Kidd! I wub ya!

Although I already know some of them

DGDN.Net has posted an article about the .xml files for Random Map scripts http://dgdn.net/dgdn.php?id=142&&cat=article_pages&&cat_ID=7&&heading_ID= 2

[This message has been edited by Zycat (edited 11-22-2002 @ 01:53 PM).]

*Worships Captn_Kidd*

Great tutorial, really made me interested in having a go at AI scripting.

Kidd, I still have some questions unanswered...

* Are all of the aiChat commands REALLY REMOVED?
* How do you "COMMUNICATE" (Data sharing, or stuff like that) between A.I players.
* How can I SAVE a few things and LOAD them from a file so I can make learning A.Is.
* Can you list all of the chat (comms) strings?
* Can you list all "cheating" commands (res cheats, "map hacks", etc.)
* Ideas for next tutorial : On the Unit Picker, Attack Goal, and How the Unit Picker, Resource Gatherer (script, cost, etc.), Attack Pathing, Building Placement really works although I know how the unit picker works a lot of people may not know, and I may miss some details about it.

Thx for your attention

How long will it be before the next tutorials out?

Oh and the alt-q ai menus are incredible!!

Ermm.....
Is subresource Hunt (cAIResourceSubTypeHunt) OBSOLETE? I can't get that one to work.....

Im sure this would be great if i were trying to do AI, currently i am stuggling through rms
ill come back when im done with my first rm script.

Zycat,

Only aiEcho() does anything, and that is only visible in the window of the full-screen debugger.

To my knowledge, there is no AI-AI communication or data sharing method. Ditto on memory/learning between games.

I don't have a list of the comm strings, they're in the DB somewhere...but they're basically the stuff the AIs chat when unleashing a god power or aging up, etc. I also don't have a list of cheats, but they've been posted on some fan sites.

Thanks for the next-topic suggestions. I'll be working on the next phase late this coming week.

Nydhogg13,

I'm not at the office right now, but I think the subtypes that we ended up with are subTypeEasy and subTypeAggressive (or huntAggressive?). Use the aggressive one when you want them to go hunting big game, the "easy" one should let them get deer and zebras, etc.

My problem is, there are constants defined for sub types Hunt, HuntAggressive, and Easy. However, Hunt doesn't seem to work for me. At least your script doesn't use this. I want my script to prioritize hunting nearby deers rather than eating cows/chickens/berries right away 'cuz it's slower than hunting. HuntAggressive works, though, but is too dangerous to do in early game...

[This message has been edited by Zycat (edited 12-01-2002 @ 11:07 AM).]

Zycat,

I understand, but I don't think it differentiates. It basically thinks of food as farming, fishing, "safe" and "aggressive".

*sigh*
I do expect AoM A.I scripting to be able to save files and communicate between A.Is...

aiSetWaterMap(gWaterMap);
aiSetRandomMap(true);

What does these functions do? I suspect if I remove the aiSetRandomMap(true); line I won't get 100% handicap on Titan...

And what these variables do in a gather plan :

aiPlanSetVariableFloat(gGatherGoalPlanID, cGatherGoalPlanMinResourceAmt, cResourceGold, 500.0);
//Resource skew.
aiPlanSetVariableFloat(gGatherGoalPlanID, cGatherGoalPlanResourceSkew, cResourceGold, 1000.0);

[This message has been edited by Zycat (edited 12-03-2002 @ 12:41 PM).]

Zycat,

aiSetWaterMap(gWaterMap);

Tells the AI system that there might be oceans, so that it's valid to consider transporting.

aiSetRandomMap(true);

I had no clue, and had to ask the master on this one. Here's what BigDog says:
This tells the C++ part of the AI to operate in RM mode (as opposed to 'scenario' mode). In addition to being part of the trigger for the logic above, this also affects when attack plans go away (allowing scenarios to have attack plans go away when they're out of units, but not orphaned), allows attack plans to auto-go-away if the attacking player is resigned/dead in an RM game (whereas scenarios don't want that behavior), allows attack plans to do some intelligent switching of who they're attacking if they're in RM mode (e.g. the attack plan really wants to kill Player 1, but his Player 2 ally has walled Player 1 in, so it's okay to switch to attacking Player 2), allows the attack plan to give up trying to gather units after a certain time, and enforces less attack route changing than in scenario mode.

It will not affect handicap in Titan difficulty.

For the final two, variables in goals are just easy storage places for script variables. These are examples where the scripts look up those variables later, they don't do anything by themselves.

Ok, and do you know what's the equivalent of (attack-now) command in an attack plan?

You just set it "active". If it has the minimum numbers of each unit you specified, and it knows of a valid target type, it will go to it.

I realize things got frantic with the 1.02 patch and the holidays, but any ETA on Chapter 2?

Cheers,
Slak

Working on it now. This week, sometime.

Sweet. I, er, unexpectedly, have a lot more free time on my hands, now.

Cheers,
Slak

Ey, Kidd, can you list attack plans' variables and what does it do?

Oh, and how to prevent my villagers to attack converted animals? Even if they're converted the villagers still hunt em, and I don't know how to stop it, Probably that's because I dunno how to clear the "KBResource" Tag for converted animals.

Converted animals counts as Economic, I think. They won't get into the attack group unless I create a separate attack plan for them.

And basically what's a goal?

[This message has been edited by Zycat (edited 01-25-2003 @ 04:08 PM).]

>> Ey, Kidd, can you list attack plans' variables and what >> does it do?

Check the tutorial under debugging, I cover a few there. Frankly, I don't know what some of them do, or even if they're all still current. (It went through a lot of changes in development.) Best suggestions I can give are to look in the scenario AI files and watch the examples.

>> Oh, and how to prevent my villagers to attack converted >> animals? Even if they're converted the villagers still >> hunt em, and I don't know how to stop it, Probably
>> that's because I dunno how to clear the "KBResource" Tag >> for converted animals.

They're considered a safe food source, same as berries or chickens. The only way I know to do that is to tell them to get nothing but farms and aggressive animals, which will ignore berries and chickens. Alternatively, you could modify the herd plan and tell them to round up at a house or military building, that might keep them far enough away from a food dropsite to have the villagers overlook them. Weird question. ;-)

>> Converted animals counts as Economic, I think. They
>> won't get into the attack group unless I create a
>> separate attack plan for them.

Never tried it.

>> And basically what's a goal?

Basically, it's a place to store data that controls plans, and it's also a plan generator.

Quote:

Tried the "herding" plan, didn't work. The villies will go over them although they're FAR away. But my idea is, can I remove specific unit ID from a certain "KB resource"?

And my priests do convert aggresive animals so the first solution won't work.

Well that's mainly because I want my A.I to use Rhinos Eles Hippos or other BIG animals to attack...

[EDIT]
See the patch 1.03? Set is a lot of fun to script hehe.

[This message has been edited by Zycat (edited 01-28-2003 @ 07:34 PM).]

Hmmm. Have you tried making a high-priority defend plan early on, and specifying those unit types (hippo, etc.), and giving it a location well behind your town?

There's no way that I know of to change the definitions of what a resource is.