Author Topic: Renegades Colony 1 (Read 15071 times)

Eddy-B · « **on:** December 08, 2006, 01:46:45 AM »

I've resumed working on the Renegades Colony game 1 as of this week.
A bug/crash that caused me to stop and concentrate more on my genereal AI back in springtime, has been fixed. Betaray has been having a ball testing it, helping me finetune the AI, so it will be a playable challange: not too easy, and definatly not too damn hard.

The next step is more difficult: designing an easy/med/hard version of it..
more on that later.

Leviathan · « **Reply #1 on:** December 08, 2006, 06:50:21 AM »

Thanks for the update and your continued hard work

Eddy-B · « **Reply #2 on:** December 08, 2006, 09:26:45 AM »

I want to add that i only need ONE beta-tester for this project. So please don't ask if you can test it. You will all just have to wait until it's done, which won't be too long

---------------------------------
[UPDATE:]
Renegades Colony 1 is a 3-side single-player colony game. The mission is designed to contain 3 AI's, but since there's 1 human player, one of them is always replaced by the human player. As far as a computer can do AI, i would say the quality of this AI is at least as good as you'd come to expect of me.

The mission objective will be to eliminate all your opponents. The two AIs will have the same objective, which means, next to attacking you, they will also spend resources to attack the other AI player.

You start of with literally minimal resources: 1 convec, 2 trucks, a Tokamak, a CC, an SF, 1 Agridome, 1 Residence and a Smelter. So does the AI: i do not believe in giving the AI an unfair advantage, just to mask the poor quality of coding by giving it a headstart instead of building a real good defensive & offensive AI system.

This is still an AI, which means it will follow more or less the same path each time it is run, but since it uses some random parameters, the game is never the same: chances are the second time you play it, the AIs will build their bases differently then before, giving them the human advantage of surprise, rather than the original missions, where you know what gets built where and at what time, making it easier to beat. My AI colony game will NOT be easy to beat! The challange for me will be to fine-tune the 3 difficulties to create a beatable game: an AI has superior control over its commands, over a human that has to rely on keyboard presses, screen scrolling and of course the one thing that makes us human: mistakes! None of these are problems for an AI, which means in theory it cannot be beaten...

More updates will follow; keep posted!

Sl0vi · « **Reply #3 on:** December 08, 2006, 01:07:18 PM »

Finally a colony game with a good AI

/me is very excited

Thanks for the update !

Eddy-B · « **Reply #4 on:** December 10, 2006, 03:26:35 PM »

I've been working on it all weekend, and sorted out some problems with the AI that held it back. It needed more & better defenses, so i coded that, and reduced the offensive side a bit.

I've had considerable help from Betaray with the project, and i expect it to be ready for release by Christmas.

Eddy-B · « **Reply #5 on:** December 12, 2006, 09:05:11 AM »

Who wants to be a beta-tester for "Renegades Colony 1" ?
Tasks (not all apply for everyone):

run the colony mission, and follow the progress of the AI players' development, OP2 experience not relevant;
report back any problems you find, be ready to talk about it in pm on irc;
be available for testing at least 2 days a week, preferably during 19:00 ~ 23:00 CET (which is 13:00 ~ 17:00 EST) on weekdays, or any time a day during the weekends;
willing to help out on development (no coding experience required). This may require several hours of your time, through IRC chat

If you want to help with Colony 1, send me an renegades@eddy-b.com containing your name, nickname, location and time-zone. Those of you that have already done this previously (for testing Renegades 1~4) just need to send me a pm.

Leviathan · « **Reply #6 on:** December 12, 2006, 12:46:18 PM »

I've already said I am happy to help ya Eddy

wizisi2k · « **Reply #7 on:** December 12, 2006, 09:26:33 PM »

I thought I was at the top of your list of beta-testers (u said so in the chat-I have a log) but I am interestered in doing a beta test

Eddy-B · « **Reply #8 on:** December 14, 2006, 03:04:21 PM »

UPDATE:

Since the colony game has 3 AIs, and all of them could be set to either Plymouth or Eden, i need to work out the strategy of a total of 6 AIs. Not an easy task.
So far, i've just finished working on the first 2 of them (one of the 3 'factions'). I started work on the 3rd AI (which is the second player) i have most of the AI stuff set up already, so i only need to check the new base which differs from the other AI. This should take me considerably less time than the first one did.

Once i'm done with that, i can do the 3rd 'faction' and then do a final test to see what the 3 of them can do against a human player. This is where the (new) beta-testers come in.

Eddy-B · « **Reply #9 on:** December 18, 2006, 01:12:29 PM »

UPDATE:

I've completed the second AI tune-up. It should now also run without a problem. I've started a few people up on beta-testing the "hard" version, which has the human player fight against the 2 AIs that i finished.

Once the last AI has been tested, i can have the other 2 mission types (easy & medium) beta-tested. This last AI will take more time than the others because of its crucial position within the gamemap. Also, this AI has a different approach to building its base (this is the AI that will substitute the "hard" player, and as such it should be a better AI than the other 2). Uptil now, this AI is always being destroyed by the other 2 in all my test runs with the 3 AIs just fighting each other. That means i have a lot of work to do still, to make it stand up to its "buddies".

More on this later! B)

Brazilian Fan · « **Reply #10 on:** December 18, 2006, 01:58:58 PM »

Nice to see you're working Eddy

Good luck, if you need help... Me here.

Leviathan · « **Reply #11 on:** December 19, 2006, 06:29:08 AM »

Sounding great

Thanks as always for your work

Eddy-B · « **Reply #12 on:** December 19, 2006, 03:58:38 PM »

Thank you all for the possitive input!

UPDATE:

Tonight i've improved on the AI: When one of them builds a secondary base, it will start using both structure factories to build up its bases. Also, when new labs are built, they will be used as soon as they are done. To keep the AI beatable it will still only use 1 lab at a time, which is the newly build lab. Once the 'active' lab gets destroyed, it will fall back to the next lab, and so on (in theory - this is not tested yet)

Eddy-B · « **Reply #13 on:** December 22, 2006, 05:10:31 PM »

UPDATE:

I've rewritten most of the code for guarding the bases. Made it more dynamic. The AI can now support upto 3 outposts (that is: 3 CC's & supporting structures for a single AI player), keep them guarded and work out which VF should create reinforcements for which base (which was a problem with the previous version of the AI). It still needs perfection, but it's looking good as it is now.

I haven't tested it further, but the code should theoretically be able to handle an unlimited number of AI's, but since OP2 only supports 7 players, i think 7 would be fine too.

I've also been updating the base-data of the third player and made some minor modifications to the other 2.

Brazilian Fan · « **Reply #14 on:** December 23, 2006, 11:43:50 AM »

Nightmare24148 · « **Reply #15 on:** December 23, 2006, 02:51:15 PM »

Eddy-B...my God you rock. OP2 has certainly gone imporvements since Ive been gone.

Eddy-B · « **Reply #16 on:** January 12, 2007, 05:51:27 PM »

UPDATE:

I completed most of the AI behavior and i tested it thoroughly. I just gave a few people permission to beta-test the game, and the bugs are still coming in <_<
I'm not sure why some bugs/crashes happen, since they do not happen when i test the game.

I've had some problems with the buildinggroups, as the AI's own tanks tend to get in the way and they won't move aside. I have yet to determine why this happens, even before i can find the solution.

The latest (debug) version of CRS1 is 164kB (285kB) and requires op2extra v1.1
The version of op2extra included in the downloads from the OPU main website is not supported and WILL result in errors when playing CRS1. Keep that in mind.
A new version of op2extra will be supplied with the colony game.

Eddy-B · « **Reply #17 on:** January 14, 2007, 03:23:08 PM »

Outpost 2 - Renegades :: Colony mission 1 (CRS1)

Nightmare24148 · « **Reply #18 on:** January 17, 2007, 12:54:30 PM »

Ive been thinking...Could you have something other than Yellow? I know Green is an Eden color...but Yellow for the Renegades is kinda meh...your call tho.

Betaray · « **Reply #19 on:** January 17, 2007, 01:33:42 PM »

would you he happier with magenta?

Eddy-B · « **Reply #20 on:** January 18, 2007, 03:13:20 AM »

Quote

Ive been thinking...Could you have something other than Yellow? I know Green is an Eden color...but Yellow for the Renegades is kinda meh...your call tho.

There's been a poll last year about the color: yellow was selected because it had the most votes. You must've missed the poll.

As for the color itself: I know everyone has his own favorite color. I don't, that's why we had the poll. And it doesn't matter much anyway: i'm not going to change it. LIVE with it

It this project gets a power-boost, there will be a follow-up project, which will again have another color to play with. But at the current pace, that'll take 2 years at least for that to happen. Besides: i need some MAJOR graphics artists for the next phase of Renegades, and it seems no one here is willing to help out, since i promise: it will be a LOT of work!

CK9 · « **Reply #21 on:** January 18, 2007, 09:48:29 AM »

well, eddy, I would help with that, but I suck at CG

Leviathan · « **Reply #22 on:** January 18, 2007, 10:14:59 AM »

Looks good. Great work

Nightmare24148 · « **Reply #23 on:** January 22, 2007, 10:48:44 PM »

Well I WAS gone a long time....meh

Ezekel · « **Reply #24 on:** February 04, 2007, 05:47:12 AM »

impressive

i'm curious why you chose to write ai scripting for the player controlled by the human though... or is that because when you play the game you (the human) will be given a random start location out of the 3 start locations?

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Author Topic: Renegades Colony 1 (Read 15071 times)