User:MGoods - Revision history

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2023-04-24T02:12:40Z

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2023-04-18T06:21:42Z

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Crab: /* Questionnaire */

2011-04-09T08:49:29Z

‎Questionnaire

Crab at 08:35, 9 April 2011

2011-04-09T08:35:13Z

MGoods: /* Timeline (4.4) */

2011-04-08T15:26:33Z

‎Timeline (4.4)

MGoods: /* Phase 2 - Create Lua functions for AI Programmers and Scenario Creators */

2011-04-08T15:23:27Z

‎Phase 2 - Create Lua functions for AI Programmers and Scenario Creators

MGoods: /* Phase 1 - Giving Lua Scripts Access to all the Neccessary Information */

2011-04-08T15:20:59Z

‎Phase 1 - Giving Lua Scripts Access to all the Neccessary Information

MGoods: /* Phase 1 - Completing the Lua Engine Implementation */

2011-04-08T15:17:18Z

‎Phase 1 - Completing the Lua Engine Implementation

MGoods: /* Phase 2 - Create Lua functions for AI Programmers and Scenario Creators */

2011-04-08T15:14:15Z

‎Phase 2 - Create Lua functions for AI Programmers and Scenario Creators

MGoods: /* Phase 1 - Completing the Lua Engine Implementation */

2011-04-08T15:13:31Z

‎Phase 1 - Completing the Lua Engine Implementation

@@ Line 77: / Line 77: @@
 The next steps listed by the devs is to build a 'wesnoth lua ai standard library', and then 'build a library of high-level functions which will be directly usable by scenario developer'. However I suspect that these two tasks would be best performed semi concurrently, so once the obvious standard functions have been added to the standard library (things like evaluate the positive or negative effect of the action I am considering, and check which tiles can be moved to) I would start building the high level functions, and then add any recurringly useful or necessary functions to the standard library.
-Creating the high-level functions would involve consulting with the better more experienced human players, such as Noy, in order to find out what tactics they would use in certain situations, as the majority of these functions are either 'do this, unless certain conditions are met' or 'under these circumstances, use these tactics'. Examples of the first include guard and patrol, the AI needs to know if and when to pursue an enemy fleeing from the location or area being guarded or patrolled, an example of the second is if the AI is told to kill a certain unit of the players, and it finds itself in a position to trap it between two units (two units with ZoC on opposite sides of an enemy unit will restrict it's movement options to squares immediately adjacent to it) it should probably do that, even at the expense of other opportunities. These Lua scripts would be run before the main loop of the AI turn sequence (http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Customizing_AI_in_Wesnoth_1.8#Customizing_AI_turn_sequence) however the behaviour of these scripts would be destructive, as the first script to be run will not consider the implications of it's actions on the options of the other scripts. Scripts could be made to account for multiple units acting under the same parameters (multiple units guarding for example) however writing scripts for every combination, especially as more are added, would be infeasible.
+Creating the high-level functions would involve consulting with the better more experienced human players, such as Noy, in order to find out what tactics they would use in certain situations, as the majority of these functions are either 'do this, unless certain conditions are met' or 'under these circumstances, use these tactics'. Examples of the first include guard and patrol, the AI needs to know if and when to pursue an enemy fleeing from the location or area being guarded or patrolled, an example of the second is if the AI is told to kill a certain unit of the players, and it finds itself in a position to trap it between two units (two units with ZoC on opposite sides of an enemy unit will restrict it's movement options to squares immediately adjacent to it) it should probably do that, even at the expense of other opportunities. These Lua scripts would be run before the main loop of the AI turn sequence ([http://web.archive.org/web/20150917185742/http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Customizing_AI_in_Wesnoth_1.8#Customizing_AI_turn_sequence http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Customizing_AI_in_Wesnoth_1.8#Customizing_AI_turn_sequence]) however the behaviour of these scripts would be destructive, as the first script to be run will not consider the implications of it's actions on the options of the other scripts. Scripts could be made to account for multiple units acting under the same parameters (multiple units guarding for example) however writing scripts for every combination, especially as more are added, would be infeasible.
 =====Phase 3 - General AI Improvements=====

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{SoC2011Student_2|MGoods|SoC_Ideas_LuaAI_2011}}
-=Description=
+==Description==
 <h4>Mark Goodenough - Improvements to the Lua AI</h4>
 I propose to first extend the capabilities of the current system for using Lua scripts to dictate AI behaviour, which is the main part of what the Wesnoth team have said they want from this project. After that I intend to program some specific behaviours that scenario designers might find useful, like 'focus on this unit' for situations where the players looses if a unit dies. Finally I intend to try to improve on the current Wesnoth AI creating an AI that performs better against human opponents, hopefully by joining the Wesnoth project and working with Crab on the AI. This last goal is the hardest part, as I've never written an AI before although our course at uni does cover the theory side of possible AI implementations, and I may not succeed.
-=IRC=
+==IRC==
 MGoods,MGoods|RangerM
-=SoC Application=
+==SoC Application==
 [http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2011/mgoods/1 SoC Application]
-=Questionnaire=
+==Questionnaire==
-==Basics==
+===Basics===
 .1) My name is Mark Goodenough. About four years ago I worked on Wesnoth as a UMC creator and a minor art contributor. I joined the community when I picked up some WML and coded up some scenarios, just to see if I could, and I started creating art mainly because I needed art assets for my campaign, but couldn't find anyone to make them (artists being much much rarer than aspiring campaign developers). Since then I left the project because I simply didn't have enough time to work on it, especially as creating art takes me... well a long time and aside from WML and failing my first attempt at Java I had no coding experience, and I had to focus on getting into the best uni that I could.<br>
@@ Line 24: / Line 24: @@
 .7) No Vacations, and I have no other commitments over the summer period.<br>
-==Experience==
+===Experience===
 .1) I have written a few programs to perform various small tasks (for example once when I tried to make time for wesnoth again I wrote a WML parser to update my old campaign code) and of course I've written programs for my university course (a basic chat client, the game of life, and a couple of other programming exercises). I also worked on a larger group project, as described in 2.2<br>
@@ Line 37: / Line 37: @@
 .6) Invasion of Arendia Campaign, and some sprite contributions (I never made good enough portraits), the one I can clearly remember doing is helping Jetryl with the attack animations of the Orcish Archer. (not that art contributions are particularly relevant for gsoc)<br>
-==Communication Skills==
+===Communication Skills===
 .1) Born and raised in England, so quite fluent.<br>
@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 .7) To be honest I veer between the two. If I'm not coding at the time, I might spend allot of time thinking about how I would go about doing something, and considering possibilities. But that tends to happen before I begin any specific task, once I've started I'll write something, see how it works out, see if it can be improved, and then either use or abandon it. I'm definitely not afraid of abandoning work if it actually makes the code worse, or has some unforseen problematic side effect (eg, slowing the program down more than expected).<br>
-==Project==
+===Project===
 .1/4.3) I chose the AI improvement project, mainly because I've always had an interest in AI and the main AI GSoC task set by the Wesnoth devs will familiarize me with the AI code so that I can mess around with it more easily later (or in other words, do the third part of my proposal) which is what I really want to focus on, even thought the main bit of the project is getting the first two stages done.<br>
-===Timeline (4.4)===
+====Timeline (4.4)====
 {| border="1"
@@ Line 67: / Line 67: @@
 |}
-===Technical Details (4.5)===
+====Technical Details (4.5)====
-====Phase 1 - Giving Lua Scripts Access to all the Neccessary Information====
+=====Phase 1 - Giving Lua Scripts Access to all the Neccessary Information=====
 The first goal is relatively simple. C++ obejcts used by the c++ AI of Wesnoth communicate with lua scipt AIs through c++ proxy objects, but at the moment this communication is incomplete and the lua scripts do not have access to all of the information available to the c++ AI. Phase 1 will involve coding functions to fetch this data from the c++ side of wesnoth so that lua AIs have access to this information. This information is then used in Phase 2 in order to construct the 'wesnoth lua ai standard library' in order to convert this data into meaningful information that the AI can base it's decisions on.
-====Phase 2 - Create Lua functions for AI Programmers and Scenario Creators====
+=====Phase 2 - Create Lua functions for AI Programmers and Scenario Creators=====
 The next steps listed by the devs is to build a 'wesnoth lua ai standard library', and then 'build a library of high-level functions which will be directly usable by scenario developer'. However I suspect that these two tasks would be best performed semi concurrently, so once the obvious standard functions have been added to the standard library (things like evaluate the positive or negative effect of the action I am considering, and check which tiles can be moved to) I would start building the high level functions, and then add any recurringly useful or necessary functions to the standard library.
@@ Line 79: / Line 79: @@
 Creating the high-level functions would involve consulting with the better more experienced human players, such as Noy, in order to find out what tactics they would use in certain situations, as the majority of these functions are either 'do this, unless certain conditions are met' or 'under these circumstances, use these tactics'. Examples of the first include guard and patrol, the AI needs to know if and when to pursue an enemy fleeing from the location or area being guarded or patrolled, an example of the second is if the AI is told to kill a certain unit of the players, and it finds itself in a position to trap it between two units (two units with ZoC on opposite sides of an enemy unit will restrict it's movement options to squares immediately adjacent to it) it should probably do that, even at the expense of other opportunities. These Lua scripts would be run before the main loop of the AI turn sequence (http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Customizing_AI_in_Wesnoth_1.8#Customizing_AI_turn_sequence) however the behaviour of these scripts would be destructive, as the first script to be run will not consider the implications of it's actions on the options of the other scripts. Scripts could be made to account for multiple units acting under the same parameters (multiple units guarding for example) however writing scripts for every combination, especially as more are added, would be infeasible.
-====Phase 3 - General AI Improvements====
+=====Phase 3 - General AI Improvements=====
 The final goal is much harder to achieve, especially as there's no way of being 'done', but I plan to continue to work on it even after GSoC has ended and I have a few different ideas of how to go about doing it ranging from extending the current implementation by including considerations about the terrain that the units end up on (something currently ignored, which makes baiting the AI quite easy) to implementing a more Heuristic approach to the AIs decision making (treating the set of possible moves as a network that the AI must traverse where it wishes to avoid worse states and approach better ones), although a fully heuristic approach is of course impossible, wesnoth is far too complex and needs to run on not even just average desktops and laptops, but older ones too, and a fully implemented heuristic approach would take hours to run for a single turn on these computers. My heuristic implementation would use heuristic algorithms to decide which decisions it should investigate and which 'paths of thought' it should abandon. This will leave some potentially good choices un-investigated, as the first few steps may be bad moves but later ones sufficiently beneficial to make up for it.
@@ Line 88: / Line 88: @@
 .7) Anything short of making enemies of every dev involved, but as a secondary priority to university of course.
-==Practical Considerations==
+===Practical Considerations===
 .1) Subversion: yes.<br>

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:49, 9 April 2011
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	MGoods,MGoods\|RangerM		MGoods,MGoods\|RangerM

		+	=SoC Application=
		+	[http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/proposal/review/google/gsoc2011/mgoods/1 SoC Application]
	=Questionnaire=		=Questionnaire=

← Older revision		Revision as of 08:35, 9 April 2011
Line 1:		Line 1:
−	{{SoC2011Student_2\|MGoods\|~~SoC_Ideas_Your_Own_Ideas2011~~}}	+	{{SoC2011Student_2\|MGoods\|SoC_Ideas_LuaAI_2011}}

	=Description=		=Description=

@@ Line 56: / Line 56: @@
 |Jun&nbsp;13&nbsp;-&nbsp;Jun&nbsp;15 || Familiarize myself with the relevant sections of code and discuss implementation in further detail with my mentor.
 |-
-|Jun&nbsp;16&nbsp;-&nbsp;Jul&nbsp;13 || By this point I would like for the Lua scripts to have access to all of the information and functionality that the current AI has, so stage one should be complete, and I would like to have started to research the kinds of AI behaviour that scenario developers would find useful
+|Jun&nbsp;16&nbsp;-&nbsp;Jul&nbsp;13 || By this point I would like for the Lua scripts to have access to all of the information and functionality that the current AI has, so phase one should be complete, and I would like to have started to create the 'wesnoth lua ai standard library' for use by AI developers. During this time I will also have asked what kinds of AI behaviour that scenario developers would find useful so that I can construct a list of high-level functions needed.
 |-
-|Jul&nbsp;14&nbsp;-&nbsp;Jul&nbsp;15 || During these two days I will 'finalize' the list of required Lua scripts for the project, although of course there's nothing stopping more being made, and arrange time with Noy, or another proficient multiplayer player, to find out how they might go about achieving the objectives of the Lua Scripts as a human player.
+|Jul&nbsp;14&nbsp;-&nbsp;Jul&nbsp;15 || During these two days I will 'finalize' the list of required high-level functions for the project, although of course there's nothing stopping more being made, and arrange time with Noy, or another proficient multiplayer player, to find out how they might go about achieving the objectives of the Lua Scripts as a human player.
 |-
 |Jul&nbsp;16&nbsp;-&nbsp;Aug&nbsp;15 || During this second half of GSoC I would like to 'complete' full libraries of standard functions for AI and Scenario Creators to use. However the amount of work involved will vary depending on what I am asked to make, and on how well the functions perform under testing, so this may be done relatively quickly, or I may not finish it before the end of GSoC.

@@ Line 69: / Line 69: @@
 ====Phase 1 - Completing the Lua Engine Implementation====
-The first goal is relatively simple, but potentially long, the Lua engine that creates the c++ proxies used to implement the Lua scripts needs to be extended to allow the Lua scripts to use more information that the main c++ AI has access to. So functions for getting this information need to be coded, and the Lua engine then needs to use this information.***TALK TO CRAB AND EXPAND ON THIS***
+The first goal is relatively simple. C++ obejcts used by the c++ AI of Wesnoth communicate with lua scipt AIs through c++ proxy objects, but at the moment this communication is incomplete and the lua scripts do not have access to all of the information available to the c++ AI. Phase 1 will involve coding functions to fetch this data from the c++ side of wesnoth so that lua AIs have access to this information.
 ====Phase 2 - Create Lua functions for AI Programmers and Scenario Creators====