We do not support map unprotectors on this site. When a map maker decided to protect their map we honor their decision, regardless of reasons.
What we
do offer, for learning purposes, is a
trigger viewer.
This is low-key one of the best posts in this entire thread in terms of giving us a lead. Thank you SO MUCH NudeRaider. (Also nice name lol!) The specific link you provided doesn't seem to work/provides an error when we downloaded it- but we're going to try to figure it out on our end and if we can't we'll swing back by. The big thing is knowing what to look for. Thank you!
No timetable that I am aware of. The developer of Scmdraft 2 is a German, the developer of EUD Editor v2 is a Korean, as far as I am aware they have not communicated with each other at all.
Note that the feature is for EUD Editor to produce a trigger-formatted version of the changes you've selected in the tool (and you can do MANY things in this tool). It is not a trivial piece of work to implement. It also doesn't really have anything to do with scmdraft 2 at all - scmdraft 2 can read and write text triggers, if EUD Editor could read and write text triggers, it still requires a human to take the trigger output from EUD Editor and put it into their map in scmdraft.
So I've been up all night with playtesting (and otherwise messing around and having fun) and mostly talked about everything discussed in this thread. First off, good news! We got the three supply working. I'll probably re-upload 1939 after some further playtesting today. But more on point, he's a computer science major and really knows the kinks, so to speak, and he spent all night elaborating on a lot of topics in this thread. This was one of them. So evidently what I posted was kind of ignorant- something like that EUD Editor he said could literally take YEARS of work for a single person to create. I also didn't realize the Herculean effort it took to do EUDs in general prior to this editor. (Which makes sense, considering I didn't even know these existed before yesterday.)
It is supposedly possible to edit AI with EUDs but I have not tried. There are a couple of threads about it in the SEN forums but they don't have very much information, certainly there's not going to be any tutorial for you to follow. If you want to experiment with editing AI with EUDs then your best bet is just to get familiar with editing AI via modding and how that works, and then EUD is an extension to that.
Depending on how familiar you are with programming in general, I'd expect going from a novice understanding to being able to do something useful is probably going to take you 3 months of effort, that being ~10 hours of learning and experimenting per week. And that's just to do something "useful" - not necessarily what you want. Certainly simulating an adept human player via AI scripting will take a huge amount of effort.
Ohhh kay. Between you and my friend I
think I got the memo. Speaking of being ignorant. I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that I [/i]also
didn't realize how flippin' difficult it is to work with AI in an RTS Game. To the point that 20 years later there are literal research institutions doing research devoted to it. The main thing my friend and I just spent doing was trying to get even the Insane AI to do anything
. And playing around with some default options and seeing what we can feasibly work with. This leads us to what is probably the best for last post in the entire thread.
I will say that I'm somewhat puzzled still about why we can't get one of those damned complicated AIs in our usermap/custom games without some serious legwork. (What's this running simultaneous AI shenanigans?) But I'm reassured that its not a practical solution to this AI inquiry. I digress.
I don't know how much knowledge you have of map making so I'll just throw out a bunch of ideas for you.
You pretty much hit the "conventional" trigger options right on the head. So I have compliment you there. Your contribution and intuition is incredible for a noob like me, even if I have seen these in action before. And funnily enough every one of those options is probably a [i]better system than what is currently the system for 1939. If for no other reason than it allows for better control of the game from a design standpoint. Diplomacy Infinity, (Option #4) Civil War Missouri (Option #1.5) Hearts of Iron 3: TGS (Options #2 and Option #3) are all maps that are the envy of any map creator. And, building off of what you said, the alternative (Option #1.5, I guess?) extension of this idea is to not let players build any unit at all, and provide it for them on a time-based basis. In retrospect, 1939 probably should have been built on the foundations you just elaborated on for a supply system. Though, in my defense, I'm not the original creator and, though its more "sloppy", it allows for more "role-play"esque freedom and fits the theme that the title "1939" is more an aesthetic. While the relative power at the start of the game is correlative to history. It's still anyone's game. And it does help it stand out from its contemporaries despite its evident design problems. (Which my friend and I are trying to remedy as best we can.)
The real "meat" of your post that interests us, however, is your second half.
I'd suggest not using a custom AI script as even with a good script the computer will still be stupid and sometimes 'unpredictable' depending on terrain and player actions. Using regular triggers should give you more consistent gameplay. Even if you do make a 'smart' AI it will be extremely difficult to balance it. I believe that some EUDs can be used as conditions and still allow you to keep extended limits. However, I'm unsure of the practicality and scope of these EUDs.
I've never played Supergun but I have played a lot of WW3. It's all done with SCMD or some other regular editor. You can create convincing computer actions depending on how much time you sink into it. The reason why the computer of WW3 feels intelligent and engaging is because of the number of triggers and conditions put into its behavior. I haven't opened up the map to look but I can make a few guesses as to what they are.
1. Timed attacked. The simplest of the behavior triggers. When the countdown timer resets it will create and order units to attack the players. This ensures that there is constant pressure on the players. These are also probably the only types of triggers that are on preserve.
2. Scripted invasions. To make gameplay consistent and ensure that the players know the map the purpose of scripted invasions is to provide some challenge and delay, or push back, the advance of the players.
3. Reactionary attacks. This is the bulk of what can be seen as a 'smart' AI. The conditions for these attacks can be location, commanded, or a combination of these and others to give unique behavior to the computer based on the players' actions. Because the triggers are reactionary it will allow for greater control and challenge of the computer attacks.
Here is another example of maps that use reactionary triggers to give the illusion of a smart AI. KotK uses mainly location and kill based conditions to trigger spawns.
This post was literally what we spent all night discussing. And, finally when we've pretty much given up on it, you come along and answer everything we were puzzling over in one fell swoop!! And that's pretty much the exact theory we've been operating by during this last two-day research quest. So you coming and making this post is actually very informative for us. Please let me pick your brain some more.
I'm starting out of order. I apologize.
2. I'm not sure if you're familiar with 1939, the map myself and my friend are working on. But this is the extent of the current "AI" we have effectively implemented. I'm not going to lie: I have the hots for this type of trigger. The most recent iteration of the 1939 map I'm working on has a Polish rebellion and, especially, a reworked Spanish rebellion that are premised on this exact concept. (BOTH of which aren't present on prior versons like NV2 or Final. Version SE has the Civil war though.) The obvious issue, that even an ameteur like myself can recognize, is that this type of AI is downright punishing for noobs and, for veterans, sort of a "nonstarter". For example, in Spain's case- I had to go back and delete a second tank because knowledgable Spain players (including myself heh) could keep four tanks safe from the spawns and use those tanks to invade a noob France. Which is ironic for a country that's supposed to be ravaged by a civil war.
Your commentary on "AI" points #1 and #3 is what really have me intrigued. There are SO many questions I have regarding this that I could probably talk your head off for hours. So I'll keep things punctual:
1) Are these methods accomplishible via scmdraft's natural trigger editing?
2) Do these methods have any sort of utilization of the game's natural AI coding? [So the "Insane AI", for example, which was the control for a hours-long experiment that invariably failed. The AI simply does
nothing after the start of the game, and certainly doesn't utilize 1939's hero units or perform even rudimentary functions.)
3) Is there any way to randomize this process, to avoid the issues of the above commentary of the last passage. Are there easy way to make it more illusory?
4) I'd hate to pry, but do you have any personal experience designing these types of triggers? Would you mind if I swung back around possibly to ask questions or for some personal commentary?
Thank you SO MUCH (*everyone*) I think everything here was very intelligent and knowledgeable and inspiring. Hopefully we can utilize it to make some cool changes and not just give lip service.
- blitzburns4
Edit 8:02 AM:
I'm such an idiot...This is what I get for skipping to the good parts with the AI.
I'm assuming that your map is a large-scale diplo style map? From my experience hitting map limits within those types of games are always an issue and negatively affect gameplay. Because EUDs are locked to the original map limits they will have the same ccmu/bullet issues as maps did during 1.16.1. I highly suggest that you exhaust all other options before deciding to use EUDs.
WHAT>!?!?
Ugh. I'm too tired to even ask the why of this but it makes sense. Things were going too good to be true. During a playtest we had a CCMU issue but didn't think much of it cause it was just two players and it promptly disappeared. I thought Blizzard themselves fixed this!!
I'm passing out. I need to lay down and digest this. CCMU is the bane of all usermap players' existence.
Post has been edited 12 time(s), last time on May 21 2018, 12:09 pm by blitzburns4.
None.