Fixing a bug (of sorts) in AIVolution

[nobby]

Hi all,

I spent some time playing with AIVolution and noticed what seems to be a bug in it. It particularly manifests itself on some of the big 8 player maps made by lav_coyote25.

The observed behaviour is that the AI players sometimes go around building derricks and defences and run out of power without building a generator. Sometimes I've seen a truck belonging to an AI player attempting to build a defence like an HPV cannon emplacement and just sitting there, obviously not having any power - sometimes right into the end-game when I'm mopping up. The AI has a base with no generators but quite a few derricks and emplacements.

I'm guessing that whatever heuristic it uses to decide what to do fails to work out that it hasn't got a generator. Given that it seems to manifest itself on maps with lots of oil like 'Three Gorges', I'm guessing that it could be missing a check to ensure that it has power generators before it runs out of power to build them. On the stock maps with less oil it might not spend so much power on building defences for the derricks and thus it gets around to building generators before it runs out of power.

The AIVolution script is fairly long winded and I haven't really looked into scripting at all. If I can figure out how the script works I might try to modify it to force it to build at least one generator and see if this fixes the problem.

Is the original author around on these forums or is anyone familiar with the script who might be able to give me some insight as to where to start?

Nigel.

[Zarel]

Work on DyDo-AI. It's the only AI that's actually being updated. No one's done anything with Aivolution in years.

[Buginator]

Hi all,

I spent some time playing with AIVolution and noticed what seems to be a bug in it. It particularly manifests itself on some of the big 8 player maps made by lav_coyote25.

The observed behaviour is that the AI players sometimes go around building derricks and defences and run out of power without building a generator. Sometimes I've seen a truck belonging to an AI player attempting to build a defence like an HPV cannon emplacement and just sitting there, obviously not having any power - sometimes right into the end-game when I'm mopping up. The AI has a base with no generators but quite a few derricks and emplacements.

I'm guessing that whatever heuristic it uses to decide what to do fails to work out that it hasn't got a generator. Given that it seems to manifest itself on maps with lots of oil like 'Three Gorges', I'm guessing that it could be missing a check to ensure that it has power generators before it runs out of power to build them. On the stock maps with less oil it might not spend so much power on building defences for the derricks and thus it gets around to building generators before it runs out of power.

The AIVolution script is fairly long winded and I haven't really looked into scripting at all. If I can figure out how the script works I might try to modify it to force it to build at least one generator and see if this fixes the problem.

Is the original author around on these forums or is anyone familiar with the script who might be able to give me some insight as to where to start?

Nigel.

Troman is the author of that mod, and he hasn't been on the forums in a long time, but you may be able to PM him with questions.

If you wish to try to fix it, we accept patches. Just make a trac ticket with it.

[Zarel]

Regardless, I'd recommend that you stay away from Aivolution. We plan on discontinuing Aiv and removing it from our game distribution in the near future. If you want to work on AI, I suggest you assist DyDo-AI, which is what we're planning on replacing Aiv with.