CCX wrote:Instead of trying to design a general Clones AI capable of acting intelligently on any given level, maybe you will have more success by having a program that can learn from playbacks of human battles in existing multiplayer levels, and from those examples develop strategies specific to each level.
Using playback files to train the program (we need to come up with a code name for this computer controlled player!) with high level strategies for a given level is a good idea. For this to work, it would require the program to use machine learning techniques.
I feel that it's possible to make a program that can compete against human players, but the key it making it work is to be able to represent the level in a form that can be easily digested by a computer. Right now, a level is represented by individual pixels, but we humans do not think of it this way. Instead, we think of a level as made up of: walls, ramps, bridges, etc. So the computer needs to do the same thing.
It would take a lot of time and energy to make full fledged working AI for clones (IBM's Watson cost $25 million or more). But I was thinking, maybe we can start small and make a Clone multiplayer "assistant". The idea here is that a human player can enable the "assistant" and this would basically add a computer controlled player on their team. The assistant would then watch over the game and only participate when there is an obvious problem. For example, if clones are falling to their death and the human player doesn't do anything, then the assistant will either apply the puff morph or atomize morph to those clones. Similar heuristics can be applied in other situations.
Just a thought
