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Author Topic: AI vs AI programming games?  (Read 1423 times)

TJJ

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AI vs AI programming games?
« on: November 27, 2020, 04:01:07 PM »

Anyone know of any games that fall into this category?

I remember playing one years ago on a friend's PS2 that involved programming teams of mechs to battle one-another.
Google tells me it was called Carnage Heart.

I'm thinking a modern equivalent would be a fun introduction to logic & programming for my 8 y/o nephew.
Big stompy robots as a theme are optional, but obviously desirable ;)
« Last Edit: November 27, 2020, 04:04:49 PM by TJJ »
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IonDragonX

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Re: AI vs AI programming games?
« Reply #1 on: November 27, 2020, 04:12:09 PM »

I know a non-violent game that is very good at introducing logic & programming:

https://denki.itch.io/autonauts

YT playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmTpKUr_ehtxvjo0usx1UCgHsE1Np67OA
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Thaago

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Re: AI vs AI programming games?
« Reply #2 on: November 27, 2020, 04:12:35 PM »

Hmmm, well its an old board game, but Robo Rally comes to mind: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally

Players input a series of commands (move this far, turn left/right this many degrees, fire, etc) and then all of them happen in sequence from all players. So, for example, if another player knocks you off course your remaining commands do hilarious things as they are all wrong.
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TJJ

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Re: AI vs AI programming games?
« Reply #3 on: November 27, 2020, 04:46:04 PM »

I know a non-violent game that is very good at introducing logic & programming:

https://denki.itch.io/autonauts

YT playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmTpKUr_ehtxvjo0usx1UCgHsE1Np67OA

Interesting.
Strange coincidence that it just so happens to be currently available in Fanatical's Killer Bundle 14!
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TJJ

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Re: AI vs AI programming games?
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2020, 04:55:38 PM »

Hmmm, well its an old board game, but Robo Rally comes to mind: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally

Players input a series of commands (move this far, turn left/right this many degrees, fire, etc) and then all of them happen in sequence from all players. So, for example, if another player knocks you off course your remaining commands do hilarious things as they are all wrong.

I'm barred from buying any more board games; too many sitting unplayed  ::)
Also looking for something that can be played remotely, and optionally solo. (Robo Rally via Tabletop Simulator doesn't count  ;D)

Have there really been no arena battle competitive visual programming games released in the last 25 years?! 0_o
My searching has turned up nothing (besides PSP rereleases of the aforementioned Carnage Heart).

Now there's a major project for a Starsector mod  :o
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TJJ

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Re: AI vs AI programming games?
« Reply #5 on: November 27, 2020, 05:07:40 PM »

Just found Gladiabots; seems to be sort of what I was looking for.
Though the programmability looks somewhat limited.

It's free on Android!
After going through the tutorials, it seems to have enough tools to make impressively complex logic!
« Last Edit: November 28, 2020, 03:18:51 AM by TJJ »
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xenoargh

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Re: AI vs AI programming games?
« Reply #6 on: November 30, 2020, 10:30:19 PM »

Mindustry was interesting.  My favorite not-so-little-anymore person hooked me up with it, and it's a weird combination of Factorio and Supreme Commander, which looks like it's heading into seriously meta territory.

It's supposed to have some sort of fairly-serious instruction-set stuff happening in the public betas, that will allow for programmable everything, and it was tempting to mod it out of the box, as you can script w/ Javascript and it uses HSON, with .jar support for serious geekery... but alas, I have things to do.

You're also always welcome to take apart my AI and set up some SS goodness or develop variant games.  The current released (and presumably, kinda stable) version's source is in the mod. 

I just recently tested converting it with the newest JRE and Lombok, to see how much / little multithreaded performance improved, and it's pretty good; Dire Straights, with everybody deployed, runs at 60FPS solid, with 60-70% idle now:


That was a 30-minute hack-job to modernize it; at some point, I'll probably have to clean up the Stream conversions, as the auto-generated ones are just awful to read, but meh.

I have no plans to update my mod until my game's done, so feel free to poke at it or make a fork.  It's not terribly spaghetti, and it's fairly well documented, with copious comments; the multithreading part isn't terribly scary and the flow from SS's single-core to MT is explained well in StandardShipAI. 

Basically, don't mess with anything in /plugins unless you've spent a long, long time staring at it, and respect the notes about where it touches Runnable, and you're good to go.  I've been somewhat surprised that there haven't been a bunch of AIs for SS already, honestly; while this was a little hard (OK, MT was actually hard) it was mainly fun-hard.

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