Starcraft AI blog

Here is another valuable new Dave Churchill tool. It doesn’t seem to come with a name, but it is a web build order visualizer which uses BOSS behind the scenes. (I’m told it is a new and more powerful version of BOSS.) You enter up to 3 build orders, BOSS simulates them to find their timings, and it diagrams each one. The picture shows how inserting a drone into a 9 pool gas build, to get back to 9 workers, can delay the initial zerglings.

Partial instructions: + and - move a selected item up and down in the build order. X erases. X* erases the whole build. * selects the whole build. The various > and < buttons copy items between locations. In a diagram, hover over an item for info about its cost and timing.

It’s unfinished, and yet already valuable. Despite many limitations (and one bug I found, which has been fixed), I have already used it to analyze and optimize over a dozen builds. It’s much quicker than entering a build into Steamhammer and playing a game to get the timings. Some of the drawbacks in its current state:

• No instructions. I’m told it will get instructions by the time it’s finished.
• It does not support upgrades or research. That’s a big one.
• It does not support stopping gas mining (like mining 100 gas for zergling speed).
• It does not support pulling workers, even one worker to scout.
• It does not support the zerg extractor trick.
• If any of the 3 builds is invalid, you get a blank picture. There are no hints about what is wrong.

I found it best for low-economy builds. For zerg builds I tested to up 9 pool, its timings match well with Steamhammer’s execution. In overpool builds, only slightly slower, Steamhammer is able to insert an occasional extra drone or zergling without slowing down the timings. I expect that is because mineral locking makes mining more efficient than BOSS assumes. On the other hand, BOSS seems to believe that gas mining is a little faster than Steamhammer accomplishes it. That might be an issue of the time it takes to get workers into the refinery when it finishes. Even so, I can optimize a build (if it’s within the limitations) in the visualizer and then drop it into Steamhammer to see if further improvements are possible. It’s easier.

From a quick glance through the page source, it looks as though BOSS has been compiled into javascript using emscripten, so it executes in your browser. The visualizer works offline.

Good stuff already. How much better will it get?