Starcraft AI blog

The round robin phase of SSCAIT 2016 has just finished. Seconds ago, Matej Istenik beat OpprimoBot in the last remaining game. Did Steamhammer make it into the round of 16?

It was a nailbiter! Only fiction gives us closer decisions. As the end approached, Steamhammer and Zia were tied for 16-17th places, each with 1 game remaining to be played. One would be in and one out! As the last dozen or so games came up, Zia was scheduled to play MegaBot, and after 2 intervening games—just enough time to enjoy the tension—Steamhammer to play Tscmoo protoss.

Zia had beaten MegaBot in their previous game, and easily won again. In the previous Steamhammer-Tscmoo game, Tscmoo had opened forge expand; Steamhammer did not know how to adapt its build and lost. (That is why Steamhammer opens three hatch before pool against XIMP and ZerGreenBot.) Tscmoo is unpredictable.... I thought the odds were poor, but I knew anything was possible. This game Tscmoo opened 14 nexus and then gas before gateway, a crazy greedy opening, and went down like a house of cards. What a way to deflate expectations of an exciting decision!

Steamhammer and Zia finished in a tie for 16-17th places. I don’t know how tiebreaking will work. Their result against each other was (I’m sure you already guessed this) 1-1, so that doesn’t help. Maybe they’ll have a playoff game. Either way, I’ll enjoy watching the finals and I’m happy that my bot performed so well after such a short development time. Watch out for the next version!

Next: Some of the bugs that came up in the round robin phase.