Starcraft AI blog

I’m going to make a post about bugs and flaws in Steamhammer, with pictures. Some are hilarious, some are to weep over. But there are so, so many that I’m too busy fixing them to write about them! So far, my change log for the next version shows 22 new features and bug fixes worth mentioning, and yet the issues marked DONE are thin on the ground.

On my first day of development on Steamhammer, December 2 or 3 I think, I started tracking issues to deal with. Within a day the list was large enough to need organizing. I divided it into topics: Macro issues, build order issues, targeting issues, code issues.... After a while that grew to become unwieldy too, so I also prioritized the issues to concentrate on the critical absolutely-must-fix ones. Today I ran test matches against various opponents and found serious bugs, and now the absolutely-must-fix issues are more than I can keep an easy overview of. I’m overwhelmed, and it’s harming my ability to solve problems in the right order.

This is why it takes a long development period before a new bot can threaten the top ranks. Well, I knew I was in for it. One step at a time. I will eventually get to the good part.

Not that the test matches went poorly. The development version of Steamhammer with new skills and a new ZvZ opening scored 26-4 against Zia, a huge improvement. Zia tried all its openings and could not find an answer. The 4 losses were all due to play bugs that I hope to fix soon—if they don’t get swamped by other bugs. Steamhammer also finally has a non-awful ZvRandom opening.