Starcraft AI blog

AIST S1 registration has closed, and the participant list has been announced. In alphabetical order:

I expected McRave and PurpleWave, because their authors said they’d play. Instead of protoss PurpleWave we got zerg PurpleSwarm. I wonder why? Is it because of Sparkle? Is it because Purple Dan foresaw the protoss overload we would have gotten? Tscmoo has always been an ambitious bot, so it is not a surprise to see it. I was surprised by MadMix, and maybe I shouldn’t have been. These are bots that implement, or in Steamhammer’s case at least aspire to implement, a large number of skills for different situations. MadMix has been of that mold since its beginning. The challenging AIST maps demand those skills.

There are no terrans. That’s unfortunate.

The tournament format is double elimination, so we get a #1 and #2 finisher. I think the favorites are McRave for #1 and Tscmoo for #2. But if we knew the outcome ahead of time, we wouldn’t have to play the tournament.

5 participants is an awkward number for an elimination tournament. With an odd number in the first round, 1 player will get a bye and move on to the second round of the winner’s bracket without having to play a game. 2 players will drop to the loser’s bracket, and the second winner’s bracket round will again have an odd number of players. It’s no good to give the same player a bye twice, so this time one of the winners in the first round will get a bye to the third round of the winner’s bracket. With only 5 participants, the players that get byes have a significant advantage. The rules call for random seeding, so the choice should be purely the luck of the draw.

Nothing is perfect, but so far AIST seems to be thoughtfully and skillfully run. Decisions make sense and events are happening on time—not a given, organizing a tournament is no walk in the park. Keep up the good work!

Next: Expect the Steamhammer 1.4.3 change list on Monday, followed by posts about how I approached the tournament.