new features

I’ve been revising the internal structure of Steamhammer’s squads to make them more capable. It’s not nearly as big a rewrite as needed, but it adds new capability and in theory it should be a big win. After several days of work, yesterday I was able to try it out for the first time—it’s not completed, but it’s finished enough to work as designed in common situations, so I can test it in real games.

After fixing one severe bug, it worked as intended. And—it played horribly!

Adding features decreases strength, fixing bugs increases strength. I believe it more than ever. It’s not that new features bring new bugs, at least not necessarily. A new feature is not well tuned yet, not integrated with other features of the bot. If it’s a big feature, it tends to disrupt successful patterns of play that arise from the interaction of the existing features. When a new feature is a good idea, it takes time to tune it up and make it successful.

I’m convinced my new feature is a good idea, or I wouldn’t be working on it. It’s an open question whether it will be successful in time for AIIDE.

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Jay Scott on Wednesday, August 15. 2018:

The development of Iron is a good example. I think of Iron as a bot that needs fine-tuning to play well. Every time Igor Dimitrijevic added an important feature or made a strategy change, Iron became weaker at first, before slowly returning to its earlier strength—or usually more.

Marian on Thursday, August 16. 2018:

Interestingly enough this is also true for humans when learning new skills.

Jay Scott on Thursday, August 16. 2018:

Good point, it’s a general principle!

Arrak on Thursday, August 16. 2018:

Some small-scope features I shipped did have strictly positive impacts -- mineral locking, sunken AI, small-scale surrounds. But features, like zergling control, tactics, and new units oft had complications. I've been wondering whether to leave an intact copy of my bot playing on SSCAIT before I inevitably break it going forward...

Bruce on Friday, August 17. 2018:

My process has been to run an overnight “canary test” of sc-docker games against the top 20 or so bots before uploading a release with new features. It’s worked pretty well so far.

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