Starcraft AI blog

Here are the 4 best articles aimed at the lay public. They’re all worth reading, for different reasons.

Wall Street Journal article

Computers That Crush Humans at Games Might Have Met Their Match: StarCraft. 22 April 2016.

With emphasis on deception as an element of difficulty in the game. My opinion: Deception is an interesting challenge but not a leading one.

Artosis

Infinite APM? Artosis on Deepmind and StarCraft - Part 1 and Part 2, March 2016.

This two-part article is interesting for representing the common reactions of Starcraft players yet showing more thought. Part 1 argues that the high speed of computers essentially breaks the design of Starcraft as a game, so that computers are unfair opponents. Part 2 argues that if that problem were eliminated, then it becomes difficult for computers to match human creativity and deception, though he concludes it should be possible eventually. Both parts take the view that Starcraft is an essentially human game.

My opinion: BWAPI programs do play a different Starcraft than human players. BWAPI provides a higher-bandwidth interface to the game than a screen, keyboard, and mouse, and not only in terms of APM. It’s not remotely a problem in practice so far, but maybe it will become one someday. If so, technical solutions don’t seem hard. Part 2 I see as showing some of the arrogance and human exceptionalism that chess players, backgammon players, and go players (among others) showed before they were defeated. These experts learned that computers are not less creative in game play than humans but more creative. And deception is a game theory problem that we understand in principle; it is easier to solve than other aspects of Starcraft.

LetaBot in Rock Paper Shotgun

StarCraft: Building A Brilliant Brood War Bot, January 2016.

In the form of an interview with Martin Rooijackers, author of LetaBot, with a bunch of interesting details. My opinion: It’s good!

the classic Ars Technica article

Skynet meets the Swarm: how the Berkeley Overmind won the 2010 StarCraft AI competition, January 2011.

A great old classic. I think this article inspired more than a few to enter the BWAPI world. Martin Rooijackers once offered the opinion that the Berkeley Overmind would be the best bot today if they had kept developing it. Makes sense to me.