Starcraft AI blog

We’re getting a steady trickle of new bots. It’s a good sign. The first upload of new zerg Hopark had a consistent crashing bug, but it was fixed by the next day. Hopark’s description is “skeleton Version” so more work is planned.

Hopark starts out with a 5 pool zergling rush, like many other beginning bots. Rather than the standard recipe of more-more-more zerglings, Hopark soon makes an extractor. It mines gas with 2 drones and minerals with 3, and techs to mutalisks. So far I’ve seen one game where it successfully spawned mutalisks, but unfortunately the enemy was already in its base and the mutas did not live long.

Teching on the back of the economy of a fast rush is not exactly a persuasive winning plan, but at least it is unique. I take it as a sign that Hopark may take more interesting paths as it develops.

Hopark is a Java bot. Unpacking the jar file, I see a lot of familiar filenames: It looks like a derivative of the SAIDA team’s tutorial BasicBot (with some documentation in Korean), which is itself inspired by the C++ design of UAlbertaBot. That means it should start with a solid foundation, and we can hope for fast progress.

I think it’s a good idea to start with something like BasicBot that provides the fundamentals and not too many advanced features. If you start with a performance program like Iron, or Locutus, or Steamhammer, then your first draft may be stronger, but you also find yourself dropped into a complex environment where many decisions are already made for you. It will take a long time to find your way around and begin to blaze your own trail. A basic starter bot gives you an easy launch, and you get a sound but simpler and more malleable frame to build on.