Starcraft AI blog

I signed up Steamhammer for the Starcraft AI Ladder run by Dave Churchill and his group. After Rick Kelly fixed a bug in the ladderware, I got the bot signed up and activated.

From my point of view, the main advantage of this third ongoing ladder (after SSCAIT and BASIL) is that it runs with the same tournament manager software that is used for the AIIDE tournaments. So for those who plan to participate in AIIDE 2020, it should be a good test to make sure your bot is compatible. In particular, it checks the frame time limits strictly. For now, the ladder has few participants and most of them are above average strength, which could be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on what you’re looking for. Games run at a high rate and there are fewer participants, so each participant gets more games than on BASIL.

It’s a bit barebones. It doesn’t even have a name—”Starcraft AI Ladder” is more a description, and has been used before. In particular, it does not come with any documentation, so the signup process and the features you get for it may come as a surprise. I thought it was worth writing up.

Signing up has a few steps. First, fill out the form. You have to authenticate your e-mail address. Then, according to the authentication success e-mail, you have to wait for an administrator to approve your account. For me, approval was almost instant, which made me wonder whether there was an administrator at all—but then, Steamhammer and I should be familiar. The message also says “You may upload your bot files to your profile before being approved, but you won’t be able to activate your bot to play in the ladder.” What you upload is a zip file that will be unzipped straight into the AI/ directory. You specified your BWAPI version at signup, so unlike SSCAIT you don’t include a copy of bwapi.dll.

Finally, go to your profile page, change “ladder participation” from “inactive” to “active”, and save changes. You can also fill in extra info if you like, like your URL. After the current queue of games runs out, your bot will get games queued up.

And that’s about it. The Detailed Results page is not as polished as BASIL, but it does offer the same replay download and replay viewing features. At the far right of the page (I had to scroll right) is a “Download Search Results” button that gives you a CSV file with the same information. At the bottom of your profile page, you can download your bot’s game history in the same format, or your bot’s read/ directory. For other bots, there is no access to anything but the games and results.

Since it’s running the same software, games are played in the same order as in the AIIDE tournaments. There are 10 maps—the AIIDE maps, which include 2 maps that are not among the 14 SSCAIT maps. The tournament manager takes each map in turn and plays a round-robin among the participants on that map; that is called one “round”. Then it moves on to the next map. Every so often the “tournament” is declared over and game records are reset; as I write, that happened last on 1 April.

What do I think so far? The tournament manager part of it is of course industrial strength. The UI is not great, but it’s good by the standard of academic projects, which are often done under severe time constraints and sometimes by students who are still learning. It could use an About page, or a paragraph of description somewhere. I hit one bug, so there are sure to be more that I did not see. Attention to detail is a little lacking; for example, the Home page aka Server Status lists the game number followed by the round number, while the Detailed Results page lists round number followed by game number.