Scripting a sophisticated RTS AI with Lua

Posted by T. Webster on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by T. Webster
Published on 2013-06-30T12:52:03Z Indexed on 2013/06/30 16:28 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 457

Filed under:

ai

|

scripting

|

lua

I'm planning to develop a somewhat sophisticated RTS AI (eg see BWAPI). have experience programming, but none in game development, so it seems easiest to start by scripting the AI of an existing game I've played, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (2004). As far as I can tell, the game AI is scripted with some variant of Lua (by the file extension .ai or .scar). The online documentation is sparse and the community isn't active anymore.

I'd like to get some idea of the difficulty of this undertaking. Is it practical with a scripting language like Lua to develop a RTS AI that includes FSMs, decision trees, case-based reasoning, and transposition tables?

If someone has any experience scripting Dawn of War, that would also help.

© Game Development or respective owner

Related posts about ai

Setting up a local AI server - easy with Solaris 11

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
Many things are new in Solaris 11, Autoinstall is one of them. If, like me, you've known Jumpstart for the last 2 centuries or so, you'll have to start from scratch. Well, almost, as the concepts are similar, and it's not all that difficult. Just new. I wanted to have an AI server… >>> More
techniques for an AI for a highly cramped turn-based tactics game

as seen on Game Development - Search for 'Game Development'
I'm trying to write an AI for a tactics game in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics or Vandal Hearts. I can't change the game rules in any way, only upgrade the AI. I have experience programming AI for classic board games (basically minimax and its variants), but I think the branching factor is too… >>> More
Solaris 11 pkg fix is my new friend

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
While putting together some examples of the Solaris 11 Automated Installer (AI), I managed to really mess up my system, to the point where AI was completely unusable. This was my fault as a combination of unfortunate incidents left some remnants that were causing problems, so I tried to clean things… >>> More
C# XNA: AI Engine?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm developing a game with zombie running around in a swamp. I want AIs to have functionality like "chase this target" or "run away". A major stumbling block is pathfinding. Is there a good pathfinding/AI engine in XNA, or should I roll my own? Does anyone have any experience with this: http://www… >>> More
Design: an array of "enemy" objects for game AI

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi..I made shoot em up like game.But I have only one ememy which fallows me on screen.But I want to make lots of enemys like each 10 second they will across on screen together 5 or 10 enemys. ArrayList<Enemies> enemy = new ArrayList<Enemies>(); for (Enemies e : enemy) { e… >>> More

Related posts about scripting

Advantages to Server Scripting languages over Client Side Scripting languages

as seen on DotNetBlocks - Search for 'DotNetBlocks'
There are numerous advantages to server scripting languages over client side scripting languages in regards to creating web sites that are more compelling compared to a standard static site. Server side scripts are executed on a web server during the compilation of data to return to a client… >>> More
Scripting the Vim editor, Part 5: Event-driven scripting and automation

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>IBM Developerworks:</b> "Why repeat yourself? You can configure Vim’s comprehensive event model to execute time-saving scripts whenever particular editing events—such as loading a file or switching between editor modes—occur." >>> More
What does (Lua) game scripting mean?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I've read that Lua is often used for embedded scripting and in particular game for scripting. I find it hard to picture how it is used exactly. Can you describe why and for which features and for which audience it is used? This questions isn't specifically addressing Lua, but rather any embedded… >>> More
How to find from GUI whether Client Side scripting or server side scripting is running

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
We have a GUI which runs on ASP.NET 2.0 framework (Client-Server model). From the support perspective how can one find whether the pages which are opening on GUI at any point of time is a server side scripting or Client side scripting. The reason why I ask this is because I understand that some of… >>> More
UNIX Shell-scripting: UDV

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a simple unix shell script: #!/bin/bash # abort the script if a command fails set -e # abort the script if an unitialized shell variable is used set -u i = 0; while [$i -l 1] do src/meshpro input/martini.off video/noise/image$i… >>> More