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It is a particularly interesting question in StarCraft because of the cloaked units, which are visible only by distorting the background (and from their sound).

by evv 7y ago

It is a particularly interesting question in StarCraft because of the cloaked units, which are visible only by distorting the background (and from their sound). Most humans will be able to identify cloaked units, but only if they look carefully, and not in heavy battle. Can the AIs see and/or identify cloaked units? It begs the question if fair gameplay is even possible unless the AI uses machine vision against the same interface. For fair human-vs-AI games, they shouldn't allow cloaked units!

herogreen 7y ago
I am not sure this question is really interesting because the aim of solving Starcraft is to improve planning and strategies, not computer vision. I suppose there are much more interesting tasks train on in order to solve computer vision.
- baddox 7y ago
  I agree. I'm not super impressed with the ability of human Starcraft players to detect and parse the meaning of health bars. That's not really done by the same part of the human brain that I would consider to be "good at playing Starcraft." I'd be fine if the AI had a clean API to tell it the units that are currently on screen, perhaps with some limit on the speed at which the AI can iterate through everything (e.g. it should definitely require a "click" to check an enemy unit's upgrades). I do agree that detecting cloaked (or burrowed) units is a bit of an interesting case, since a simple API like I mentioned would make it trivial for the AI to detect these units. Perhaps you could do some sort of probabilistic system, or some sort of "attention" system where the AI has to choose where on the game screen to spend its limited attention, and more attention in an area around a cloaked units would increase the probability of the AI "detecting" the cloaked unit. That probably comes close to matching how humans detect cloaked units, e.g. when you're deliberately looking for an observer around your army you have an almost 100% chance of finding it if it's there.
ggggtez 7y ago
I'm pretty sure the AI can't see cloaked units, which is why it always built so many observers in the demo games.

by evv 7y ago

herogreen 7y ago

I am not sure this question is really interesting because the aim of solving Starcraft is to improve planning and strategies, not computer vision. I suppose there are much more interesting tasks train on in order to solve computer vision.

baddox 7y ago
I agree. I'm not super impressed with the ability of human Starcraft players to detect and parse the meaning of health bars. That's not really done by the same part of the human brain that I would consider to be "good at playing Starcraft." I'd be fine if the AI had a clean API to tell it the units that are currently on screen, perhaps with some limit on the speed at which the AI can iterate through everything (e.g. it should definitely require a "click" to check an enemy unit's upgrades). I do agree that detecting cloaked (or burrowed) units is a bit of an interesting case, since a simple API like I mentioned would make it trivial for the AI to detect these units. Perhaps you could do some sort of probabilistic system, or some sort of "attention" system where the AI has to choose where on the game screen to spend its limited attention, and more attention in an area around a cloaked units would increase the probability of the AI "detecting" the cloaked unit. That probably comes close to matching how humans detect cloaked units, e.g. when you're deliberately looking for an observer around your army you have an almost 100% chance of finding it if it's there.

ggggtez 7y ago

I'm pretty sure the AI can't see cloaked units, which is why it always built so many observers in the demo games.