M28AI Devlog (v159)

[maudlin27]

@ender06 Thanks, unfortunately both replays desync for me the moment the game starts, but if you play any further games let me know as there's a chance the replay for them won't desync.

[maudlin27]

v58 Update

• 21301510 Mapgen replay - 6 changes, including making M28 slightly harder to snipe with air
• 21301625 – Winter duel - 7 changes, including making better use of very high resource modifiers
• 21305751 Mapgen - 5 changes, including fixing some issues with fatboys and T2 arti. T2 arti should now be built across the map in some cases (which will likely make things a bit worse and need toning down in a future release)
• 21306326 Mapgen - 4 changes focused on improving MML use against enemy firebases
• 21306893 Naval mapgen - 3 changes, mostly improving how M28 handles HARMs
• 21310805 Mapgen - 2 changes to increase engineer production and mex assistance where multiple mexes are upgrading
• 8 other changes, including having M28 eco less; then having M28 eco more; and stopping M28 trying to get adjacency from non-M28 teammates

Trophy awards

• Radde trophy - awarded to Triangleleaf for beating M28 with a 2.8 resource modifier
• Sladow trophy - awarded to Triangleleaf for beating a 2.2 AiX M28

Acknowledgements

• Radde for feedback on M28 shortcomings in addition to some replays
• (Ender06 - replays although I wasn't able to get them to work)
• Albert C – Highlighting how M28 tries building adjacent to a human player’s hydro

[ender06]

Had a few games crash today and yesterday. This is the most recent replay: https://replay.faforever.com/21332089

[maudlin27]

@ender06 Unfortunately it still desyncs for me from the start of each of your replays. However, the replay still crashed for me and after only a short time, with the following message in the log:
info: Sim crashed hard in DoSimBeat(): Invalid blueprint ID in CDecoder::DecodeIssueCommand()/DecodeCommandData()
Given the number of sim mods enabled, it may well be one of these that is contributing to the crash.
Another possible cause (given the actual replay went on for a long time and it appeared to be a high mass map so presumably went late game with lots of units) is memory - if the memory used by FAF exceeds 2GB then it becomes very prone to crashing.

Unit mods are a significant contributor towards high memory usage, particularly with AI in the game (as the memory used increases for each different type of unit built, so if you have 3 factions and a bunch of new units in addition to core FAF units, you'll get to 2GB much faster).

If playing with M28 I'd therefore suggest turning off all but one of the other mods and seeing if you get a crash, and also keeping an eye periodically on the memory used (via taskmanager) to see if it is almost at 2gb (in which case more measures may be needed, such as a lower unit cap, smaller map, more restricted faction choice, unit mods that add fewer units, etc.)

[Cyberdyne_Skynet]

Hi maudlin27

We realy love your M28 AI, its so far the best AI we fought. Up to x2.0 and 2000 units its a beast of an enemy. I just want to say thank you for your hard work.

But if its possible we want to know with wich Mods this AI is compatible.

We play most of the time survival or hardcore 5 vs 1 cheat multi AI with this list of mods:

UI:
NoShake + Redux ACU Icons

SIM:

• Marlo's mod Compilation (working)
• 2x Resources, Storage, BuildRate, BuildRange (working)
• Advanced ACU (working)
• Some of the BlackOps Mods / BlackOps FAF EXUnits / BlackOps FAF Unleashed (working) BlackOps FAF ACU's (not working, so we dont use them)
• Hive Enginnering Stations For All (working)
• Nuclear Repulso Shields (working, but we ban all the stronger shields execept the simple "t4")
• Quantum Resource Generators (working)

Working means the M28 AI is using it, we needed to ban some single units because there is no logik for the AI but still very playable with some simple bans. Sometimes there are random crashes and on some maps there is a desync. But i would say from 10 Games so far we can play 7/10 till the end atm. Hope you can untestand what i wrote here, english is not my native language.

[Rowey]

@cyberdyne_skynet No shake is now integrated into faf under shake intensity slider in the game options

[maudlin27]

@cyberdyne_skynet I wouldn't expect UI mods to have any impact.
For SIM mods, I'm not (as yet) aware of a mod that M28 is incompatible with (in that it breaks M28 if its used), while M28 should also make use of custom units for most unit mods, and ought to also make use of custom ACU upgrades e.g. from BlackOps where the default upgrades are overwritten (but I last tested this pre-v1 release).

However due to the difficulty in figuring out the cause of issues where there are lots of mods (e.g. it may not even be M28 that is the cause, but an interaction between those two mods, and it could just be that M28 makes such an interaction more likely) my focus would be on games with just 1 other SIM mod where M28 is crashing/suffering major issues.

[Cyberdyne_Skynet]

@AdAstraNoob Thanks I didn't know that. So one less Mod to care ^^

@maudlin27 Thank you for that information, we allways testing the Mods for compatibilty so no one gets random desync, game freeze or game crashes (looks like that Hive Enginnering Station Mod is making some random desyncs on some maps). Do you know a Mod or an ingame setting to reduce significant the RAM usage? I will try to do what u said in some posts above, but in larger games with units Mods its very difficult to not go over 2gb RAM usage.

[maudlin27]

@cyberdyne_skynet Graphic settings might impact things but Ive not tested to confirm.

However most benefits are likely to be a game setting thing - eg use 1-3 factions, fewer AI players, have a sub-1k unit cap, use a sub-20km sized map, play on a map with no water

I doubt you’d need to do all of these but just some of them may help

[Saver]

Hello Maudlin, your blog about the M28 is great. However, you should consider promoting the AI ​​feature in COOP missions more. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I only read the point this week and I suspect that many people don't know about this great option in the Mission. Maybe. This information should be sent to the FAF news area. sorry for my worst English

[maudlin27]

@saver I'm planning to request a news post once I've finished testing M28 as a hostile campaign AI on the rest of the Supcom campaign, since then I can highlight all the campaign features in one go and it's less likely to break the missions. For now it's mentioned in the mod description and on the wiki (re being an AI buddy), but I suspect not many people read them.

[Saver]

Here is a test of the first mission FA with your AI with three people. Unfortunately the game leaked a lot https://replay.faforever.com/21362409

[Saver]

In addition, construction took place again in the non-playable area. But otherwise it was a nice change

[maudlin27]

@saver said in M28AI Devlog (v58):

21362409

What do you mean by leaked a lot? did it slow down to -1 or worse game speed?

[Saver]

The game speed has fallen from 0 to -6 in the game. Unfortunately I don't know if it can be seen in the replay.

[Saver]

Mainly in cases where air battles started

[maudlin27]

I didnt notice when I was watching the replay but I stopped after 41m as I had enough points to look at by then, do you know roughly the timestamp where it went to -6? It makes sense that it would be slower in a big air battle although I wouldn't have expected -6 (assuming everyone has average to good cpus) so it could be an indication of something gone wrong with the code. It's also possible it's a result of some of the additional checks that have to be run in campaign maps that will add to the overhead (although again I wouldn't have expected such a big impact)

[Klecks]

The game suddenly freezes completely after a certain time. Without error message and without replay. Whether with 2 or 4 players against an M28AI. You then have to end the game via the Task Manager. However, this only happens when you have reached the maximum of 1000 units (i.e. when you go on the attack). And it happens in every game. I have also noticed that the speed sometimes drops to -6.

We play with the following mods:

• All Faction Quantum Gate
• M28AI
• Nuclear Repulsor Shields
• Total Mayhem
• Total Mayhem Lite
• 5x Build Range

Are you aware of any incompatibility with any of these mods?

[maudlin27]

@klecks Not individually (some like Quantum gate, total mayhem and build range I've seen work fine, theo thers I've not specifically tested), but issues are much more likely to occur with multiple mods, either due to an incompatibility with a particular combination of mods; a bug with the mod that M28's logic highlights, or memory issues (which are more likely with more mods), in addition to the potential for a bug with M28.

If it happens with just one of those mods enabled then I can take a look to figure out. The other thing you could do is see if there's a log file (even if there's no replay - although I'd have normally expected a replay to be available for games played in FAF even if the game crashes part-way through).

For example logs are saved for me at the following location:
C:\Users[username]\AppData\Roaming\Forged Alliance Forever\logs

Have you always had these issues or has it only been since the latest release (last 24 hours)?

Also enable more detailed logging in the settins in the client, which increases the chance that the cause of the crash can be identified from the log:

[maudlin27]

v59 Update
A mix of campaign, replay and vs AI based changes with this update:

• Fighting M27 - 9 changes; interestingly M28 beat M27 on 4 different 5km and 10km maps that M27 had been tested on extensively (theta passage, polar depression, twin rivers, and eye of the storm), making me think M28 had finally reached the point of convincingly dethroning M28. However, M28 lost on 2 20km maps (setons and burial mounds), contrary to what I'd have expected. The main change added was improving M28's ability to handle an early strat if it has asfs.
• 8 changes based on replay comparisons from Radde between M28 and M27 on Xander, including making land experimentals more likely to move towards an enemy instead of attack-move, and fixed some issues with hos mongoose and MAA would retreat from units (the former being too cautious in some cases due to a bug, the latter ignoring nearby tanks due to a bug in some cases)
• 5 changes from 2 mapgens where Radde and Mhad beat 1.5 resource M28s, mainly trying to make M28 slightly more resistant to air snipes
• 9 changes from an M28 vs 1.2 RNG game on twin rivers (normally something M28 won but this time it lost after an epic 2 hour game due to poor fatboy usage) - the main change is making M28 retreat fatboys much sooner so they're less likely to be caught up to and killed, and increasing the extent to which M28 will eco when behind on eco.
• 11 changes for Saver's FA mission 1 of the campaign to make M28 more aggressive with navy, have a better unit mix, send GCs at the enemy start position (instead of keeping them on patrol), and being more likely to build T3 arti/similar
• 4 changes from a replay by Bart on gap of rohan, mainly fixing issues with overbuilding T2 arti and SAMs

Trophy awards

• Radde trophy - Awarded to Radde and Mhad for beating 1.5 resource M28 on both a mixed land+navy mapgen, and a navy mapgen
• Sladow trophy - Current holder is triangleleaf for beating v57 M28

Acknowledgements

• Radde - sending various replays including a comparison of M27 and M28 to help me identify significant differences in their approaches that make M27 seem tougher for a human player
• Saver - Replay against M28 as a hostile AI in campaign which highlighted a number of campaign specific issues
• Bart - Replay in a norush gap of rohan high eco game which highlighted some flaws with M28's arti and SAM logic