Shard Attacks

Originally posted on darkstars.co.uk

I was asked a question about Shards attack system on the spring engine lobby server. Having described Shards attack system, I decided to repost the log here for posterity

[20:19:31] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> yo its #fhh£hu@4545, just a few questions about shard if you’ve a moment
[20:19:41] oh rly?
[20:20:10] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> i’m wondering how shard determines threats or enemy positions… how does it choose how to attack basically
[20:20:27] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> i know it waits until a certain number of units are massed
[20:20:33] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> but how does it decide where to go?
[20:20:37] the files in question are attackhandler.lua and attackerbehaviour.lua
[20:20:46] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> just a sec, i make open
[20:20:55] when the unit is built
[20:21:07] behaviourfactory looks at the behaviours table and loads the ones specified
[20:21:13] if no entry is found
[20:21:25] it looks to see if the unit is in the attackerslist table
[20:21:32] and adds the attackerbehaviour
[20:21:45] the attackerbehaviour then acts kind of like a conscripted soldier at home
[20:21:58] it fires off an event registering its presence to the attackhandler
[20:22:09] attackhandler then saves it in a table and does a check
[20:22:23] if the queue of waiting attackers in the list is above a threshold
[20:22:28] it removes them from the queue
[20:22:36] and starts looking for a target
[20:22:48] it iterates through every enemy on the map
[20:22:55] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> ok i’m going to need a DL link, apparently i havent got it on this computer
[20:22:59] adding its position to a counter on a grid
[20:23:08] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> (still listening, thx for this)
[20:23:23] when all the units are categorised, it picks the grid sector with the lowest nonzero value
[20:23:45] this is how AAI, and NTai chose their targets
[20:23:53] only AAI and NTai chose the highest
[20:23:56] not the lowest
[20:24:02] NTai had a lot of other twists also
[20:24:04] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> so the choice of area to send attackers to is -not- actually using a threatmap, but a similar behavior, looking for a weak point
[20:24:24] those 2 AIs did the targeting loop every few frames and added it to a heatmap that decayed
[20:24:34] its more instantaneous and reactive
[20:24:37] no lingering threats
[20:24:45] rather simple if I do say so
[20:24:53] when an enemy target is found
[20:25:01] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> hmmmm
[20:25:04] the attackhandler orders the attackerbehaviour to attack
[20:25:13] a fight command is sent to the position
[20:25:20] and the attacker is now left ot its own devices
[20:25:27] and si out of the loop
[20:25:43] when the attackerbehaviour recieves a unitIdle event for the attacker
[20:25:52] the assumption is that there is nothing for it to do
[20:26:01] so it assigns the attacker as in waiting
[20:26:08] and repeats the whole process from the beginning
[20:26:23] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> well it sounds pretty efficient
[20:26:23] a nice and simple ‘new’ unit goes in
[20:26:26] attacker comes out
[20:26:53] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> attacking a weakpoint seems like a better strategy than attacking the strongest point
[20:26:58] I have further optimisations to make to the algorithm to make it pluggable
[20:27:13] you have IK to thank for that insight
[20:27:15] but
[20:27:23] I intend to make it a choice in future
[20:27:27] like supcom
[20:27:33] cull weakest vs attack strongest
[20:28:22] do you mind if I repost this as a blog post?
[20:28:41] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> yeah for sure; its helpful knowing how it works
[20:29:15] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> i’m playing with a survival game idea with car and bob and wombat and a few others; trying to learn what i can about the various AI behaviours in spring
[20:29:26] note
[20:29:31] that the entire attacking system can be either
[20:29:33] sidestepped
[20:29:35] or replaced
[20:29:53] all it would take is either your own behaviours, thats then assigned to attacker units
[20:29:54] or
[20:30:05] <[Mr]Peanus_Butter> the other day I was testing shard against some other AI I’ve forgotten which and noticed the difference in attacking weak vs strong; i attributed it to a difference in threatmapping, but now i am wiser
[20:30:07] put your own attackerhandler and attackbehaviour in your games subfolder
[20:30:21] Shards Lua VM is set to ignore the main files if one is present in a game subdir
[20:30:29] so itll be as if ym implementation never existed
[20:30:55] or you can have different units use differing attack systems