Sunday, August 23, 2009

Slight delay

Sorry folks, but there were many more game-breaking problems with my map than I had anticipated, and I haven't had a chance to fix them yet. I was hoping to address them before I went on vacation (a real vacation, as in I'm taking paid time off of work to relax), which I was unable to. I'm away from home now with limited internet access, and won't be back for another week or so, so I'll have to ask you all to be patient for a little while longer.

On the upside, I've finished most of the work needed to make the map 1.24 compliant (which took bloody forever), so that should hopefully address many people's concerns about the new patch. Also, I've been in contact with IceFrog and he has agreed to provide me with some official support, which should make future releases much quicker and easier to do in the future. Woohoo!

In the meantime, I'll have to ask you to wait a little longer. I'll see if I can get any work done on this while I'm on vacation...but I doubt it. =P

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Hrm

So it looks like the 1.24 situation is much more sticky than I realised. Given that, I think after I finish this testing phase I'll go ahead and post what I've got for everyone to take a swing at.

THIS MEANS IT WILL ONLY WORK ON 1.23 OR EARLIER. PLEASE DON'T E-MAIL ME SAYING THE MAP DOESN'T WORK ON 1.24. I KNOW IT DOESN'T.

This version is more or less a total compatibility overhaul of the script - I haven't had a chance to do many of the rewrites I wanted to, but at the very least most things should be working properly and should be somewhat adequate to allow people to play/practice new heroes/items/builds/whatever.

Because of this, some abilities will not be used properly (or at all) by the AI, but this will be addressed in future versions. The bots will, however, learn all of their abilities (or should). I haven't finished rewriting the levelling system but what's in place should be okay for now.

I've also disabled several game modes and commands until they can be made AI-compatible. Any game mode that requires voting or choosing outside of normal picking methods has been temporarily disabled until I have time to teach the script to play with these modes (-vr, -rv, -rd, -cd, -cm). I've also disabled league modes (-lm, -xl) because, really, who plays league matches with the AI map? The new -so mode has also been disabled.

The -afk and -kickafk commands are disabled, since you should never need them in an AI map, as well as -ah (maphacking against AI bots, really?). -switch is out also because there's no need with -so disabled.

I haven't had time to update the -fun content either, so for now it's been disabled. I will bring this back concurrently while updating the script.

I've modified -pa and -pe to work with the new Tavern system and location, so at least you'll still be able to pick heroes for your allies and for the AI. The item builds have been updated for compatibility ONLY, which means they'll still get the same old items as before. If people are still interested in contributing we might try reviving some threads in the OpenAI forums that address this.

There are also some -dm bugs that I can't quite figure out. I've disabled Dazzle in -dm (much like Meepo is disabled in -dm) because, inexplicably, the game crashes when Dazzle is picked during a deathmatch game. I think some other hero is causing the game to crash, but I can't figure out which (my guess is Huskar). It seems dependent on when heroes are picked and such, so after I post you guys can try to figure it out. =P

I've also renamed the map from "Dota Allstars 6.61b AI+ 1.52" to "DotA Allstars 6.61b AI v0.21". Why "v0.21"? Because it seemed like a good number at the time. =P After all the rewrites and compatibility changes, this is starting to look less and less like the AI we all know and love and more like something else, so I'll go ahead and declare this the beginning of a new stage of AI development. Yay.

Credits still go to cloud_str and RGB. Without their work and dedication this map would not be possible.

Expect an update and a download within the week.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Yes, I know it doesn't work

Please stop sending me e-mails saying that none of the AI maps work on 1.24. I know they don't.

I have a rough version of 6.61b AI (I'm taking the plus off, since it isn't very "plus" right now, and changing the version number to something like 0.21), but given the number of e-mails I've been receiving and the fact that it doesn't work with the new patch, I'm not going to release anything until 6.62 is out and I've had a chance to update the functions to be compliant with the 1.24 WC3 patch.

I've been a bit busy with things...just got back from a beautiful wedding. If you two see this (since you've both told me you occasionally pop on here), congratulations again! I love you both and hope you have a great time in Hawaii!

That is all. =)