*D'OH* Of course..... So I'm being stupid again. Thanks for that little tid-bit, that should severely cut down on the number of laps necessary.
^ Like does not apply to the being stupid bit. Thanks for going through with all this, you're doing a great service to the community here, at least those who are into SP racing.
No worries. I've got all the coding skills of a demented rodent, and nobody in their right mind would look to me for racing advice. But this I can do. And as it happens, I enjoy doing it. But can you possibly get Robert to clarify something for me? As it is right now (or rather, was) the lap-times in the index-file are only used after the 'training' has been done. If I've deduced this correctly, the adaptive AI compares its last lap-time to the players lap-time, and then goes hunting through the index for an AI level that is roughly equal to the players lap-time and uses that level for the following lap. Pretty sure I've got that right, and that is all fine and groovy. But........ If you manually edit the index-file, and only insert the AI level, it doesn't work. If you manually insert an AI level and a fictitious lap-time, it doesn't work (unless you're extremely lucky and manage to hit the right lap-time). So apparently the Adaptive AI needs an AI level AND a specific lap-time in order to use the entry. And yet, when using Fixed AI you can set it to a specific level, and it'll generate a lap-time out of the blue. It's even kind enough to write it for you in the index. So in other words, the AI itself must have some idea of the lap-time it's capable of doing, otherwise it wouldn't be able to differentiate between the various AI levels in the first place. So why does the Adaptive AI need a lap-time when the Fixed one doesn't? And is there some way to bypass that? If we could somehow get to the point where all you needed was to insert the desired AI levels without the lap-times, this whole training thing would be moot. All you'd have to do would be to edit the file before using each combo, and it would be fully trained.
Not sure I understand properly An AI needs to know player's average laptimes; those I guess you could put in manually. It also needs to know how fast itself can go around the track at different skill levels in certain car class on certain track layout, so it can reverse engineere a skill level from player's time. If you knew what those times are, you could put them in, but how could you I guess you could try, remember to also put in amount of samples in paranthesis.
Maybe not. I get that, makes perfect sense. Except...... That doesn't seem to apply when using a Fixed AI. If you use e.g. 105 for a particular combo, it'll run at 105 and it'll continue to do lap-times that are very close to each other. So the Fixed AI apparently doesn't need to know how fast it is with any given combo, it'll just go. Which, as far as I can figure out, either means the AI level controls something more than just the lap-times themselves, or that the Adaptive AI in theory should be capable of doing the same. So I guess my question is, since we already know the Fixed AI can run without having prior knowledge of its lap-times, why doesn't this apply to the Adaptive? Or in other words, why can't we simply plug in a range of six AI levels into the index-file, and the AI will fill out the lap-times as and when it gets to them? I realize that this would leave the AI without a clue as to which level to use for each lap, but that is no different than starting with a new index-file containing no data. I'm sure I'm missing something somewhere, but I'm having a little trouble wrapping my mind around what I perceive to be two different behaviours. Final thing, and I'll let you get some peace. The Adaptive AI starts out at level 80 when using a fresh index-file, but once the index-file starts to fill up it'll start somewhere else even if it has no data for that particular combo. Can you confirm that if the index-file contains data on other combos, the Adaptive AI will start any new combo at a level based on the average level throughout the index-file? And of course, thanks for taking the time to respond.
Increasing skill level from 95 to 100 changes a whole lotta stuff about how fast they can go in corners etc, and the laptime is the result. And their laptime is also the only thing you can compare to player's "skill level", to try to match them up. Marko tries to match them to real life laptimes at a certain level. If you chose 95 in game instead of adaptive, it's not like we're gonna match to a specific laptime, only tweaks some parameters that make ai faster/slower. Secondly, yes, if you dont have any data for that specific layout/class combo, it'll take an average. First check if you have data for carclass, if not if you have for track layout, if not it takes average of all. Probably closer to truth than setting it to 80
Aaahh...The penny drops. Okay, so a Fixed AI level will produce a certain behaviour which will result in a certain lap-time. The Adaptive AI, on the other hand, looks to reproduce a lap-time close to the player, and then reverse-engineer the process to find the AI level needed to produce the AI inputs that will result in that lap-time. But of course it can't do that unless it has something to base that on. Right, right, right..... Solving the problem from the other side means you need a different set of data to base the solution on. Okay, got it. Wait, what? Amazing how eight words can make ones life a whole lot easier. That is absolutely brilliant, thanks for that bit of info.
Now, now. Don't give up so soon, grasshopper. It may still work, it just needs some method-modification. But the last time I did this, the thread grew.....somewhat largish.... because I kept finding new stuff after I'd posted. And I'd really like to avoid that happening again, so this time I'm going to make reasonably sure that I'm actually right before posting. So I'm 90% sure I've got it figured out, and since I need to train the KTMs anyway, I'm going to do some testing and see if I can't get to 100%. Add some time to get either a video or some illustrating done, and I wouldn't expect anything until probably Monday assuming something doesn't crop up in real-life.
Okay, so the first draft is ready for ridicule. I had originally intended to do a video, but most of the info is theoretical and the explaining involves text-files and spread-sheet, which would make for a somewhat sleep-inducing video. A forum post wouldn't allow the formatting needed to insert images at the right places. So instead I chose to whip up a small PDF explaining both the theory behind it, and how it applies in practical terms. It's actually not that complicated once you grasp the basis of the system, I just happen to think that knowing why you need to do something is far better than just knowing you have to do it. Now all we have to do is wait for Robert to come along and tell me I've misunderstood the whole thing. . . Told ya....
Generally in adaptive mode the AI is much to slow when not adapted to average times and much too fast when successfully adapted, ehm, (like before)...anyway, I don't care much cause best way is still to adjust the correct diff level that meets your skills... But what I wanted to state is that I like the AI very much now, they behave like MP Opponents and I had some really cool fights with 'em (GTO @ Midohio, Level 102)....mostly tough but fair (means no strange actions)...dunno how it feels if you're SP-only driver with less experience,but coming from a lot of MP (league) races throughout last year, the AI is definitely worth to use them for sparring again... Good job so far...
@CheerfullyInsane there are a few wrong assumptions in that pdf, some I feel I have to correct: - ai doesn't adapt per lap, it's per race. otherwise it'd be a bit like rubberbanding - what you call sample rate is just the amount of samples that's been used for the stated average laptime, to know how much next added laptime will affect average Fastest way to get ai up to par is to download a ready file, which I assume is what you supply? Then all needed is player laptimes which you ofc have to set yourself.
Really? Uhm.....Okay, normally this is the point where I ask "Are you sure?", but since you designed the system, I'm going to skip that part. Could've sworn I saw AI behaviour that indicated it did, but I guess that means there's a flaw in my testing method. Fair enough, not the first time I've been wrong, and most certainly not the last. Good news is that this means you actually need fewer indices than I originally thought. So basically it smooths out the curve. Meaning that if the AI e.g. gets held back in a few corners that'll result in a slower lap-time. But if the average so far is already based on say 10 laps, the impact is lessened. So one bad lap will not lower the stated lap-time in the index-file, and thus won't necessitate a change in AI levels for the next race, which it might otherwise do. Okay, got it. A complete index-file listing every lap-time for every AI level for every combo would indeed be the fastest way. But not only would that result in a fairly hefty file-size, it would also take forever to get done. As I've found out, you can't just insert data into the file unless you have a general idea of the lap-times the AI will generate. @pixeljetstream designed a program that'll extrapolate probable lap-times from a data-set, and insert them into the index-file. But that relies on having a certain amount of data in the first place, which isn't always the case. And inserting fictitious data into the file results in.....odd behaviour. So what I'm trying to do is find the fastest way for the user to get the AI up to par for any given combo, no matter what the users level is and no matter if there is previous data available. Don't get me wrong, the adaptation process does work, and once you have data for a specific car-class from 2-3 different tracks, it adapts pretty quickly on its own. But it'll still take 4-5 races to get a good base-line, and a few more races until the data is solid enough for the AI not to shift levels from race to race. So my thinking was to exploit the algorithms already in place, and 'cheat' the AI into thinking it had already done hundreds of laps and it could now stop adapting. And now that my initial idea has been shot down in flames, and lies whimpering on the ground, it's time to rethink. So..... Apologies if I'm restating the obvious, but I'd really like to get this right one of these days. When you start a race against Adaptive AI, and there is no data at all in the file, the AI starts at level 80. Else, If there is data for the car-class the AI will start at the average level of the car-class in the file. If not, if there is data for that track, the AI will start at the average level of that track. Finally, if there is no data for neither the track nor the car-class, but there is other data in the file, the AI will start at the average level of all the data available. After the first race of a combo, the AI will then write an AI level and corresponding lap-time, and all further races will use that first entry as a baseline. Once you have data for a particular combo, the AI will take the average of your last 10 laps and compare it to the average lap-times it has for each AI level. If there is no AI time that corresponds to the players average time, the AI will then try a new level, and subsequently writes the data for that level into the file. How much it jumps depends on how big the difference between the times. If the AI has a time that corresponds to the players average, it'll re-use that AI level, and the lap-time will be added to the average for that level, ensuring you get consistency in the AI levels. Have I (finally) gotten that right?
Yet maybe this could still be the best way to deal with this in the long run, getting loads of adaptation files from all different level users and combining them? Only problem in that I think: If there's another major change in the AI code it might be rendered useless and all would need to be redone...
In a perfect world, yes. But I seriously doubt we'd get enough entries to make it worthwhile. Pixeljetstreams tool 'only' attracted enough attention to get 10% coverage, and that was including extrapolation. Besides, people seem to run basically the same thing. Lots of GTR3s, and DTMs, not very many NSUs or Audi TTs. Not to mention that we'd have to do it all over again whenever a new track or car is released. (Not that I'm complaining about new releases. ) Yep. Coupled with the above, that's kinda the reason I'm searching for a fast way to get everything up and running. Which btw is eminently doable. Granted, if you're starting with nothing in the file, the first couple of combos take a while. But once you have 2-3 tracks done for each car-class any new track can be done in maybe 4 laps if you don't mind editing the index-file. So if you start with some of the short-tracks (Brands, Norisring, Monza jr.) you can get a pretty decent base-line going in 30 minutes. But given the last few false-starts, I'm going to sit down and have a think about how to present the method before posting anything.