Attempting to improve the AI for Proportions 3.05

[Urendi Maleldil]

One thing that I have mentioned before however, is that the game reloads the AI script each turn. Therefore it would be possible to have an external program modify the AI files between turns, which could yield more "intelligent" AI.

Such a program could read and respond to conditions described by the game in the external log files, and help the AI react better to in-game actions.

[PvK]

Could do, with logging turned on, though what kind of information can SE4 be made to log?

[Suicide Junkie]

If you're going to be using an external program, getting info back out will be the tough part.

Perhaps an autohotkey program to use the existing SE4 UI... open all the dialogs and extract all the details into a nice text format.

Then it could run your AI.exe to create an orders file to read... and finally some hammering on the SE4 UI to plug the orders into the game before hitting end turn.


To heck with using the built-in AIs How about writing your AI in whatever language you like, and playing with all the options of the human interface?

[Ironmanbc]

HA if we could do that then I would leave the Ministers on and let them do my turns while I sleep

[Suicide Junkie]

I will make the UI interface if somebody wants to make the AI program.

[PvK]

Do you really think it's feasible to create an interface to read and use the SE4 UI?

[Suicide Junkie]

Certainly.

The toughest part would be the text recognition, but the fonts are all known, and the text locations are in fixed positions too. (With some simple adjustments for screen resolution, but I already deal with that in the Windowed SE4 tool)

Giving orders should be easy too:
"Select ship X" --> Go to ships list, scroll down until the ship name is found, then click it.
"Move/warp/etc to a location" --> press hotkey, click galaxy map, click coordinates.

[PvK]

I guess I missed the threads on the windowed SE4 tool. What are you using to screen-scrape and manipulate the UI?

[Suicide Junkie]

AutoHotKey is what the Windowed SE4 Tool uses.

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...indowedSE4.zip

[Urendi Maleldil]

Sweet, SJ. Your Windowed SE4 Tool is great.