AI Showdown

Mashup multiple AI configs so they can be played at the same time.

Configuration

ais.json file specifies paths and attributes for each AI. The example configuration assumes there is a valid PA media path, and custom AIs are in server_mods.

Tasks which copy or use files from the base game need a path to the media directory. There are some rough rules that try to guess this path, but the media variable may need to be overriden with an explicit path in ais.json.

Template expansion is performed in path, base_path, and personality_file. Principally this would be <%= media %> for the game's media path, but it also provides the ai config object and the current ai

Because default tasks are specialized, AIs must be complete. If you rely on AI files from the base game, point the base_path attribute at the base AI. base_path can be an array to include pa_ex1.

If you are not using the default AI, you must take care to prevent interference from un-specialized rules. Either include the default AI and don't use it matches, or ensure that one of the included AIs has a blank directory and shadows all default file names.

Identifier override: ais.json identifier simply sets the mod identifier. base_identifier is similar, but will be extended with the ai rule_postfix entries before being used.

Running

Quick Start

Uses on Node with NPM and the Grunt task runner, which needs it's command line utility installed with npm install grunt-cli -g

• Put this project under a sibling of the server_mods directory e.g. .../Planetary Annihilation/server_mod_dev/ai_showdown
• Run npm install
• Copy ais.json.example to ais.json and edit for the AIs you want to mashup.
• run grunt media_check to see if the default rules guessed your PA path correctly
• If you are using any files from the vanilla AI, run grunt copy:vanilla
• grunt build (also the default task) will mashup files into the local directory
• grunt mod will copy the local files into a runnable server mod.

Details

package.json lists dependencies, but you'll need to run npm install to download them.

PA will upload all files in the mod directory, including node_modules and maybe even .git - you probably don't want to use this in server_mods directly, unless you really like waiting. The template is set up run to run as a project within a peer directory of server_mods - I use server_mods_dev/mod_name. The task grunt copy:mod will copy the mod files to ../../server_mods/identifier, you can change server_mods in ais.json if you want to run it from somewhere else.

Available Tasks

Example config depends on media directory for vanilla AI files

• ai_unit_map - Copy and rename unit_maps

• platoon_templates - Rename rules and copy files

• builds - Rename builds and copy files

• personalities - Look for personality_file, personality shadows in AI mods, or default ai.js, and build a new_game scene mod (requires PAMM to load)

• build - above tasks

• copy:mod - copy the mod files into server_mods

• copy:modinfo - rewrite modinfo with AI specifics and put into server_mods

• mod - above three tasks

• media_check - test if the PA media path is correctly configured

• copy:vanilla - copy the vanilla AI from media path into ai working directory

• clean - remove all copied/generated files. If a configuration change causes a file to change names names or no longer be generated, the old files must be removed, which clean can do. You must pass the -f switch to delete files outside your own directory (e.g. the generated mod) Please take care that your modPath is correct and will not accidentally resolve to a root path or somewhere uwanted. The --verbose and --no-write switches are useful for checking, though it does not show the fully resolved path.

• default: build

Credits

• Quitch Developed the techniques for running multiple AIs
• Wondible Automated most of the work involved.