Wednesday, May 26, 2010
GOd-tony Refused on developing DOTA-AI maps
After the sad Retirement of BuffMePlz(BMP) the ex-DotA AI developer. The
Community was seeking for an AI developer like BuffMePlz who could carry
on with the work. So, God-Tony (killerbee) was asked to continue the development
of AI Maps from now on. Recently, he has replied on his blog about the future of
the DotA AI. You can read it below:
GoD-Tony Decision:
Taking this blog in a slightly different direction, I'll write a bit about my
thoughts on DotA AI and the retirement of BuffMePlz.
I recently received an email from BMP informing me of his decision, as
well as his offer of general guidance to lead my own AI project. My first
reaction was "Why didn't I get an email like this sooner?"
I believe that if an AI project had been worked together by a team of people,
then it wouldn't have come down to this. It's really too much to take on by
one person.
The idea of posting my Pre-Alpha builds of RGB's AI for the newest version
at the time was to spark some interest in development in an otherwise dead
scene. I knew BMP wasn't interested in wasting his time with people that
thought they "could help" but couldn't do anything other than offer another
opinion. This was a way of proving that there were certainly people interested
in helping, myself and Cipd included
That was almost a year ago when my interest for developing AI was at it's
peak, and when I received no response regarding those maps, I moved on
to the next idea. This was to create an Open AI for DotA that could be ported
to the latest version almost instantly, and Open in the sense that it would be
very easy for others to contribute (especially open source).
Even though I completed the code-base for this project, it still needed some
real AI to go along with it. This was back in January, and once again with no
response or input from the ones I contacted, and the continuation of BMPs'
ports of RGBs' maps, I decided that it was a wasted effort.
What I'm getting at here is that it's basically too little too late. I believe DotA
for Warcraft 3 is near it's death. With Heroes of Newerth released just days
ago, Starcraft 2 coming out this year, and the possibility of IceFrog moving on
to Valve, by the time I created a decent AI, DotA would be on a different platform.
I don't see myself working on an AI for Dota now or in the future, and the only
way i could see this changing is if some very ambitious developers came forward
and teamed up as it should be done.
