Blizzard And Google Release Starcraft 2 AI Programming Tools
Soon after Google's DeepMind AI project beat the world's best Go players, the company announced a partnership with Activision Blizzard. Deepmind's target this time was the RTS Starcraft 2.
That was back in November 2016. Fast forward to today and we're finally seeing the fruit of that partnership. Blizzard has just released a public API (application program interface) with an emphasis on AI research. The new API will allow programmers to write their own AI agents and test them against other bots and players.
The full host of programs being made available to the public include a scripted AI API, image-based AI API, offline AI vs AI support, and Linux support for all API packages. An open source version of Deepmind's PySC2 toolset has also been released. Its great to see Blizzard and Google making these tools available to the public, and I'm sure the gamer community will be active in using these tools to craft better AI opponents for the game.
Deepmind has already conquered several video games, mainly simple Atari titles like Pong, but those generally had clear goals a simple action set. Starcraft 2 is far more complicated. Each "player" has more than 300 basic actions at their disposal and must make decisions based on imperfect information -- thanks to the fog of war that limits map vision. Even gamers not interested in Starcraft should be exited about this project. The research and discoveries made are expected to yield improvements to video game AI across the industry!
Further Reading: Official Blizzard Post, Official DeepMind post
