Jump to content
  • Crappy Comrades? Poopy Partners? Dogshit Doubles?


    Marcello

    Preposterous! Not in my Reborn! Perish the thought!

     

    G R E E T I N G S, Rebornians. Over the years I have carefully crafted Reborn's AI from the ground up (shoutout to ame who actually designed it tho, she the real mvp). With each episode the AI has only gotten smarter, and better at playing pokemon. In particular with the advent of 18.2, our AI has really stepped up it's game with some major bugfixes, outplaying you* so hard, it really makes you FEEL like you're a shit pokemon trainer.

     

    *by 'you' I mean me, I'm terrible at pokemon and the AI has consistently been better than me since like, E18, let alone 18.2

     

    And with the constant AI improvements, we are often asked 'Hey, how come the AI is so smart when battling me, but so garbage when it's my partner? Is this just designed that way to make the game harder?'

     

    To which we say 'No, of course not! We don't believe in that kind of unfair game design, AI shouldn't cheat and we would never artificially dumb it down in situations where it should be helping the player!'

     

    ...on purpose.

    ...We'd never do that on purpose.

     

    So have you ever had an experience in Reborn where your AI partner has an all hitting move like, say, Earthquake, and uses it when it would KO your mon? Or doesn't use it when it would barely damage your mon and seriously hurt the opponent?

    Because in E18 we added code specifically to deal with that, and have your partners make smarter choices! And guess what? They still didn't make smart choices and we were sad.

     

    So let me tell you a little something about loops. Loops are great. They let you check through a bunch of cases with only a single block of code!

    I could write 'for i in 1..4' to go through four different cases (funny that, just as many cases as a mon has moves!) with a single bit of code!

     

    But do you know what is near i, both in the alphabet and on the keyboard? j.

     

    And do you know what happens if you loop through i and accidentally type a j somewhere? Why, it checks whatever j is, which is probably something else from earlier in the code, nothing to do with poor old i.

     

    And that can have the side effect of making AI real unpredictable. Like, for example, lets say your AI wants to use Earthquake. But part of the AI for that is to check how much damage it does to it's partner.

    But oh no, I typed a j instead of an i in that check? So instead of checking how much damage Earthquake would do, it checks another move. Could be any of them. Like say, a status move. So it'll think no damage. And Earthquake away no matter how hard that'll hurt your mon. Oops.

     

    But now this is fixed. We have officially cancelled j. Except for like, the places it's meant to be. In those places we've cancelled i. So for E19, you can finally look forward to the partner AI being just as smart as the opponent AI! Hopefully that should make some of the paired fights in the game a lot easier.

     

    ...

    ...

    ...

     

    Eeeeeeexcept the fact that this cuts both ways. The AI is also now much better at being a partner, regardless of which side it is on,, so this fix will also mean that AIs will act a lot smarter about not sacking their own mons in doubles so like... Y'know, have fun with the AI being better in literally every double battle in the entire game! ❤️❤️❤️

     

     

    Of course, this wouldn't be a devblog post without at least a LITTLE teaser for E19. And sure, I've told you about an AI update that it will bring but, because I'm such a great guy, you can have a little more. So I leave you with a screenshot of some actual dialogue from E19 with no context... I wonder what character would say this? 🤔

    image.png.cdc953edcd16ba614c67c45ceddcfc79.png

     

    • Like 11
    • Thanks 2
    • Hmm 15
    • Upvote 2

    User Feedback

    Recommended Comments

    All my sympathy for how stupid somebody must have felt when noticing that kind of error. From my very limited experience, these are the worst errors to happen in a program, as they won't keep it from functioning but it may yield unpredictable results... 

    I am also surprised at saying that the AI was better than you: I understood you worked quite a lot on it, how can your program beat you? Has the singularity happened? Has the Reborn AI become sentient? 

    Or maybe you can't keep up with all the calculations/checks it does, and/or you don't access all the information it knows? 

     

    Also, can I say that with E18.2 and that, I'm terrified of how E19 is going to end me? Or, more accurately, how many times I'm going to lose?   

     

    I was going to write a long text about who to eliminate for the quote, but I got lazy. Too many possibilities, too many possible recipients (emotional depth is very subjective), and a few people who would be glad to insult each recipient. Fern or Titania to Florinia could work, but they both already lashed out (maybe not in every timeline, though).   

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • Developers
    9 hours ago, Mindlack said:

    All my sympathy for how stupid somebody must have felt when noticing that kind of error. From my very limited experience, these are the worst errors to happen in a program, as they won't keep it from functioning but it may yield unpredictable results... 

    I am also surprised at saying that the AI was better than you: I understood you worked quite a lot on it, how can your program beat you? Has the singularity happened? Has the Reborn AI become sentient? 

    Or maybe you can't keep up with all the calculations/checks it does, and/or you don't access all the information it knows? 

     

    Also, can I say that with E18.2 and that, I'm terrified of how E19 is going to end me? Or, more accurately, how many times I'm going to lose?   

     

    I was going to write a long text about who to eliminate for the quote, but I got lazy. Too many possibilities, too many possible recipients (emotional depth is very subjective), and a few people who would be glad to insult each recipient. Fern or Titania to Florinia could work, but they both already lashed out (maybe not in every timeline, though).   

     

    For what it's worth, while I programmed the AI, Ame is the one who actually designed it, and she is far better at pokemon than me. I'm, on the whole, pretty bad at mons. If it gets better than her, THEN we should be worried.

    But it's also worth noting that the AI does a lot of calculations and keeps track of a lot of info so it has that edge too.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • Global Mods

    but when are you going to add the hardmode option that does nothing except disable the bit where the AI intentionally uses a weaker move to leave you on a few HP or save PP?

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    I'm by no means a coder or anything but, wouldn't it be easier to just make the partner controllable this way there are no variables in a fight? Or would this be very difficult?

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    On 2/7/2020 at 9:22 AM, Amethyst said:

    G R E E T I N G S

     

    On 2/7/2020 at 9:24 AM, Marcello said:

    G R E E T I N G S

     

    On 2/7/2020 at 9:22 AM, andracass said:

    G R E E T I N G S

    why do i think this is some kinda hint toward whoever said that?

     

    AND I THINK ITS EITHER HARDY OR TITANIA

     

    why ai already beat me every match

    Why u do dis

    But on a serious note I can't wait for ep 19 now! (Even though this line must have been said a bazillion times already on this site xd)

    On 2/9/2020 at 3:25 AM, Marcello said:

    If it gets better than her, THEN we should be worried.

    thanks im officially and royally scared

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • Developers

    Umm... would it be possible to get an 18.2.1 / 18.3 update with this and maybe the difficulty levels? The AI update kinda made me want to replay reborn again but I really like doubles so I kinda don't wanna play it without this.

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    • Veterans
    1 minute ago, baldr said:

    Umm... would it be possible to get an 18.2.1 / 18.3 update with this and maybe the difficulty levels? The AI update kinda made me want to replay reborn again but I really like doubles so I kinda don't wanna play it without this.

    depends on how much i want ame to commit die

    • Haha 1
    Link to comment
    Share on other sites

    On 2/15/2020 at 7:27 AM, andracass said:

    depends on how much i want ame to commit die

    @Marcello kind of told us where the bug was... a j used in a for i in 0...4 inside a @doublebattle

    If I didn't get it wrong, it should mean at line 37361 in the script PokeBattle_AI in an unmodified version of 18.2
    "v=pbRoughDamage(attacker.moves[j],attacker,attacker.pbPartner,skill,attacker.moves[j].basedamage)"

    Maybe you could release it as a very fast, very small patch with just the fixed script file?
    Pretty please?

    Link to comment
    Share on other sites



    Join the conversation

    You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

    Guest
    Add a comment...

    ×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

      Only 75 emoji are allowed.

    ×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

    ×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

    ×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • i know i'm, like, criminally bad at updating the sidebar

    but it's just the scripts!

    i never know what's worth mentioning.

    anyway we might redo the battle system.

    (6/15)

     

     

    SPOILER_shaving_luna_head.png

  • 16-4.png
    16-5.png
    16-6.png
    16-7.png
    16-8.png
    16-11.png
    16-12.png

×
×
  • Create New...