I was interested in how the various SC2 launcher applications interface with Starcraft. Are there command line parameters that are being set or is there some sort of interprocess communication that is needed to inject values into SC2? I looked around for an open source launcher so I could get some ideas but didn't find anything. I'm interested in getting something like the AllIn1 launcher working for OSX so I can use custom AI's. Any place I can be directed to learn more?
The All In 1 launcher is a hack and we won't distribute hacks here. You don't need hacks to run Custom AI on a map, you can just implement the AI in... any map.
You can also make a program to run a map from a directory (and include the AI script) if you want.
The way they work is by changing the MapInfo file (inside the map mpq) which holds the lobby informations (default AI in this case). So it's not really hard to do.
However if you are about to change the team information, it's going to be harder as it does not belong to the map file but you have to change the Starcraft memory.
While here on mapster we encourage you to do 3rd party apps that interact with the game in order to provide better mapping tools, the launchers are primarily used by people to play without buying the game. Therefore this is under high surveillance by Blizzard and we don't want to have problems because of that :)
Sixen: Thanks for your reply. I was unaware that the All In 1 launcher contained shenanigans like a hack, I referenced it simply because I most frequently see people explaining how to launch Green Tea and other AI's using it.
As for building an app to run a map from a directory and include a particular AI, that's *exactly* what I want to look into doing and any info you can shed on how exactly that might be done (how do you launch SC2 on a specific map and how would you dynamically attach a particular AI), would be *very* helpful. I am a software developer so I can handle the custom app part I just don't know what the app should be doing.
vjeux: Thank you for that info. I am starting to get a vague idea of how that is supposed to fit together. The app I'm thinking about would be just for training for competitive multiplayer. So it would be only for legit versions and just to set up against the various AI's to train against. I also wanted to make using something like YABOT + Green Tea possible to launch on OSX since the only way I've seen people reference getting that working is also with one of those "launchers". I'll refrain from talking about creating a "launcher" if that term has negative connotations.
Show me these AI's that are better then blizzard's AI's.
AI's are coded in triggers, and effected by unit prioity settings in the data editor ..... which would be something that is controlled in game. Still no reason you would need a launcher.
I would think it's because people like breaking systems and stuff. For instance someone may like playing with a custom launcher because they like the fact that blizzard doesn't like it, even if it does nothing extra and you could get banned for it, or like making one because they can and find it a challenge.
The default AI has no micro. There is so much room for improvement, and it's a legit reason for doing whatever it takes to implement it, if that's what one is interested in.
Manipulating software != piracy
Tho sure, piracy is clearly an objective for SOME ppl. I'm afraid some ppl are just theives. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATH WATER.
And anyway, you own the one and zero's on your hard disk.
They're yours, as sure as your testicles are, in every literal, physical and philosophical sense.
Culture/law/economy is wwwaaaaaaayyy behind this reality and it's a major symptom of the crap attempt the human race is making at the meat -> data transition in terms of perspective/paradigms/politics.
Oh crikey I'm ranty. Must be something to do with losing 5 hrs to 'Variant definitions could not be validated'.
@esotericmoniker: Go
What AI are you attempting to implament? Just a custom one you made? or a modified one from another game. If you are simply trying to get the tools to modify one from the game, I'd suggest simply using the tools Blizzard gives you... Since the Galaxy Editor has a lot of restrictions (primarily no pointers) most any other AI you implament from anywhere would simply not function, let alone all the modification it would require to work, you might as well learn, and build an AI within Galaxy.
It sounds kind of like you simply want a file that says "double click me to play my mod", I'm not sure if you can make a map file so it automatically opens SCII and runs the map with all the integration into bnet and such.
I never messed around with the WC3 AI much, but from what I've seen of the SCII editor, it has a few nice things in it such as "simulated APM" (which isn't really that well implamented) as well as the typical FSMs that permiate AIs in prety much all games currently made (and I hate it!... lol, but that's an entirely different matter).
@DJSplendid: Go
Actually... if you've ever read a EULA, you'd know that you're basically "being allowed" to use their (or any company for that matter) software, and they may change or discontinue your service at any time, for any reason. Yes, you technically, physically own the magnetic plates (or polymer ?substrate? if you have an SSD), but technically, blizzard could legally forbid you from using their software just cause they wanna, and I'd be willing to bet, president asside, take action to have it forcibly removed. Not that any company would risk the fallout, nor spend the money to do so... And it goes without saying, cracking or hacking software goes against this EULA like opening most electronics voids the warranty. I run a CD crack on a lot of my older software, but regardless of how high a box you stand on, it's technically prohibited.
The default AI has no micro. There is so much room for improvement, and it's a legit reason for doing whatever it takes to implement it, if that's what one is interested in.
Manipulating software != piracy
Tho sure, piracy is clearly an objective for SOME ppl. I'm afraid some ppl are just theives. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATH WATER.
And anyway, you own the one and zero's on your hard disk.
They're yours, as sure as your testicles are, in every literal, physical and philosophical sense.
Culture/law/economy is wwwaaaaaaayyy behind this reality and it's a major symptom of the crap attempt the human race is making at the meat -> data transition in terms of perspective/paradigms/politics.
Oh crikey I'm ranty. Must be something to do with losing 5 hrs to 'Variant definitions could not be validated'.
My point is .... Make your AI with GE...... I highly doubt anybody in thier right mind would hack the game when blizzard already lets you add to the AI in game....
I have already seen custom AI's. One was of a single phenix owning 100 muta. The guy wrote an advanced ai for the phenix so it never let the muta get in range.
The truth is if your talking about SUPER COMPUTER AI..... SC2 really wasnt made for that..
And the computers do micro.... if you say they dont at all..... you prolly kinda suck..
License agreements are not legally binding until ratified in court.
If they were, Microsoft would own your babies.
Slashdot makes for good reading in these areas.
The legal system for physical ownership and abstract ownership is FUCKED.
Let's say I reversibly alter the binary representation of all the data licensed to me by company X.
I then write to company X asking if they own this binary sequence.
What happens next?
Exactly. FUCKED.
The launchers were mostly made during beta, because the beta passes were so few and far between, using a launcher let you play vs ai that wasn't written in the galaxy editor because... the galaxy editor wasn't out.
@esotericmoniker: Go What AI are you attempting to implament? Just a custom one you made? or a modified one from another game. If you are simply trying to get the tools to modify one from the game, I'd suggest simply using the tools Blizzard gives you... Since the Galaxy Editor has a lot of restrictions (primarily no pointers) most any other AI you implament from anywhere would simply not function, let alone all the modification it would require to work, you might as well learn, and build an AI within Galaxy.
I wanted to integrate the Green Tea AI. There are map packs released occasionally but often they lag behind releases of the AI itself and it seems to get broken by each major patch. I will look into just opening up the editor and integrating the AI in there. Thanks for the info.
@esotericmoniker: Go What AI are you attempting to implament? Just a custom one you made? or a modified one from another game. If you are simply trying to get the tools to modify one from the game, I'd suggest simply using the tools Blizzard gives you... Since the Galaxy Editor has a lot of restrictions (primarily no pointers) most any other AI you implament from anywhere would simply not function, let alone all the modification it would require to work, you might as well learn, and build an AI within Galaxy.
It sounds kind of like you simply want a file that says "double click me to play my mod", I'm not sure if you can make a map file so it automatically opens SCII and runs the map with all the integration into bnet and such.
I never messed around with the WC3 AI much, but from what I've seen of the SCII editor, it has a few nice things in it such as "simulated APM" (which isn't really that well implamented) as well as the typical FSMs that permiate AIs in prety much all games currently made (and I hate it!... lol, but that's an entirely different matter).
@DJSplendid: Go Actually... if you've ever read a EULA, you'd know that you're basically "being allowed" to use their (or any company for that matter) software, and they may change or discontinue your service at any time, for any reason. Yes, you technically, physically own the magnetic plates (or polymer ?substrate? if you have an SSD), but technically, blizzard could legally forbid you from using their software just cause they wanna, and I'd be willing to bet, president asside, take action to have it forcibly removed. Not that any company would risk the fallout, nor spend the money to do so... And it goes without saying, cracking or hacking software goes against this EULA like opening most electronics voids the warranty. I run a CD crack on a lot of my older software, but regardless of how high a box you stand on, it's technically prohibited.
welll if you need to submet afdivid say no i do not agree with your trems an state your own trems
I created a similar program for SC:BW called BWAI Launcher. It is a little different to what you will have to do because in the backend it used a separate program called an SEMPQ to open SC and inject a custom MPQ (containing the compiled AI's) into its memory, which would let the AI apply to any map you would play. Since there is probably no way to inject an MPQ into SC2's memory at the moment (and would probably be a tough thing to do), you will probably be limited to injecting the AI into 1 specific map then launching SC2 into that map. So your program would ask for a map to play, you would copy that map to a temp file, then inject your AI into it (remember, maps are just MPQ's) and run SC2 with the temp map.
Now I'm not sure which MPQ library you would use, when I was working on my SC:BW modding tools back on Leopard I compiled SFMpq for OSX myself, but then I couldn't get it to compile for Snow Leopard (and havn't even thought about Lion). I think I remember seeing some Cocoa (if you are doing Cocoa) frameworks but I never tried them out.
Anyway, good luck and if you have any questions i'll try to help!
Edit: Just noticed this thread was just necroed and esotericmoniker hasn't logged in in 2 years :(
I was interested in how the various SC2 launcher applications interface with Starcraft. Are there command line parameters that are being set or is there some sort of interprocess communication that is needed to inject values into SC2? I looked around for an open source launcher so I could get some ideas but didn't find anything. I'm interested in getting something like the AllIn1 launcher working for OSX so I can use custom AI's. Any place I can be directed to learn more?
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ModeratorsThe All In 1 launcher is a hack and we won't distribute hacks here. You don't need hacks to run Custom AI on a map, you can just implement the AI in... any map.
You can also make a program to run a map from a directory (and include the AI script) if you want.
The way they work is by changing the MapInfo file (inside the map mpq) which holds the lobby informations (default AI in this case). So it's not really hard to do.
However if you are about to change the team information, it's going to be harder as it does not belong to the map file but you have to change the Starcraft memory.
While here on mapster we encourage you to do 3rd party apps that interact with the game in order to provide better mapping tools, the launchers are primarily used by people to play without buying the game. Therefore this is under high surveillance by Blizzard and we don't want to have problems because of that :)
Sixen: Thanks for your reply. I was unaware that the All In 1 launcher contained shenanigans like a hack, I referenced it simply because I most frequently see people explaining how to launch Green Tea and other AI's using it.
As for building an app to run a map from a directory and include a particular AI, that's *exactly* what I want to look into doing and any info you can shed on how exactly that might be done (how do you launch SC2 on a specific map and how would you dynamically attach a particular AI), would be *very* helpful. I am a software developer so I can handle the custom app part I just don't know what the app should be doing.
vjeux: Thank you for that info. I am starting to get a vague idea of how that is supposed to fit together. The app I'm thinking about would be just for training for competitive multiplayer. So it would be only for legit versions and just to set up against the various AI's to train against. I also wanted to make using something like YABOT + Green Tea possible to launch on OSX since the only way I've seen people reference getting that working is also with one of those "launchers". I'll refrain from talking about creating a "launcher" if that term has negative connotations.
@esotericmoniker: Go
If its for training .... why dont you just open SC2 and play against computers.... that is if you actually paid for the game.
There is no reasonable need for opening the game with a different program just to play the game.
Oh and when you play against comps you can set the AI..... why would you need another program to do this?
There are AIs way better and more challenging than Blizz's standard AI, that's what the program would be for
@TheAlmaity: Go
Show me these AI's that are better then blizzard's AI's.
AI's are coded in triggers, and effected by unit prioity settings in the data editor ..... which would be something that is controlled in game. Still no reason you would need a launcher.
@SouLCarveRR: Go
I would think it's because people like breaking systems and stuff. For instance someone may like playing with a custom launcher because they like the fact that blizzard doesn't like it, even if it does nothing extra and you could get banned for it, or like making one because they can and find it a challenge.
@wOlfLisK: Go
All you need to do to make a luancher is open vb
make a button
under button do a
run cmd ( path to sc2)
and wallah a launcher......
@esotericmoniker: Go What AI are you attempting to implament? Just a custom one you made? or a modified one from another game. If you are simply trying to get the tools to modify one from the game, I'd suggest simply using the tools Blizzard gives you... Since the Galaxy Editor has a lot of restrictions (primarily no pointers) most any other AI you implament from anywhere would simply not function, let alone all the modification it would require to work, you might as well learn, and build an AI within Galaxy.
It sounds kind of like you simply want a file that says "double click me to play my mod", I'm not sure if you can make a map file so it automatically opens SCII and runs the map with all the integration into bnet and such.
I never messed around with the WC3 AI much, but from what I've seen of the SCII editor, it has a few nice things in it such as "simulated APM" (which isn't really that well implamented) as well as the typical FSMs that permiate AIs in prety much all games currently made (and I hate it!... lol, but that's an entirely different matter).
@DJSplendid: Go Actually... if you've ever read a EULA, you'd know that you're basically "being allowed" to use their (or any company for that matter) software, and they may change or discontinue your service at any time, for any reason. Yes, you technically, physically own the magnetic plates (or polymer ?substrate? if you have an SSD), but technically, blizzard could legally forbid you from using their software just cause they wanna, and I'd be willing to bet, president asside, take action to have it forcibly removed. Not that any company would risk the fallout, nor spend the money to do so... And it goes without saying, cracking or hacking software goes against this EULA like opening most electronics voids the warranty. I run a CD crack on a lot of my older software, but regardless of how high a box you stand on, it's technically prohibited.
My point is .... Make your AI with GE...... I highly doubt anybody in thier right mind would hack the game when blizzard already lets you add to the AI in game....
I have already seen custom AI's. One was of a single phenix owning 100 muta. The guy wrote an advanced ai for the phenix so it never let the muta get in range.
The truth is if your talking about SUPER COMPUTER AI..... SC2 really wasnt made for that..
And the computers do micro.... if you say they dont at all..... you prolly kinda suck..
delete this
@Sixen: Go
The launchers were mostly made during beta, because the beta passes were so few and far between, using a launcher let you play vs ai that wasn't written in the galaxy editor because... the galaxy editor wasn't out.
also. yeah it's pretty much a hack.
I wanted to integrate the Green Tea AI. There are map packs released occasionally but often they lag behind releases of the AI itself and it seems to get broken by each major patch. I will look into just opening up the editor and integrating the AI in there. Thanks for the info.
It would be nice also to have a launcher that is for custom campaigns.
The launcher would:
1. Install/Uninstall a folder containing maps into sc2 maps directory.
2. Install/Uninstall Mod files from the mods folder.
3. Launch a map from #1 directly from your desktop.
This would be awesome too.
Whatever you do, wholeheartedly, moment by heartfelt moment, becomes a tool for the expression of your very soul.
welll if you need to submet afdivid say no i do not agree with your trems an state your own trems
Hey esotericmoniker,
I created a similar program for SC:BW called BWAI Launcher. It is a little different to what you will have to do because in the backend it used a separate program called an SEMPQ to open SC and inject a custom MPQ (containing the compiled AI's) into its memory, which would let the AI apply to any map you would play. Since there is probably no way to inject an MPQ into SC2's memory at the moment (and would probably be a tough thing to do), you will probably be limited to injecting the AI into 1 specific map then launching SC2 into that map. So your program would ask for a map to play, you would copy that map to a temp file, then inject your AI into it (remember, maps are just MPQ's) and run SC2 with the temp map.
Now I'm not sure which MPQ library you would use, when I was working on my SC:BW modding tools back on Leopard I compiled SFMpq for OSX myself, but then I couldn't get it to compile for Snow Leopard (and havn't even thought about Lion). I think I remember seeing some Cocoa (if you are doing Cocoa) frameworks but I never tried them out.
Anyway, good luck and if you have any questions i'll try to help!
Edit: Just noticed this thread was just necroed and esotericmoniker hasn't logged in in 2 years :(