HABAI testing release for ArmA:OA
Sep 12, 2012 Singleplayer Map 5 commentsThe idea here is to encourage testing of the ArmA2:OA set up and development of creative ideas for making the ArmA2:OA AI game as fun as possible. This...
HABAI
Battlefield 2 mod | TBD
Welcome to HABAI - Hardware Accelerated Battlefield AI
Give your bots the CPU cycles they deserve. They have earned it !
Hardware Accelerated Battlefield AI (HABAI) improves AI bot performance. At the present time it is only available for the Forgotten Hope mod for Battlefield 2. Support for other mods like AIX2 may follow as as for ArmA2:OA. What does this mean ? For the player it means more intense game play, with bots using and performing better with weapons and vehicles. That means blistering game play with more bullets flying, more explosions, more aggressive AI, more fun ! Mods without servers full of human players can be given a new lease of life. The AI is more difficult to play with as it responds faster. Clans can use this mod to improve training in BF2 with bots.
The mod will also allow easy switching of maps using the in game map voting menu. There will also a be a custom quick start GUI so single player and coop players can get quickly into a multicore accelerated game with the AI.
This screen shot shows the in game map chooser (map vote menu).
The mod will also fix the "autobalance.py" Python script provided by DICE as the current version does not balance bots when using more than 96 bots. At the present time the maximum 50/50 team balance can be achieved with 96 bots, with 48 on each team.
Yes, there really can be 96 bots balanced 50/50 in Battlefield 2 (plus one, me, the human player).
More bots can be added (up to 255 but that is a theoretical maximum) but one team will always be set at 48. With a fixed "autobalance.py" script balancing should be achievable for more than 96 bots. A solution will also be provided for becoming squad leader as when the maximum number of squads is reached it is not yet possible to become the squad leader. Other fixes and innovations may be developed.
The technical details
HABAI sets up a multi threaded environment for Battlefield 2
As the AI has a seperate CPU core all to itself the engine does not scale down AI performance. DICE have stated that their engine does indeed do this when resources are limited ...
Tobias_Karlsson_(DICE) wrote:"Battlefield [...] is a real time system, which means that all subsystems have a very limited amount off time to perform their calculations [...] The AI system is time sliced, that means that all the major [AI] systems can abort, break, or postpone their calculations if they run out of time."
Quoted from "An Introduction to AI in Battlefield 1942" [Battlefield 2 AI is an almost identical system], Tobias Karlsson, Digital Illusions CE AB, p4, 2003-11-07.
This is done by splitting server (AI/bots) and client (graphical) operations between cores (CPU affinity) on a single machine with a multicore CPU. This is currently working but was not easy to achieve because various server options are sometimes poorly documented and sometimes don't work as expected. More so the Battlefield 2 engine architecture, especially the operation of the AI, is not widely understood (I thank Void here for his help, see his ESAI ).
My testing shows much improved frame-rates ... for example there are no slow downs when there are lots of AI in one area. Benchmarks prove that there is an improvement. The important figure in the following tables is the "Avg" (average) number for FPS - Frames Per Second. The benchmarks were all taken on the same Forgotten Hope level, Anctoville, as all 48 bots of one side spawn in a single area. This is where AI slow down often occurs as well as framerate glitches. Benchmarks taken on Quadcore Q6600 and Nvidia 9800GT machine.
Fraps benchmark for a game started using the in game server creator.
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
1485, 60000, 15, 42, 24.750
Server and client on single core.
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
1657, 60000, 17, 60, 27.617
Server and client on seperate cores effectively making BF2 "multi-threaded".
Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
2713, 60000, 0, 61, 45.217
This improves AI performance as well as keeping the framerate in the graphical client as high as possible.
CREDITS
Very special thanks to everyone at battlefieldsingleplayer.com for keeping single player / coop alive. Thanks to the Forgotten Hope team for their high quality mod and for supporting AI. Thanks to Forgotten Hope single player fans in the FHSP forum section. Thanks to bfeditor.org for technical support. Thanks to djinn for moral support. Thanks to Void for AI enlightenment.
Latest Screens
Latest News: Progress update: Focus on AIX2 and some discoveries about patch 1.5
0 comments by DJ_Barney on Nov 23rd, 2012
I've been furiously testing HABAI. CPU's have been left glowing white hot ! I've discovered that a few problems that I've had have been due to using Battlefield 2 (BF2) patch 1.5.
So I installed a 1.41 version of BF2 and what a pleasure it is to use for a single player like me ! Now I can be in a squad and have full access to commander resources. AIX2 is also a pleasure to use in 1.41 as this is what it was designed for. What a shame that EA ruined this with the 1.5 patch, and with one of the major BF2 mods out there. Maybe they will amend their error one day, AIX2 devs would certainly deserve that.
Talking of AIX2, I am concentrating on an AIX2 release now (I need to change my mod page graphics). This makes sense as AIX2 has always been the mod aimed at bot game play. This is where the full benefits of HABAI can be seen - where the bots have access to as many functions as possible.
So now in 1.41 I can join a squad when the maximum number of squads has been reached AND become the squad leader.
1.5 would not allow this. This changes everything as the maximum number of bots is no longer an issue. The actual sane upper maximum is 108 bots in total as any more bots than this will not have orders from the commander and will stay in the area where they spawn. However they should react to nearby enemies. Machines with bigger CPU frequencies per core will be able to run more bots. But there may also be a limitation related to BF2 net code. I'm getting some occasional hit delays (there is a delay between a hit on a soldier and the actual death animation). However for the improvement in bot intelligence and reaction to their environment it would be small thing to put up with, and remember BF2 was probably never designed to have this many bots in it. This may all get cleared in further testing and settings tweaking
I need to do some more benchmarking but the best thing about all this is the stability of BF2 with the HABAI setup. In fierce bot encounters the frame rate on my machine can drop from ~50-60fps down to ~25fps but it's hardly noticeable. Before this set up I would get severe immersion killing stuttering with this number of bots in a game started from inside the client.
Keep on eye on Battlefieldsingleplayer.com in the next few weeks as I will be releasing something for others to test.
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Just wondering, is it possible for Squad Leaders in 1.5 to be modded so that they can use artillery strikes?
This mod is not release yet ?
Will this cause lag while playing FH2 singleplayer??
and is it possible that there will be a version for us BF2 1.5 users??
Anyways it's looking good! :)
Can you make bots pick you up in a chopper or car (in aix) because they leave me with only one person in a blackhawk and when I ask for a pickup, they always say no and fly away :'(
Why ARMA?
Because the technique (detailed above) is the same for ArmA and improves performance. But I know ArmA is not for everyone so I'm now working on a proper release for HABAI for Battlefield 2 that will include Forgotten Hope, AIX2 as well as a template to use for other mods. ArmA will come later as I'm only in the initial stages of testing.
Can you guys make one for Project Reality sometimes?
Eventually. A release for AIX2 and/or FH is the priority. PR is more tricky because they enforce install of PR into a 1.5 patch BF2. HABAI runs a lot better on 1.41 because 1.5 broke so many SP/Coop/AI elements. But if people really want it I could do a release for PR 1.5 anyway.
It'd be lovely!
Like someone stated most players play 1.5, due to the fact that's the official server versions. (FH2 player here)
Well that's okay, Just later when your first priorities are done.
And i really love that you guys are making this for ArmA 2, So i guess that should be finished first!
But anyway, Most people play FH2 on 1.5 because you can't play FH2 Multiplayer in 1.41