So what is the StarCraft Human 'N' AI League? (SCHNAIL)
First, there is a quite mature, and active scene about developing artificial intelligence for Starcraft: Brood War. If you haven't heard of that,
check out the Student StarCraft AI Tournament site. These are bots that play Brood War against each other. It's a fun and challenging field for
programmers to test themselves out. There is an online stream that you can watch, where these bots beat each other.
Okay, but how can I play against these bots?
Before this, setting that up was a chore. There was a tool called DropLauncher which could set it up, and it worked with some of the bots. But it wasn't well known,
and definitely wasn't well known. Then an idea was born, to bring this to modern times, and have a platform, that manages all of this for you. An online bot ladder, where
all of these AIs can participate, and you can test yourself out. So we quickly got to work, and named it ... Bladder (short for bot ladder) . Yeah, that name didn't have a nice ring to it,
so we finally settled on SCHNAIL - the StarCraft Human 'N' AI League. First we designed it to work in the cloud - and had a working protoype - but later decided against it, and made
it a simple desktop application. The prime goal for it is to be user-friendly, and easily usable. It should take care of everything, you just press play - no messing around with
bot files, and installing obscure frameworks.
Who is this for?
There are for groups we want to create this project for.
1. Casual gamers
Playing Brood War is fun, but there is a harsh difference between playing the campaign, or maybe some custom games vs. the computer, and going on Battle.net, or a LAN - the challenge
level is a magnitude harder. The bots on SCHNAIL can give you somewhat of a gradual increase. And also, not everyone wants the hassle that often accompanies online games - tedious
matchmaking, toxicity, etc. Sometimes you just want a little challenge in peace. An AI can provide just that, and give a higher replayability value than the stock computer script
from 1998.
2. Bot authors
Many authors love what they do, and can be quite competitive. The scene is somewhat small, though, and bot vs. bot matches are different than bot vs. human ones. Many authors
want to know how well their creations would perform "in the real world". This is a great field to improve programming skills, and get some recognition.
The technical expertise needed to develop a somewhat good bot is on par with experience needed for an actual job.
3. AI researchers
This group overlaps with bot authors to a large degree, but not quite the same. Brood War has became somewhat of a testbed for AI research in the past few years, and the
gameplay data is a valuable resource there. We intend to be open to any opportunity that can further artificial intelligence research.
4. (Aspiring) pro gamers
When you are trying to get a higher ranking on the ladder, be a better player, finding a practice partner can be hard. Even if you do, there is a chance your partner won't be
too consistent with his gameplay. A bot does not mind doing the exact same thing every time, and you can practice against certain races, and builds. Also, some bots give quite a challenge
already, and as time goes by, they'll only get better. (Just think of what AlphaStar did for SC2!). We hope that beating the top bots can become a proven track record in the
esports world in the future.
How can I actually use it?
When the project reaches the open beta stage, you'll be able to download the client from this page.
