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A comment on DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft. Parent comment

Re:DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft by smilekzs on Sunday March 20, 2016 @09:58PM (#11325716)
The game is capable of accepting a much higher APM than Korean pro players are capable of pulling off even at peak. IMHO the AI should be subject to an APM limit (e.g. sliding window).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft by dogma1138 on Sunday March 20, 2016 @10:21PM (#11325796)
Not if it's done over the normal channels (USB) many players not even "pro korean" ones can easily encounter input issues like key rollover limits and polling rates on your mouse.

USB has quite a bit of limitation for HID's and allot of the gaming mice and keyboards use various hacks to overcome them.

Games and OS also have limits I can easily issue more commands using my keyboard than SC2 can handle so not all key presses will actually register.

Not to mention is that the game actually has to run on regular hardware, start spamming your keyboard in a game and you see the CPU spikes, the game loop also puts quite a bit of limits on how many interrupts per second it can catch, and how long does it take for it to actually switch context (e.g. SC2 build menus).

That said after AlphaSC2 destroys another Korean national passtime I would definitely love to see human like input being used by AlphaSC2.

Not because I think humans deserve a fair fight, but because i think the most interesting part will be to see how AlphaSC2 has to modify it's play style to compensate for the limitations of having to use "meatbag" control methods.

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Re:DeepMind Challenges for StarCraft by smilekzs on Monday March 21, 2016 @10:46AM (#11328408)
IIRC the entire input polling/NKRO issue can be solved by simply switching from USB2.0 FS (aka USB1.1) to HS, which requires a more powerful keyboard/mouse controller.
[ Parent | on HN ]