Widgets vs Cheating

It does matter whether or not code actually runs. Digging something up from 2016 that is incompatible with 2020 ZK and did absolutely nothing at the time anyways is far from an AI "assistant".

What you are doing is scaremongering through spreading misinformation.

This is ultimately a question of ethics.

The ethics of fairness is stupid cause people are stupid.

Fairness is enforced by violence, physical or emotional.

The devs/admin don't really care about this topic, they would rather not enforce against this kind of thing.

The code clearly states Widgets assistance is allowed and there is no line to limit what level of assistance is allowed.

I don't mean to say dev/admin sucks, it is just we havent had a guy that we really need to deal with cause of this topic.

Pretty sure if such a guy comes along with a really unfair widget something would be done.

Until then, meh, whatever, widgets arent fair blah blah blah, widgets are cool blah blah blah

quote: Imo there should be an option in autohost lobbies and in custom made lobbies to disable widgets for all players. I also don't think players in matchmaking should be able to use their widgets to get an advantage too.

This exists in advanced options.

There is a lot of repetition here so let me start with some distracting points that I already consider settled.

quote: As I've said in the last few threads, as long as widgets are publicly available (and are merged in as optional widgets after development is complete) I see no problem with them.

"Publicly available" could mean posted on an obscure website and linked to one time. Any widget can be merged and disabled by default if I click the merge button, regardless of whether it works for more than its creator or not. Here is how it is:

• If a widget or setting cannot be enabled without ticking Advanced Settings or opening the widget list then it may as well not exist for most players. You cannot expect everyone to want to dig through all the technical nonsense just to play the game. We already expect people to bind obscure hotkeys if they want to maximise their abilities.
• Putting a widget or behaviour change in the game in a form that many people can actually use takes a lot of work. Few widget creators seem interested in putting in this level of work.

The fact of the matter is that there is a big difference between making a widget for yourself and making something that could improve the game for everyone. Widgets help their creators. Game development helps everyone.

quote: They mostly make things a lot less frustrating.

quote: I think widget development should be encouraged as much as game development. I'd even say widget development is game development. Since widgets are what allows ZK to be so fluid and intuitive to play.

quote: Besides the part on how to go about new developments, wouldn't you agree that ZK's open widget policy has allowed for the game to make its own niche in the first place? Would ZK be worth playing over other games if it had all automation disabled and was limited to point commands?

quote: Automation moves the game away from micro and towards macro strategizing, which is a good thing to me. But, I suppose a bad thing for players who feel like micro skills are a valuable part of the game.

quote: Unit auto-fight behavior is AI-based assistance though, and I don't think anyone wants that to go away.

quote: I actually have no problem with Widgets in general, as they usually reduce unnecessary micro. This helps the game in general to give more time to think about a strategy and how to approach engagements on multiple fronts at the same time.

I don't think any of this matters to the question at hand. Those worried about widgets (excluding PRO_rANDY) are worried about the single widget that breaks the game, not the 99 others that give people a little QoL or customisation. What widgets 'usually' do is not relevant, and the benefits they have conveyed in the past only matters as much as we expect similar benefits in the future. Blocking problematic widgets and leaving the others unaffected is just about impossible

quote: That's the opposite of what I wanted to say. I think widget development should be encouraged as much as game development. I'd even say widget development is game development. Since widgets are what allows ZK to be so fluid and intuitive to play.

Do widgets help development? In the present? As far as I can recall the last time a true player widget was merged into the default UI was 2013. This is the Newton Firezones widget, and I still had to write the settings and other integration for it.

Widgets that break the game are less "helping development" and more forcing me to do tedious stuff that, in the end, has very little impact on the game. If someone really thinks that they are helping by "pointing out" some minor flaw in the mechanics then they could simply fix the game instead of putting in all the effort to write the widget in the first place.

quote: They mostly make things a lot less frustrating.

Patching game mechanics "revealed" by widgets to be frustrating is a process of diminishing returns, and we are at the thin end. At the start we were sweeping away many frustrations of the type dyth68 alludes to. Ordinary players were benefiting from reworked mechanics or extra unit AI that made the game better, and relatively cheaply. Now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel and many of the widget fixes on the horizon look both expensive to implement and liable to actually make the UI worse. Not all widgets do things that a human could feel frustrated in being 'forced' to do to play well.

Consider prefire. To patch the problems of prefire we would have to either delete AoE weapons or hamper the interface for force firing at the ground. If instead we included prefire then suddenly all the unit AI would become worse, in lieu of a massive amount of programming work for essentially no benefit. In both cases the UI for most of the people playing the game has been degraded for little improvement.

At this point I think I can safely say that players writing their own widgets does not, on balance, "help development". If anyone disagrees then they can put their time where their mouth is an actually help development. So with that revelation, widgets are not banned for the following reasons:

• A fraction of the playerbase finds the fun of ZK in writing and messing about with widgets.
• Widgets help developers test stuff.
• The hope that they might someday resume helping development.

Patches that stop widgets breaking the game exist to serve that fraction of the playerbase, since the alternative is blocking local widgets. Nobody else is feeling the benefit from it. Maybe those players should step up and patch their problems.

quote: My angle is that casual should allow widgets, and ranked play should not. If that would be bad for widget users who enjoy ranked play, we really need to address the different ladders we support. Vanilla ranked, widget enabled ranked, casual 1v1, teams, ffa etc. A lot of work.

quote: I think custom widgets are fine for casual play but should be disabled on the ranked matchmaker.

The widgets that 'break' the game affect balance, and I am not going to balance two separate games. I am responsible for making sure that the whole of teams does not devolve into widgetised precision Lobster clouds, even if such a thing is blocked in the matchmaker.

Would you propose that non-MM games have a modifier that gives AoE units more range? Because that is essentially equivalent to only allowing local widgets in battlerooms (with the implication that the problems they raise are never addressed).

quote: Bots will become better than some players as time progresses. Already now Circuit AI would outperform more than half of the competitive 1v1 ladder. That is no reason to ban automation or stop us from having fun. It is up to the player to choose his level of automation and the control he wants to retain. If your Matchmaker opponent decides to use some AI to boost his skills the Matchmaker should take ratings into account to keep the games balanced. If you don't want to play against robots, just look at the top Starcraft players, their playing is much more robotic than Godde in ZK with all its automation tools.

This paragraph isn't convincing anyone who isn't already a full cyborg. If you can't see that there is a difference between playing against a player and playing against a bot then you're going to have real trouble talking to half the people in this thread.

Eventually AI is going to become powerful enough for a widget ban to be required. What if such players swarm the matchmaker? Where do new players who want to play people play?

I'm feeling very guilty atm because I've been promising certain patches relating to unit AI for ages now and haven't gotten around to it. :(

quote: that big number is the reclaim amount on the floor, the scorpion is cloaked you could tell by its icon, you could tell if it was stunned too, and those structures are in progress.

These kinds of things really should be in the optional widget list that comes with Zero K.

quote: I personally still have never used a widget but I wouldn't mind using some that are just QoL in the future if I see any that I find worth using

You've played Zero K, so you've used widgets. You just presumably have only used the ones that are installed and enabled by default.

quote: In case of local widgets the motivation is to win more games.

malric: This is not true, at least in my case. My motivation is to reduce micromanagement and frustration.

quote: In case of local widgets the motivation is to win more games.

Citation needed.

quote: ZK strives to be a "physically simulated game"

No it does not. The physics is a tool for inserting creativity, diversity, and intuitive behaviour. A lot of physics, even the deep end of Newtonian physics, is not intuitive or fun.

quote: How did the current game developers started?

See "Do widgets help development? In the present?..."

quote: These kinds of things really should be in the optional widget list that comes with Zero K.

What are you talking about?

quote: You've played Zero K, so you've used widgets.

quote: Thanks to the integration of unit AI, I would say that everyone using it already is that "full cyborg"

Obviously nobody is using 'widgets' or 'cyborg' to mean what you two are trying to morph them into meaning.

quote: turrets firing over their range was a thing that could be abused before it was widgetized, but its widgetization made it bad enough to warrant a fix.

I don't remember there being a widget before I blocked this. Otherwise, this is irrelevant. See "Now we're scraping the bottom of the barrel..."

quote: Our current set of controls is what we've become used to - what we call human/normal play, even though it would be considered blatant cheating in other games. So why does more powerful AI equal to us having to ban it? Where does powerful UI suddenly turn into bot? Why can't we eventually have a smart-attack command that tells units to prioritize specific targets, regroup with nearby allies or avoid porc?

I have answers to these questions, that I have spread throughout threads and decisions. If ZK is going to be an RTS rather than a coder AI playground the design needs these answers. The line is somewhere around the point that the AI is making decisions. Players need to be able to accurately predict the behaviour resulting from their commands or the commands become magical black boxes. There is a big difference between telling a constructor "reclaim everything in this area" and "go do the optimal economic actions in this area".

Also.. "If you can't see that there is a difference between playing against a player and playing against a bot then you're going to have real trouble talking to half the people in this thread."

quote: The line is somewhere around the point that the AI is making decisions. Players need to be able to accurately predict the behaviour resulting from their commands or the commands become magical black boxes

This line is something I don't understand. I have played this game for quite a bit, but I could never tell you what a unit on free-roam is going to do, or how a unit on fight-move will behave. Chase, skirm, low-priority target classes are changing without the player knowing about it, and even if they didn't it is very hard to follow the unit AI's decision making without looking at the code. I know Scorchers should automatically dive against some units and kite some others, but this is something I have been unable to predict. Then they also retreat from buildings when the building is about to explode and other special behavior. At that point I feel the scorcher dive/kite decision might as well be dictated by a neural net.

mojjj
I think there is a good reason to keep widgets available but not integrate them into the game without vetting. I'm all for open widgets, but UI wise this would just lead to players shooting themselves in the foot. There's a good reason the widget list is hidden behind some settings and I've seen enough players opting for a reinstall just a few minutes after I explained them how to access it. There's also the point of having a different configuration every game breaking balance.

GoogleFrog

quote: What are you talking about?

@Kurosei posted a screenshot of him using a whole bunch of widgets: https://zero-k.info/Forum/Post/219310#219310
I think most of those widgets demonstrated in the screenshot should become part of the standard widget set (even if disabled by default) as they substantially improve the game.

quote: Obviously nobody is using 'widgets' or 'cyborg' to mean what you two are trying to morph them into meaning.

You're right. I was trying to point out that there isn't a clear dividing line between widgets and widgets on a "what does this thing do" level.
The only distinction that some seem to care about is whether they are in this repo: https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/tree/master/LuaUI/Widgets
But I'm not convinced that's the real issue (I expect you'd probably accept PRs for most widgets provided they are disabled by default).

Maybe a more practical explanation of what I want to avoid is ZK being two different games whether you play as an AI or as a human. You should always be able to exploit weaknesses of the AI, but the AI shouldn't be able to exploit weaknesses of humans.

In Starcraft, AIs without APM limit play a completely different game than humans. A human would never be able to replicate what such an AI does. My goal for ZK would be that a human can always (at least theoretically) replicate what the AI does and use it for himself. This is not possible if some micro automation is inaccessible for the player.

This might seem like an impossible task, but ZK is fairly close to it currently. Depending on how we decide, this may in the future lead to AIs cheating by definition and void the "if you can't beat the AI, learn from the AI" slogan.

Dregs : There are still lots of low hanging fruit. Just look at any unit that requires lots of babysitting which should be fixed.
For instance, Lances will fire at fleas rather than waiting for the enemy Lance that's just about to enter range, Recluse will wander into Stingers and a group of Scythes will just sit there getting murdered by a Glaive if discovered (though the AvoidanceAI I made helps here).

Also, automation isn't the only type of widgetry. There's lots of potential UI things that could be improved (I believe @Kurosei posted a screenshot with examples).