
Super Smash Bros. Melee: An “Untouchable” Agent - jasonjmcghee
https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.03280
======
ibrault
In the discussion they mention:

> The major limitation of our project was the opposing player. Of course, we
> would have preferred training against human players who play Melee
> professionally.

An alternative training method could be through the use of the 20XX hack pack
[0], a mod of Super Smash Bros Melee that adds, among many useful features, an
improved AI. Here's a video of the AI from release 4.05 in action:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzl5NXV5bHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzl5NXV5bHQ)

The built-in SSBM AI is _very_ noticeably different from competitive play, and
the 20XX AI makes significant steps toward more human-like competitive play.
It would be interesting to see the results if trained on these AI.

[0] [https://smashboards.com/threads/the-20xx-melee-training-
hack...](https://smashboards.com/threads/the-20xx-melee-training-hack-
pack-v4-07-7-04-17.351221/)

~~~
clouddrover
> _The built-in SSBM AI is very noticeably different from competitive play_

And not necessarily that clever. Here are examples of the CPU losing to a
player who does nothing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwDngBhmQXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwDngBhmQXY)

~~~
agscala
This is not an example of dumb AI. cpus will lose to a non moving Luigi in
more than one smash game. It's intentional behavior.

~~~
adameast9000
Can you prove that it's intentional? It looks more like a very specific
positioning of the character relative to the map and a lot of trial and error
that is causing the cpu to kill itself

~~~
agscala
Sure, look at this video. This is the latest game in the series.

[https://youtu.be/SFBnhaXql24](https://youtu.be/SFBnhaXql24)

~~~
agscala
Holy crap after digging deeper this is actually just a meme I thought was an
actual thing for like the last 7 or 8 years. Whoops

------
cowsrool
[https://github.com/altf4/SmashBot](https://github.com/altf4/SmashBot)

Here is an AI that beat a ton of pro melee players. Video here
[https://youtu.be/o1bfQWy8o08](https://youtu.be/o1bfQWy8o08)

------
angel_j
"Our modern ML AI lasted almost a minute against 15 y.o. hand-coded AI, 74.5%
of the time!"

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tibbetts
If you just wanted the videos: [https://goo.gl/x67ioE](https://goo.gl/x67ioE).

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bfirsh
If you're on a phone, here's an HTML version of the paper: [https://www.arxiv-
vanity.com/papers/1712.03280/](https://www.arxiv-
vanity.com/papers/1712.03280/)

~~~
modulus1
Thanks, the video link in the pdf doesn't work, but the one here does:
[https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9SX5ANPyMzTNWgtMzdq...](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9SX5ANPyMzTNWgtMzdqa2JVQWM)

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joshuamorton
Mildly confused:

The paper claims there are only 5 used actions, but I also observed
wavedashing.

Also as an aside this is yet another in a series of not as cool as I'd hoped
melee ML projects :(

~~~
chis
I was pretty impressed by the Falcon AI earlier this year. He actually used
modern reinforcement learning to train from 0 instead of the crappy built in
AI. Also, his AI was limited to near-human reaction time (10 frames) which led
to a more human-looking agent.

At the end of the day these papers are from master's students. I think they're
both impressive in that context.

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.06230.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.06230.pdf)

~~~
adameast9000
Interestingly the reason they chose falcon was that he has no projectile
attacks. I also remember hearing that it could only play against other
falcons, and only on battlefield. But it could have been improved since then

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cwyers
Google Drive says the videos have exceeded some limit and can no longer be
played. Which, to me, suggests that maybe Google Drive is not the best place
to host videos.

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jimrandomh
> It learned to avoid the toughest AI built into the game for a full minute
> 74.6% of the time

No results against humans, though.

