[HN Gopher] RTS for Agents
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RTS for Agents
Author : summoned
Score : 96 points
Date : 2026-01-16 18:20 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.getagentcraft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.getagentcraft.com)
| bob1029 wrote:
| I think this is a really cool idea.
|
| What would stop us from making it multiplayer and having two or
| more human players compete over common resources & goals?
| Folcon wrote:
| To be honest as far as I can see the answer to that is nothing
|
| I've been getting increasingly interested in trying to work out
| what this would look like
| MattRix wrote:
| I don't know if this is a joke but isn't the answer just... a
| regular RTS game?
| Finbel wrote:
| One fun thing would be to raise the abstraction level of
| the game.
|
| How would it feel to only interact with your
| base/economy/army via prompting and face someone doing the
| same.
|
| Would words per minute replace APM, what would the meta
| look like etc. Would you be able to adjust the system
| prompt for your "army" to suit your play style?
| dugidugout wrote:
| I get the feeling you are approaching Hesse's Glass Bead
| Game.
| MattRix wrote:
| I'm sure it would be fun at first, but it would quickly
| become frustrating and repetitive.
| Gabrys1 wrote:
| then, you would automate that
| 2001zhaozhao wrote:
| Imagine being able to vibecode your units' attack and
| movement behavior during a match to dynamically counter
| enemy strategies.
| modeless wrote:
| Like a regular RTS except instead of pointing with the
| mouse you have to plead with and threaten your troops to
| get them into battle?
| staindk wrote:
| "you are an elite five star navy seal pikeman. You are
| invulnerable and have precise aim. Your name is John Wick
| and the enemy killed your dog. Kill all the bad guys or
| go to jail"
| bob1029 wrote:
| Perhaps it's not a competitive game. Maybe the better
| approach is to have all players cooperate against the
| environment.
| samsolomon wrote:
| Man, I could see the next Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander-
| like game where rough orders/instructions are given to commanders
| and they carry out those commands.
|
| The scale of those games was already nuts, but that would 10x
| things.
| Iv wrote:
| BAR (https://www.beyondallreason.info/) is an open source TA
| clone that proposes massive scale and that is totally open.
| After the recent disappointment over a series of failures to
| bring a new big RTS game in the last 2 years, the RTS community
| talks a lot about this one.
|
| The mechanics are old school, as with basically all RTS, but
| the openness allows for far more experiments than one would
| assume in a proprietary game.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| I'm reminded of an obscure Gamecube game called Odama
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odama) which was kind of a
| bizarre blend between pinball + RTS, where you commanded feudal
| Japanese troops using the Gamecube Microphone. Of course, this
| was 2006, so it only accepted a short list of vocal commands
| like "Company halt!" and "Charge!"
| jjmarr wrote:
| The revealed preference of players is for terrible AI so games
| are easier. That's why AI has been going downhill.
|
| Payday 2 is my favourite example since they've had a bug since
| Day 1 that lobotomizes the AI subsystem.
|
| Specifically, there's a global cap of 1 action for all enemies
| per game tick, so when there's too many enemies the reaction
| time is 5 seconds.
|
| The mod Full Speed Swarm fixes this bug and the game is
| unplayable without collaboration and a lot of skill.
|
| It's also unnoticeable until you die or if you do a ton of
| research on the AI. I used to host pubs with the mod to troll
| other players who suddenly found the game impossible to play at
| lower difficulties.
|
| I think it's possible we get an AI driven RTS but the demand is
| too small right now unless its a recruitment vehicle for the
| military.
| erikw wrote:
| I don't know about this... I think that the "expert" AIs on
| RTS games just get more resources (not compute resources, but
| in-game resources) so they can create more units. I'd love to
| play against an AI component that has the same resource
| collection speed as the human player.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I still remember the mod scene in original StarCraft (+
| Brood War) - it got to the point of supplying alternative
| AI algorithms, and there were plenty of non-cheating ones
| that were a noticeable step up in difficulty. At that point
| I already played competitively with friends and on-line, so
| they were only _very challenging_ to me; for a new player,
| or someone casually doing the single player campaign, or
| just me a year earlier, they 'd be impossible to beat.
| gs17 wrote:
| Yeah, cheating with resources or vision is disappointingly
| common. I remember the Green Tea AI for Starcraft 2 being
| pretty hard, but it looks like above "medium" it cheats
| (but the TL wiki does say "very easy", which will give you
| 10 minutes to set up, is equivalent to Blizzard's
| "harder").
| margorczynski wrote:
| I wonder how strong such an agent would be today if years
| ago AlphaStar was on par with pros. All those fun projects
| (the one with Dota 2) died out when LLMs took the scene and
| RL died out.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Whether better AI is fun or not depends on (A) the sorts of
| advantages/disadvantages it is given and (B) its skill level
| compared to the player.
|
| When people say they want better AI, they mean they want
| smarter + human-like AI without "cheating" (more resources,
| perfect aim, rubber banding, perfect knowledge, etc).
|
| And even if you build a human-like AI, it's not going to be
| fun for players if it's too good, just like how humans have
| the most fun playing against other players at their level,
| not against the top-ranked players in the world.
|
| So to keep AI fun, there is always going to be artificial
| limitations, and "people want terrible AI" doesn't really
| capture that.
|
| One example might be games where you can hear footsteps or a
| branch snap. With stereo audio, you could technically derive
| exactly where someone is, possibly even which room they are
| in. When that raw signal is provided directly to a machine,
| it might accidentally be too good, know which bush you
| crawled into, and shoot into it.
|
| Yet humans would only be able to go "I think I heard a branch
| snap" or "someone must be creeping up on me" even though they
| are given the same signal as the AI.
| whs wrote:
| I wish there's a RuneScape server for bots. A game where it is
| both fun to play manually, and automated. Quests, for example, is
| a one-off thing where it could be fun for the player and not
| really useful to automate since it is a one-off task (unless
| you're running bot farm).
|
| I don't think the main game would encourage that - the more
| obscure the protocol, the less bot in the actual game (even
| though I don't think it's hard to find protocol documentation or
| just plug into an official client). OpenRSC, a revival of
| RuneScape Classic do have botting worlds, but personally RSC is
| not "fun" for me.
|
| There are programmer games like Screeps (which the new Arena
| version just launched at the end of last year), but those game
| usually do not allow manual play or only indirect play. I tried
| Screeps, but I'm not good at strategy games, so once I get the
| runtime working I lose interest and none of my friend would want
| to help me strategize in game that they do not understand.
| Folcon wrote:
| Genuine question to you as someone who's been building in this
| space, what would you want / need to play a game as a
| programmer?
|
| An API? An SDK? An in-game editor? Tutorials? Or is this more a
| "I want a factorio-like"?
|
| I've been building economic engines and simulations for the
| last few years now and over the last 3 months in my off time
| I've been getting increasingly in the weeds about how to design
| a game that fits this
|
| I've specifically been exploring using a voxel game as a base
| (think minecraft-like) however because I'm deeply interested in
| minion management / design I've been looking at how to create a
| programming / play experience that actually is fun and makes
| sense
|
| What I'm trying to understand is what is the fun overlap
| between these
|
| I have some opinions / ideas of my own and what I've been
| trying to do, however I'd be really interested in what other
| people are looking for to see where the overlap is and whether
| it fits the shape of what I'm building and whether I want to
| really commit the time to prototyping some things to see if
| there is interest to support this type of playstyle
|
| Just to be super clear, what I've built so far specifically is
| targeting multiplayer
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| There is some prior art of this nature, such as screeps, that
| you might find useful as reference material (if you aren't
| already aware of it).
| Folcon wrote:
| I am thank you, however the reason I'm engaging here is
| that what's being asked for from what I can see is a very
| different experience to screeps, for example screeps is top
| down much more programmer designed and has specific
| affordances and design to create the automated experience
| via being a developer
|
| The reason I'm comparing it to factorio is because that
| game though still top down is designed specifically with a
| player in mind automating their labor and then slowly
| taking on a complex logistics game as they go and doing so
| fully in the game, the play is in laying out structures
| within the game
|
| Satisfactory for example has different choices that lead to
| different gameplay as it's first person 3d, the play is in
| setting up and managing logistical structures and hitting
| production targets
|
| That is interesting, however for my tastes both of these
| are a little too static an experience for what I want to
| build
|
| I'm still working out the details of what I'm putting
| together, but I have a decent high level idea of what my
| goals are =)
|
| What I want to know is, if people play this kind of game,
| what are they looking for / wanting?
|
| What's a good "MVP" or minimal gameloop that would feel
| satisfying?
|
| I want to quickly work out if I can serve either the
| gameplay desire or the gameplay fantasy or if it is just
| too hard to provide a fun experience for this kind of play
| in which case I should table this and focus on what I'm
| currently doing
|
| However I'm still engaging with this because I would like
| to create a fun playspace here I just don't know what other
| programmers would want especially in the context of what
| the GP was asking, which is a mix of manual intervention
| and programming / automation
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| I can't speak for all programmers, but as a game
| developer myself, my take is: your very job as a game
| developer, above all, is to find the fun. This is
| especially prudent if you're making a game for other
| programmers. If I already had a solid idea in my head for
| what would be an amazingly fun programming-oriented game,
| I would... program it myself. I don't have such a concept
| in mind. I believe finding those concepts is something
| you have to find out by tinkering with ideas, building
| prototypes, working out the implementation details and
| seeing what you yourself enjoy.
| Folcon wrote:
| I don't disagree with any of that =)
|
| It's what I've been doing, I'm asking what I'm asking to
| see if it surfaces anything that I've been missing / not
| thinking about and trying to work out what people would
| see as table stakes
|
| In the same way that I know that playtesting reveals
| flaws and gaps in my design and thinking, this is a
| earlier version of that process that has in my experience
| helped me when building non-game related things
|
| It may very much be the case that this is not the kind of
| thing that I should do when focused on building a game,
| but I don't think it hurts to ask
| whs wrote:
| Other people have described Factorio-style game, or idle
| RPGs. I think for a Factorio-style game, Desynced might be a
| better programming game. I haven't play it for quite some
| time, but last I remember it has a visual editor and
| automation bots in early tech tree. In Factorio, if you craft
| a green circuit board it automatically craft all the
| precursors from iron/copper plates in your inventory. In
| Desynced you have to do all that manually, which force you to
| use the automation system right up front. However, it's not
| fun repeating code blocks to build different simple things,
| and it's not fun that you have to solve both gaming problems
| (eg. I need to build my base, what should I build next) and
| programming problems (eg. write flood fill bot to explore for
| resources) at the same time.
|
| The problem with these kinds of game is at some point you'll
| run into tech debts - your factory layout is not optimal, and
| the game optimize your starting zone so migrating out means
| you may lose simple access to starting resources. I tried
| optimizing for large factory up front, but it's like a
| startup with a monolith running on a Kubernetes.
|
| Satisfactory solved this by having a fixed map and 3D, but it
| comes with its own challenges. Good Company partially solved
| this by replacing belts with humans who can walk anywhere you
| want, and introduce belt at a late game stage (which I quit
| around that stage - the game already gets repetitive by that
| point).
|
| Anyway, what I was describing was not those kind of
| automation games. RuneScape is an RPG game with over 20+
| skills. What make it interesting is that RuneScape bot
| engines (which exists, but is illegal) do provide all the
| high level primitives for you in Java. You could provide a
| world coordinate and a walking script will do all the walk
| for you even if it is the other side of the world map. It
| should felt like making games in Scratch instead of
| reinventing serialization in Screeps.
|
| Other games with scripting also often don't allow human-in-
| the-loop. If a bot in an automation game get stuck because
| you forgot to program how to restock teleports, you have to
| stop it and reprogram. RuneScape bots don't block inputs - if
| you forgot to make the bot handle stamina exhaustion just
| click the run button yourself without stopping the script.
|
| RuneScape also comes with strategizing for the human, while
| the solution space is quite fixed and well discussed by the
| community if you don't want to find out yourselves. If your
| Slayer task is green dragons, do you go to a spot that is far
| from a bank and lose efficiency or give up the loot, or do
| you go to PvP zone and use cannon (multi target auto turret)?
| If I write a bot, I probably will write a Wildy Green Dragon
| script instead of a generic fight-anything script so that it
| will know to bring cannon and place it at the optimal spot to
| target all spawns at once. Same goes for many other skills -
| if I train crafting or construction do I sink millions and go
| for the highest XP rate or do I go very slowly and get a
| slight profit out of it.
|
| I'd also add that having a community marketplace would also
| helps. RuneScape have underground marketplace for bots, with
| free scripts that probably get you banned, and paid "private"
| scripts that supposedly undetected. I also have played Mars
| First Logistics where you build a vehicle Lego-style, then
| deliver weird cargo like a block of ice or a crate of oranges
| without a lid. The game have Steam Workshop support where you
| can just skip building your own vehicle and try to drive
| someone else's vehicle to destination. I got an ice block
| pusher, which I need to figure out how to put the ice in
| (just surround the block, close gate so the block cannot
| escape), then the map has hills that make your ice fall over
| the bottom anyway.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Not OP but for me the appeal would be in botting a game
| that's made for humans, and not a game made specifically made
| for botting. Let me use autohotkey, or modify the client, or
| do any of the things real botters do, don't worry about
| providing an API. Just let me register a character as a bot
| and restrict it to a separate server that can't interact with
| the main game servers/economy, and disable anti-botting
| protection. Maybe make it require something like CURLing an
| endpoint so that regular users can't accidentally create a
| character on the bot world.
|
| But this would probably never fly because it would become a
| training ground for people who make malicious bots.
| Zarathruster wrote:
| As a programmer I'd be happy with an API, so I can keep
| working in the environment I'm accustomed to. Programmers can
| get very picky when it comes to their ergonomics, so it would
| be wise to let them handle this part.
|
| This, however, would be a significant obstacle to non-
| programmers. You might consider offering an in-game editor
| similar to Scratch or BYOB for people who want to dip into
| programming. It'd be a fun way for them to learn
| alexpotato wrote:
| This is basically Factorio.
|
| You start out very manual and then automate more and more parts
| of the game.
|
| There is even a "signal network" function that can be used to
| program.
|
| You can continue to do things in manual ways even later in the
| game.
|
| EDIT: changed to "manual ways"
| graypegg wrote:
| Honestly, as someone that's been picking up OSRS again (and is
| actually now thinking about RS3 given all of the recent
| progress jagex is making on removing MTX in it!), I'd be good
| with that. I still like to play it myself without botting, so
| anything to move the bots somewhere else I think would be neat.
| PvP folk lose some easy kills but that's about it for impact on
| regular players honestly.
|
| The problem is, the reason the bots exist now is to sell the
| account or farm gp. The only way this would work would be if
| that bot only world was gated off from the rest of the economy
| like special gamemode/league worlds, naturally destroying any
| reason most bot makers make bots. Your love of automating for
| sport puts you in the minority of botters sadly haha
|
| Officially blessed OSRS private servers are on the roadmap
| IIRC... maybe there's a future for a bot-olympics in one of
| those?
| nickzelei wrote:
| The official private servers were paused recently.
| https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Project_Zanaris
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Erenshor is sort of what you want, its fully offline, reminds
| me of Runescape. All the other players are NPCs technically.
|
| I have thought of the same btw. There's also an actual Idler
| MMO on Steam I think is Free to Play called Idleon or something
| like that, its more side scroller though. You can play it and
| progress, or you can idle and let your character level as well.
| bhu8 wrote:
| Very nice! I am working on something very similar at
| www.viberia.net
|
| My take was that it's easier to trace who is doing what (and what
| the agent hierarchy looks like) when agents' locations are fixed.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The cool thing is these kind of agents don't run on LLMs, they
| run on classical methods like GOAP and utility AI, etc.
| Johnny_Bonk wrote:
| I wonder if this is a fork of gas town...
| adusal wrote:
| Release coming soon! Many of the ideas here are actually in the
| roadmap :D
|
| For more context:
| https://x.com/idosal1/status/2011886884830789808
| ironbound wrote:
| Reminds me of the project
| https://neuralmmo.github.io/_build/html/rst/landing.html
| egeozcan wrote:
| I've been developing an rts using coding agents
| https://egeozcan.github.io/unnamed_rts/ - lots of borrowed ideas
| from red alert.
|
| it's super buggy and yet doesn't work on mobile but it's been my
| childhood dream to make an rts and I have something I can have
| fun adding different dynamics.
|
| it's much more fun to watch the agent struggle developing an AI
| instead of play the game itself (tried that at the beginning
| too).
| ilvez wrote:
| Prompt-prompt!
| cdea wrote:
| This is like if the game in Severance was fun
| monday_ wrote:
| Tokens are actually a very good RTS resource. If you allocate a
| fixed amount of tokens per map, a side with more of them would be
| able to spawn more agent units, or a few smarter hero units (with
| /think).
|
| I imagine this also works in multiplayer
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Youngsters may not know about Core War, a competitive game for
| agents that debuted in 1984, and it's predecessor Darwin from
| 1961.
|
| The difference in compute scale between the Darwin winning
| program (44 machine instructions) and an agent today that calls
| into an LLM is rather mind boggling.
|
| https://corewar.co.uk
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(programming_game)
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