Hey,
I'm interested in developing some ai tools that would assist a person while playing. Stuff like automatically building units under certain conditions and some micro tasks. If things go well I'd like to introduce some machine learning algorithms based on parsed replays to weight behaviors during certain circumstances. I haven't done hacks/scripts for games before, but I have a lot of programming and research experience. Basically I want to extract state information from the game, run some code, and issue commands during play. Anyone know how to get started on this?
As far as I'm aware, you won't be able to save data from within the scripting engine. Which means, without using third party software, you couldn't feasibly do what you're describing. The AI we're able to put in will be unable to "learn" because it has no way of saving or storing information about what is going on. While a truly adaptive AI would be fun to develop, it's just not do-able.
Having your replay parser would be of great help though. It takes a while to write things down on paper.
Where can I find one of those parsers?
The guy over at http://www.sc2rc.com/ (http://www.sc2rc.com/) has made a partial replay parser. That is, he extracts some basic info about the game like who played it, what map it was, and what races people were.