06-22-2022, 12:13 PM
The main AI metadata section was never really intended to be used for experimenting with different AIs; it was rather designed just for storing whatever "best" setup we find after already having run experiments. I always run large-scale experiments purely through command-line instructions (without any GUI at all) myself... for command-line experiments, we already have support for building different AIs with different heuristics, different algorithms, different features, and so on. But that's probably not very convenient for all users.
Personally I don't feel like the best solution would be to have a single file with per-role heuristics (or search algorithms or features or anything else AI-related). With such a setup, you'd have to first test the AIs in one matchup (i.e., heuristics A as player 1 vs. heuristics B as player 2), then close Ludii again, edit the file to swap them around, and then finally re-launch to also test the other matchup (i.e., heuristics B as player 1 vs. heuristics A as player 2).
In (probably) the next release, we will allow you to write multiple different .def files (just putting them anywhere on your computer, separate from the .lud file) with different AI configurations, and just load them as AIs through the normal dropdown menus that also contain all the other agents. I think that would be a better solution that avoids the problem I described above?
Personally I don't feel like the best solution would be to have a single file with per-role heuristics (or search algorithms or features or anything else AI-related). With such a setup, you'd have to first test the AIs in one matchup (i.e., heuristics A as player 1 vs. heuristics B as player 2), then close Ludii again, edit the file to swap them around, and then finally re-launch to also test the other matchup (i.e., heuristics B as player 1 vs. heuristics A as player 2).
In (probably) the next release, we will allow you to write multiple different .def files (just putting them anywhere on your computer, separate from the .lud file) with different AI configurations, and just load them as AIs through the normal dropdown menus that also contain all the other agents. I think that would be a better solution that avoids the problem I described above?