Getting started

The goal of this page is to get you quickly started using the API. The following code block is the bare minimum you need to start Starcraft II and run your own bot.

An entire AI template project is available here, it contains the code below and more.

import os

from typing import Optional
from library import *


class MyAgent(IDABot):
    def __init__(self):
        IDABot.__init__(self)

    def on_game_start(self):
        IDABot.on_game_start(self)

    def on_step(self):
        IDABot.on_step(self)


def main():
    coordinator = Coordinator()
    bot1 = MyAgent()

    participant_1 = create_participants(Race.Terran, bot1)
    participant_2 = create_computer(Race.Random, Difficulty.Easy)

    coordinator.set_real_time(True)
    coordinator.set_participants([participant_1, participant_2])

    coordinator.launch_starcraft()
    path = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "maps", "InterloperTest.SC2Map")
    coordinator.start_game(path)

    while coordinator.update():
        pass


if __name__ == "__main__":
     main()

Now, let us break it down piece by piece to understand it.

from library import *

This imports everything from the library into your namespace.

Next, we need to define our bot.

class MyAgent(IDABot):
    def __init__(self):
        IDABot.__init__(self)

    def on_game_start(self):
        IDABot.on_game_start(self)

    def on_step(self):
        IDABot.on_step(self)

A bot which plays Starcraft is defined as a subclass to the class library.IDABot which contains some help code in order to make implementing your bit more straightforward.

If we look closer at our newly created bot, it has three methods which are all run at different times. The method __init__ is the constructor, which is called whenever the bot is first created.

The method on_game_start method is run when the game starts. Lastly, the method on_step is run on every time step of the game and thus where most of the decision making is going to be implemented.

Moving on, we have the code which sets up a game of Starcraft II:

def main():
    coordinator = Coordinator()
    bot1 = MyAgent()

    participant_1 = create_participants(Race.Terran, bot1)
    participant_2 = create_computer(Race.Random, Difficulty.Easy)

    coordinator.set_real_time(True)
    coordinator.set_participants([participant_1, participant_2])
    coordinator.launch_starcraft()

    path = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "maps", "InterloperTest.SC2Map")
    coordinator.start_game(path)

    while coordinator.update():
        pass


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

First we create a coordinator, this is the object we use to start Starcraft. On the line after that the bot is constructed (the constructor is called). The rest of the function sets a few settings and then starts Starcraft.

There are a few changes you might want to do here:

Remove or comment out the following line:

coordinator.set_real_time(True)

This line will make the game run at the same speed as humans play the game. However, your bot might will probably be able to play the game faster. If you remove or comment out this line the game will run as fast as possible, only waiting for your bot to return from on_step.

We can also play two bots against each other by changing the row:

participant_2 = create_computer(Race.Random, Difficulty.Easy)

to:

bot2 = SomeOtherBot()
participant_2 = create_participant(Race.Terran, bot2)

where SomeOtherBot is a bot defined in the same way as MyAgent.