I look to see the osu! standard autoplayer. There's no doubt about it, you get the game to aim and click perfectly. No real restrictions.
Same goes for Taiko and osu!mania, they can just have it hit things perfectly.
Those three modes, players can relate to the autoplayer fairly well.
But for CtB, it's a bit of a different story. Even when talking to people about watching the automated player, I hear it's not a good idea to learn from it, because of how inaccurate it is to actual gameplay.
Well, after seeing how the autoplayer salad! plays CtB, I thought of some ideas on how we could make this automatic player more realistic. (This especially goes for things like AR10 maps) This involves moving more accurate to the limitations of the catcher movement.
Rule 1: Make movement decisions based on what can be seen on the screen.
This means, that high higher approach rates, the catcher will try to stay in the middle of the screen when nothing is on-screen, to be able to catch all fruits without knowing what's coming up. This also means, if the next fruit is on the other side of the screen in AR10, by the time the the autoplayer reaches the middle, it will notice the next fruit and go after it. If a hyperfruit is leading to a fruit not visible on-screen, the catcher will just follow the hyper to whatever takes it there, obviously. This will help players be able to relate to the auto player more. The excepion to this rule is Flashlight, where the catcher will move as if it has memorized the map, and in high AR, it's all memory as the approach becomes pretty moot.
Rule 2: Move in speeds of the catcher. This means, if it is a distance to the next fruit which us short enough to be walked through part of the way, the autoplayer will walk the distance to be in the middle of the fruit. if it's perfect walking distance, the catcher will walk all the way to the next fruit. If the fruit is too far away and requires dashing, the catcher will dash until it reaches the middle of the fruit, once again. We can let the catcher reach the middle of the fruit thanks to the recent hyperfruit fix, because pixel jumps are no more. Hyperdashes will allow the auto player to catch the next fruit, just like players do.
Rule 3: Proper movement through sliders. When going through sliders, salad! makes this jerky movement, as if it wants to move only when it needs to. This is wrong, for in some cases, it can make the catcher move faster than it's able to:
---------O---------
--------.-----------
--------.-----------
---.----------------
----.---------------
--.-----------------
--\o/--------------
The autoplayer will sit still to grab the first three droplets, but then speed to the side as it grabs the next two and the end of it.
My idea is that the catcher moves gradually through sliders, much like real players would, using mixes of moving and not moving, and dashing if it's necessary.
This also means, when grabbing super-speed sliders like this:
----------------O--
--.--.---o--.-.----
O-----------------
\o/----------------
It shouldn't stop along the way to grab the droplets, as a player cannot do that since the slider is so fast that it becomes a hyper, and will end up missing some droplets along the way.
The only thing I didn't discuss was banana spinners, because I'm quite tied about this one; If we let the autoplayer calculate the most effective route through the bananas, it will probably ruin the fun in trying to get the most bananas.
Anyway, I hope my thoughts and concerns on improving the autoplayer for CtB may be heard.
I'm just trying to make the autoplayer be more realistic to how a real "perfect" player would play.
Same goes for Taiko and osu!mania, they can just have it hit things perfectly.
Those three modes, players can relate to the autoplayer fairly well.
But for CtB, it's a bit of a different story. Even when talking to people about watching the automated player, I hear it's not a good idea to learn from it, because of how inaccurate it is to actual gameplay.
Well, after seeing how the autoplayer salad! plays CtB, I thought of some ideas on how we could make this automatic player more realistic. (This especially goes for things like AR10 maps) This involves moving more accurate to the limitations of the catcher movement.
Rule 1: Make movement decisions based on what can be seen on the screen.
This means, that high higher approach rates, the catcher will try to stay in the middle of the screen when nothing is on-screen, to be able to catch all fruits without knowing what's coming up. This also means, if the next fruit is on the other side of the screen in AR10, by the time the the autoplayer reaches the middle, it will notice the next fruit and go after it. If a hyperfruit is leading to a fruit not visible on-screen, the catcher will just follow the hyper to whatever takes it there, obviously. This will help players be able to relate to the auto player more. The excepion to this rule is Flashlight, where the catcher will move as if it has memorized the map, and in high AR, it's all memory as the approach becomes pretty moot.
Rule 2: Move in speeds of the catcher. This means, if it is a distance to the next fruit which us short enough to be walked through part of the way, the autoplayer will walk the distance to be in the middle of the fruit. if it's perfect walking distance, the catcher will walk all the way to the next fruit. If the fruit is too far away and requires dashing, the catcher will dash until it reaches the middle of the fruit, once again. We can let the catcher reach the middle of the fruit thanks to the recent hyperfruit fix, because pixel jumps are no more. Hyperdashes will allow the auto player to catch the next fruit, just like players do.
Rule 3: Proper movement through sliders. When going through sliders, salad! makes this jerky movement, as if it wants to move only when it needs to. This is wrong, for in some cases, it can make the catcher move faster than it's able to:
---------O---------
--------.-----------
--------.-----------
---.----------------
----.---------------
--.-----------------
--\o/--------------
The autoplayer will sit still to grab the first three droplets, but then speed to the side as it grabs the next two and the end of it.
My idea is that the catcher moves gradually through sliders, much like real players would, using mixes of moving and not moving, and dashing if it's necessary.
This also means, when grabbing super-speed sliders like this:
----------------O--
--.--.---o--.-.----
O-----------------
\o/----------------
It shouldn't stop along the way to grab the droplets, as a player cannot do that since the slider is so fast that it becomes a hyper, and will end up missing some droplets along the way.
The only thing I didn't discuss was banana spinners, because I'm quite tied about this one; If we let the autoplayer calculate the most effective route through the bananas, it will probably ruin the fun in trying to get the most bananas.
Anyway, I hope my thoughts and concerns on improving the autoplayer for CtB may be heard.
I'm just trying to make the autoplayer be more realistic to how a real "perfect" player would play.