future.html

---
title: TAEB - Future Directions
layout: default
---
<h1>TAEB - Future Directions</h1>

<h2><a name="announce">Announcements</a></h2>
<p>
    See
    <a href="http://taeb-nethack.blogspot.com/2009/03/taeb-pubsub-and-announcements.html">TAEB, pubsub, and announcements</a>
    on our blog.
</p>

<h2><a name="monster-tracking">Monster Tracking</a></h2>
<p>
    Currently, TAEB completely forgets about monsters when they
    are not visible.  It rediscovers them on the next turn and
    generally acts correctly, but not being able to track monster
    state from turn to turn puts annoying limitations on our
    tactics.  If we could somehow track monsters the way we track
    items, TAEB would potentially be a much better fighter.
</p>
<p>
    Most significantly, it is impossible for TAEB to know if a
    monster is awake; since it never remembers seeing monsters
    before, it is forced to conservatively assume the monster is
    asleep.  If a monster is potentially asleep, we can't use
    combat tactics like waiting in a corridor - we would wait
    forever!  This is an especially annoying problem because
    valkyries start with Stealth, so zoo monsters are very often
    asleep.
</p>
<p>
    Unfortunately, monster tracking is hard.  Monsters move around
    much more than items, so in general it's impossible to know
    <i>which</i> monsters are the same as monsters on the previous
    turn, especially in pack situations.  We really want to
    support tracking packs, because pack monsters are a major TAEB
    killer.  Also, monsters have many hidden variables, and
    testing in combat doesn't work very well.
</p>
<p>
    The best candidate solutions are based on variations of
    <a href="http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Bayesian_inference">
        Bayesian inference</a>, deciding for each monster a
    conditional probability of being something we care about.
    This is a fair amount of work, though, and little progress has
    been made.
</p>

<h2><a name="newais">New AIs</a></h2>
<p>
    Behavioral, time-tested as it is, is starting to show signs of
    having reached the limits of its extensibility.  Each new
    behavior added slows down the bot additively, and in
    interesting environments like quest levels we may take several
    seconds to decide on each move.  Can Behavioral be saved or
    will a new, more stateful AI like <a
        href="http://taeb-nethack.blogspot.com/2009/08/planar-taeb-ai.html">Planar</a> take the torch?
</p>

<h2><a name="ih3">Interhack III</a></h2>
<p>
    One long-term idea for the TAEB core is to use it to power the
    next-generation of <a
        href="http://taeb.github.io/interhack">Interhack</a>.  This would
    result in an Interhack with ability to semi-automate arbitrary
    tasks, extremely flexible Perl scriptability, and a queriable
    model of the entire dungeon, enabling an interface to rival
    Crawl.  There are two main blockers for this. First, TAEB has
    to support all NetHack commands and game mechanics.  While old
    Interhack could get away with simply passing through
    unrecognized commands and output (nearly all of it), that
    would wreak havoc with TAEB's world model.  Second, TAEB needs
    to become much faster; on a good day, TAEB processing lag is
    on the order of a third of a second, more than twice the
    network lag from San Diego to Helsinki.
</p>