Today I am going to talk about a project I started a short while ago. This post is just an overview, and I will continue with a series about the project in greater depth, probably I will have the next post up later this week.

The project in question is a bot (a program that automates playing) for the game War Thunder. I initially became interested in this when I flew bombers for a few missions and noticed how "robotic" it is to do so, following the same set of actions each match with little ability to react to changing situations: flying a bomber is exactly what this bot will do. But first:

Disclaimer

Because of the issues arising around the War Thunder terms of service and the general moral ramifications of such a piece of software, I will only be running this bot in practice mode and/or offline custom missions where they will not interfere with the War Thunder service or game experience.

Furthermore I will not be releasing any substantiate code or material that would enable others to create their own bots, this blog series will only contain general overviews of the techniques used.

This project is solely for research and educational purposes, not for cheating.

Design Goals

Of course, I say "flying a bomber" and that could mean many things. When I say this I am referring to the large four engine bombers. And, given a large bomber, the tactic I will be using is high altitude level bombing. The mission will be as follows:

  1. Take off from the runway.
  2. Find a safe corner of the battlefield and fly to it.
  3. Fly in a helix, ascending until at some desired altitude.
  4. Fly to the bomb site, and drop bombs.
  5. Fly back to base, descending in altitude.
  6. Land.

A lot of this isn't possible in a "normal" War Thunder game, for example most maps have bombers begin already in the air rather than on a runway, also most matches of War Thunder don't last nearly long enough for this mission. Because of these factors I will be flying in practice mode, and be using the single truck that spawns in the middle of the map as a bomb target.

Requirements

There are some factors that would make doing the above easier. In order to better learn, I will be restricting myself out of some of them.

  • No or minimal use of the readout the game provides on port 8111, I will fall back to using it if absolutely necessary, but I want to do as much as I can through computer vision, and for the purposes of this project I consider using the data exposed here "cheating".
  • No looking at the graphics buffer or network traffic. As with the above I consider it "cheating". Also, I have no idea how to do one of these things and the other is too similar to my day job to be anything but tedious.
  • Difficulty set to "Realistic Battles", respecting proper aerodynamics and having planes that can actually stall is important. I might consider extending the bot towards "Simulator Battles" a stretch goal.
  • Big planes, I want the bot to fly a plane that can't just turn on a dime and needs the controls to be handled carefully. A manoeuvrable fighter would be too easy to steer.
  • Practice mode only, possibly an offline custom map if practice mode proves unsuitable.

Next Post

I will be posting my first update, hopefully later this week. It will be about using OpenCV in Python to read the plane instruments from the glass cockpit view. Keep tuned!