Tutorials, Documentation to assist new users getting started?
sergeiwallace opened this issue · comments
There seems to be very little in the way of documentation, tutorials, or general support for the RoboCup 2D project, which makes it very difficult for new users to learn how to use the various applications to build and train a team. Could someone please write up a "Getting Started" tutorial and/or provide useful code documentation to faciliate understanding of at least the basic ideas, principles, and code structure to start developing one's own team?
I know there are some installation tutorials and a something of a "Get Started" tutorial by herodrigues (deserved props for doing something), and I have successfully setup the application and run the default game, but the overall amount of support for new users still seems woefully insufficient given the overall complexity of the application design and interface. Furthermore, I'm aware there are some teams' code bases out there, but it is still a big leap to go from no knowledge to looking at a fully developed C++/Bash code base (without many comments) and understand what all they are doing and why.
Thanks for your comments.
The community recognizes the problem of documentation. We are now searching for resources to provide new manual and tutorials.
@hidehisaakiyama can I move the manual I wrote to this organization?
@herodrigues
Are you planning to copy the tex source files from sourceforge? Or, new documenation?
New documentations are welocme. But, we need to consider the maintenance cost of them. What tool do you use? I'm planning to migrate previous manual tex sources to sphinx.
It's not a technical documentation. Mosf of the content is about configuration and installation. I also translated some pieces of the official manual.
It sounds good.
Which tool or format do you use? Tex, Markdown, or anything else?
Right now is markdown, but I can use Doxygen and generate HTML, Tex and Markdown.
@herodrigues
Sorry for my late response.
If its size is not much, it would be good your document is put as README.md for the repository of rcssserver. If you mean you tutorial document https://github.com/herodrigues/robocup2d-tutorial, it is necessary to create new repository. If you like to continue the contribution, I will invite you to this organization.
I would be great if you move my tutorial, I can put the installation section in the README though.
Is there any complete list of commands we can send to the server (in version 15)?
Because this one is incomplete: https://github.com/rcsoccersim/manual/blob/master/source/soccerserver.rst
@miguelrass
No complete list of commands. The current repository is almost a copy of the old manual.
Now, the community tries to update the manual. It may enhance their explanation.
Anyway, I will try completing the command list.
That would be great since I'm trying to apply Reinforcement Learning to learn how to play without prior knowledge. And the things I need are:
- the commands to the server (which is a bit hard to understand without documentation),
- the feedback from the server (this one is easy)
- a way to simulate the game in sync mode with the agents at the fastest pace possible, i.e. not real-time (I don't know how to do this).
And thanks for your support!
You can tweak many server variables. Try rcssserver server::help for information.
Also, you can run the game in sync mode and modify the game speed by using the SoccerWindow2 monitor. More information here.
@hidehisaakiyama Thanks a lot for updating the documentation. The new information is very useful.
@herodrigues Although I reacted to your comment long ago, I also thank you for your support.
Recently I came across an article that stated:
"The offline coach has all the real world location data and can inform players of objects position relative the player without any time restrictions that the online coach has. (...) The messages sent are either a look, a move or a change_playmode command." - Lidström & Leskelä (2014)
This type of coach (or trainer) seems to be very relevant for machine learning. Is there any documentation on how to initialize a trainer? And how to communicate with the players? Or a complete list of all the commands that it can send?
@miguelrass
Please read the chapter 7 of old users manual:
https://rcsoccersim.github.io/rcssserver-manual-20030211.pdf
No major changes in the trainer protocol. So, this manual will be helpful.
Now, we are migrating this old manual to new one. It will be available in near future at https://rcsoccersim.github.io/manual/