Generating parkour ideas using artificial intelligence

[SwiftSmoky 8,445]

I used an Artificial Intelligence (AI) called GPT-2, which is trained to continue text (given any piece of text, it gives predictions of how the text may be continued). If you look at a list of tanki parkour ideas, the obvious prediction is that this text will be continued with more ideas. So I decided to give this AI a long list of tanki parkour ideas and see how it will continue it.

It's important to understand that the AI doesn't understand the text as well as humans do, and it doesn't know pretty much anything about this game, so what it says doesn't always make sense. It takes some imagination to turn what it says into proper plans for real tricks, so don't think too literally about what it says. In some cases it may look like I do most of the creative thinking, but even then this AI is very helpful to the process because being pointed in the right direction is almost as valuable as being given the full idea. Also for some reason it kept adding trains, cars and helicopters to the ideas, but when it made sense I turned such off-topic words into the closest metaphor in tanki. Also, in the end I actually did the opposite and proposed a way to create a helicopter in tanki!

The quotes below are cherry-picked out of lots of nonsense, most of what the AI said was completely useless, so it took a while to collect enough decent quality ideas. In the end of this post I included some of the funny things it said.

 

 

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Mine jump from ramp into windows

A very simple idea, but at least it makes perfect sense and doesn't require any interpretation or filling in any details! (which is rare, as you are about to see)

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Place mines on rail lines and make a tank drive over them

The way I imagine it, there's a line of tanks with railgun (the AI said "lines", but I think 1 is enough). I start by doing what the AI says: place mines on the line of rails. The AI doesn't say how to do it, so let's use a tank that drives over them and places the mines as it passes over each tank. Then I do the last thing the AI says: make a tank drive over the line of rails. From here it's up to me to complete the details to make the trick work. This last tank will be the jumper and start driving right after the tank that drops the mines, so the first tank the jumper drives on will lift him up into the air (and shoot it), and every next tank in the line will be lifted up by the mine just in time to be able to shoot up at the jumper and make him fly further.

If you ask some trick inventors they'll tell you they thought of something similar in the past, so it's not the first time this idea comes up, but at least it's a valid trick idea that wasn't included in my list of ideas, so the AI never heard about it.

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Go behind a building, light a fire-breathing dragon head out of a few propane tanks, hide, and shoot the head when it flies close by

Maybe it's not exactly a parkour trick idea, but it would take some parkour (and an artist) to build a dragon head out of tanks. And you can use a firebird to make it breathe fire.

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Driving on a mine in the air

If you're in the air then you're not really driving, you're flying. But it is possible to hit mines in the air! For example if you fly really close to the edge of a platform with a mine placed on the very edge so it's half in the air. I imagine the following trick with this concept: start from between two very close houses, with a tank that just barely fits between them. The houses are both small and the same height, and both of them have mines placed on the edge of the roof above you. You jump up (doesn't matter how, could be using mines too), and as you reach the height of the roofs, you hit the mines on both houses and they make you fly further up.

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A line of mines is set up in a row, all tilted forward at a slope. Drive down the slope and into the middle of them, destroying them all.

We have slopes in the game, for example ramps, but the steepest slopes are cliffs so let's use them. If you place mines on the side of a cliff, they will be tilted facing the same direction as the cliff, so it is possible to place a row of mines just as the AI describes. If you drive down the cliff and hit the mines, they will push you forward (not straight up, but to the direction in which they are rotated, which is forward and slightly upward). This can make a small jump already, but let's get creative and make the best of this idea. Once the mines hit the bottom of the falling tank, his bottom will move forward and a little bit up, while his back will stay at the cliff for a while before flying away, so when the rotation is right the tank can shoot the cliff to bounce Hammer shots into himself, or use Magnum for splash impact. Also, if the other side of his tank ends up reaching a lower point on the cliff than the part that hit the mines, there could be another set of mines for the other edge of the tank to hit. If you drop from a taller cliff (like the one in Highland) you will have more downward momentum and will be more likely to reach a second set of mines this way.

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Jumping on a wall of a building, flip upside down and jump from there.

On first sight it may seem a bit useless, but after I thought about how the flipping could happen, I realized this actually makes sense to do. Imagine a tank flying right side up and hitting a wall in the air. One way he could flip is by bouncing Hammer pellets into himself (which will also make him fly away from the wall, just like the AI said), another way is to hit the top edge of a wall and trigger a mine, which will make you move straight up while flipping in the air, then you can shoot the wall with Magnum to make the splash push you away from the wall, or you could shoot the other way to land on top of the building whose wall you just hit, this would be a pretty fancy landing! By the way, the simplest way to fly straight without rotating in the air at all (to hit the wall the right way) is to jump using only splash impact, for example you could shoot up with Magnum 2 or 3 times such that all shots will land at the same time and launch you up and towards the wall.

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Vertical wall slide with three people, one holding each other's body and the third shooting

A "vertical wall slide" sounds like a tank in handstand is standing against the wall and sliding up. I could make him slide up by shooting him from below with twins, and he could shoot down with rico to help, preferably with his turret inside the wall to prevent the tank from rotating. So we got a "vertical wall slide", but it needs to be "with three people, one holding each other's body" - I'll assume it means one tank holding the others. This could be done by placing the other two tanks on top of the first tank in handstand, so the bottom tank needs to be a big one and the top ones small, so they can balance better. Actually, let's rotate the bottom tank so he is sideways instead of in handstand, this way he will be wide enough for the others to stand on him, we can still call it a "vertical wall slide" even if the sliding tank is rotated sideways. So we have a sideways titan with 2 wasps doing a handstand on him side by side, and they start sliding up the wall using the bottom tank's shots and another player or two with twins. The last part of the AI's description of the trick is "and the third shooting", which sounds like it refers to one of the tanks in handstand. So once the tanks slide all the way up and reach the height of the roof, one of the tanks in handstand will start shooting with Smoky, at first he will hit the other tank in handstand and then he will aim down and keep shooting, making both of them spin and slide onto the roof.

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Jumping on a wall and jumping on another wall, then jump on the first one again, repeat until you reach the end

It says to jump between just 2 walls "until you reach the end" (which must be the roof). So we need 2 tall buildings close to each other, and we just jump between them (from wall to wall) a few times until we get high enough to get on one of the roofs. To jump up from a wall, all we need is tanks with Magnum or Thunder shooting the wall under the jumper, creating splash impact that will push him up and away from the wall towards the other building. But we need something else to start the trick, to get the jumper in the air next to one of the walls so we can push him up from there with splash impact, since the trick is hard enough as it is I'd rather use something simple like driving up a Dictator that leans on the wall and shoots up with Twins.

Fun fact: This is actually a variation of a trick I thought of long ago and dubbed "the Spiderman trick", in which a tank jumps between walls of buildings without touching the ground or the roofs (using splash impact from below), until reaching the end of the line of buildings. I wanted to do it in Skyscrapers or Dusseldorf, but it turned out to be very difficult for players to hit the walls precisely under me many times in a row, so I never completed this trick.

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Jumping on a train with the train going backwards, then jumping onto another train which goes forwards

Let's say the trains are tanks moving somewhere fast. A tank that stands on a driving tank and moves to another tank that drives next to him to the opposite direction doesn't sound very interesting, so let's make things more interesting and say that the trains are also flying. So we have a tank (the jumper) standing on top of another tank that jumped up and forward in the air, and they pass in the air next to another tank that flies the same way but in the other direction. The tank with a jumper on him won't reach as high as the other tank because of the jumper's weight, so it would be useful for the jumper to move onto the other tank that until now was going up without any weight on him.

All that's left is to come up with a way for the tanks to jump in a precise direction and without rotating too much so the jumper can stand on them all along. I just happened to come up with such a jump when I was messing around with lightweight hulls and Viking's overdrive. A Viking is flipped on top of another tank, he activates his overdrive and just shoots down non-stop with Magnum. Another tank can stand on the Viking and just ride him in the air. So the final trick is having 2 Vikings jumping this way in opposite directions, one of them with a Wasp on him, when they pass next to each other in the air, the Wasp drives (and shoots to the side if needed) to get on the other Viking in the air, and continues flying with him towards a house.

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Spray painting spots

These are spots that you can spraypaint in the game, most likely to highlight special features of the level.

While you can't spray paint, you could do something else "to highlight special features of the level". What I would consider a "special feature" that needs highlighting, is a place in the map that a player needs to do something for the trick when he reaches it. The highlighting can be done by placing mines or by shooting the spot to create a black mark on it. My friend @darrrex used this method once to mark places on the ground for players (who were sliding to the side along cliffs and couldn't see far around them) so they know when to shoot to make a trick work.

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Two short ramps to make a medium-sized ramp (to jump from)

I did this once too, but eventually abandoned the idea because it didn't look special enough for an FnF video. But I still like the idea of making a big ramp out of many tanks.

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Jumping from a building onto another building. The second building has a turret to shoot at the jumper.

That's an interesting challenge, two tanks stand on different buildings, and one of them needs to help the other jump to him. This would be especially interesting if the buildings are at about the same height, or the jumper is on a lower building.

I can imagine many ways of doing it, but I'm not going to go into details because this will get long, so I'll just give one example: a tank with Hammer and the Slugger alteration (which makes the pellets spread less) could bounce pellets off the top edge of the other house (if they are at the same height) such that the pellets will bounce into the jumper and push him towards the house the shot came from. To get some height this tank will need to be flipped and shoot the house with Magnum as soon as he starts flying away.

This is very similar to the challenge I made for the first Parkour Survival contest, where the jumper started on the ground and helpers had to stay on top of roofs, so you can use a lot of the solutions from this challenge to also make the AI's trick idea work, especially splash jumps.

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Spiral stairs with railgun turrets at the top (to shoot the tank when it reaches the bottom)

I'd say building a spiral staircase is a good idea in and of itself, and it might even be possible! It's possible to hold a lightweight tank almost fully in the air, with just his edge on the ground, by placing a much heavier tank on his edge above the ground. So maybe it's also possible to put more tanks this way, each of them rotated a little more than the one below him, and hold it all together using a heavyweight tank on the top. This can be done near the corner of a house to make it easy to get the heavy tank to the top, and to keep the whole thing more stable.

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Jumping on a wall, and jumping on another wall, and then jumping on the other side of the first wall you jumped on.

If by "wall" you mean these narrow fences, then it's decent challenge. This probably won't make a very creative parkour trick though, I imagine doing it with splash jumps.

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Vertical flip on a tank, then fly upside down on the tank

Flips are always vertical, which got me thinking if a horizontal flip could be useful, but I couldn't think of anything. The "fly upside down on the tank" part is more interesting, but the AI doesn't explain how to make it happen, so I came up with my own way: Make a tank balance his center perfectly on top of a Viking's Magnum (aiming straight up), the Magnum should use the heavyweight alteration to make sure he won't get rotated or moved a little by his own shots. Then he will use his overdrive and shoot the tank on top of him to make him go up in the air. This could keep the tank flying for a while (until the overdrive wears off) and could probably get a tank into the sky kill zone, but we want to keep him flying "on the tank" so not too high up, so the Magnum needs to shoot slower than the overdrive's max speed to keep the jumper not too high above him. You could keep this for longer if you use a bunch of Dictators to recharge the Viking's overdrive. Every 2 dictators are enough to fully recharge the Viking's overdrive, but they can't recharge each other so more than 2 Dictators is better. To put it simply, this is a Magnum elevator powered by overdrives that works at less than maximum capacity to keep the jumper at about the same height in the air.

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Jumping on a mine, then jumping on another one, then jumping on another one, etc...

I think TFP did that one, a long time ago.

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A jet engine on a tank. They are pretty rare, but it can be found in the arms dealers market.

This got me thinking about how to attach something to a tank that will make it fly, for example an upside down Viking Magnum that will use his overdrive to keep flying. Need to keep the "jet engine" stable so it doesn't rotate form it's own shots (which is doable by placing the jumper on it in the right place to counteract the rotation with his weight, I tested it). I'd prefer to keep it flying for longer than the Viking's 7 seconds of overdrive, so it needs to fly low enough to keep recharging it's overdrive from Dictator's overdrive.

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Backpack-missile that can fly. You control it with a remote.

There's nothing in the game that can be put in a backpack, but you could make a controllable missile out of a flying tank (it could explode on impact and deal damage using the Blaster drone and self destruction, but we don't need to get this close to the AI's description). To control it, all that's needed is a few tanks that can shoot it to the right direction any time.

But what if I wanted to keep controlling it indefinitely? The AI said to make a missile, but what if I want to make a drone? It's very hard to keep a tank in the air for a long time by continuously shooting it from below while also moving it to the sides, because it takes a lot of long range firepower and perfect aiming of many players over a long period of time. The only way for a tank to stay stable in the air is either not move to the sides (but I want it to move to the sides) or keep itself up using a Magnum and Viking's overdrive (which also requires a tank riding him to prevent him from flipping himself). The problem with using an overdrive is that it runs out, but 4 overdrive recharges from Dictator pairs will let it fly for 35 seconds (including the viking's first overdrive before the recharge) which is pretty nice, and after that you can just say it ran out of fuel/battery, which happens to any aircraft. An interesting option is the map Subway, because having a ceiling to push into is a good way to keep the drone straight so it can be easily moved around with direct shots. But I'd like to have maximum freedom in the drone's flight, so Subway isn't the ideal option for me. If the drone is flying in the air unrestricted, then moving it sideways is more complicated: I could hit it with a very weak shot (like a low modification Smoky) to tilt the drone so it's own shots will push it a bit to the side while still keeping it up in the air, I hope this can be stable enough. If such shots can keep the drone stable and rotate him as needed, then they could also be used to counteract the force of his own shooting to remove the need for a tank riding him, but I think I'd rather have a tank riding him because it would simplify things and because he would really enjoy the ride! Now that I think about it, the drone's rider could be leaning in different directions on the drone to tilt him and control his movement, if this works then it's not a remotely controlled drone but a helicopter! The rider controls the direction, and the helicopter controls the height (by changing his shooting speed). But the height is still limited because the splash doesn't reach far from the ground, which is good to keep it close to the Dictators for recharge. This sounds so good that I'm motivated to try it despite all the potential technical difficulties!

 

 

Useless but funny things:

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Put several mines on a mine-roller and set it rolling down the hill, then jump in and let it push you

Now I want a mine-roller in tanki. DEVS!

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Throw several big heavy objects (a fridge, a tv, a piano, a mini-tank, a car, etc) at your opponent from a long distance (maybe from a helicopter? lets see if we can do it....)

That would be a funny thing to see!

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Sister/friend hold you and let you sit on their shoulders as you fall. If you lean back, the fall is very short, if you hold on, you can make the fall longer.

Don't try this at home.

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Jumping on a wall, get hit by a bullet and fall off

Looks like it gives ideas for fails too...

Edited August 12, 2020 by SwiftSmoky

[Spy 14,765]

Topic approved.

[govenier 1,202]

Damn dude

[Venerable 2,970]

My god!

Amazing effort!

I'll take a few weeks to read and understand it completely. But I'll try. 

Honestly, I've never done any successful parkour with a group, so most of it is super tough...

But really great effort, @SwiftSmoky!!