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Battlecode 2015 – AI Programming Competition

98 points by dvorak42 12y ago

vertis 12y ago
While some of it is open to non-MIT students, it looks like to continue through to the finals you need at least 50% MIT students on your team. Should be fun anyway.
- sabirc 12y ago
  No, at least 50% of your team must be students.
- dvorak42 12y ago
  You can also compete for the top of the scrimmage rankings, and we are considering adding an Open tournament again to allow all teams compete for fame and glory.
  - entropy_ 12y ago
    I definitely would like to see an open tournament. My friend and I are going to be participating but neither of us are students. Just doing it for the fun and educational value.
- Vintila 12y ago
  Nope >In order to be eligible to compete in the seeding, qualifying, and final tournaments, at least half of your team members must be current students (any school). http://www.battlecode.org/tournaments/ http://www.battlecode.org/tournaments/
sagichmal 12y ago
Looks fun! > What are the supported programming languages? Java and Scala. Oh. Nevermind. What's the most interesting version of a competition like this which doesn't place restrictions on implementation language?
- tokenrove 12y ago
  The ICFP programming contest, usually.
- dvorak42 12y ago
  We're not happy about the restriction either, and hopefully we'll run a Battlecode that doesn't have a programming language restriction, but we haven't found a way to deal with limited instruction count execution that we are happy with that is machine independent, and counting Java bytecode has worked for us so far. If there are other JVM languages people want supported, we'd be happy to take pull requests on Github once we make the new gameplay public tomorrow.
  - johnlinvc 12y ago
    How about clojure and jruby? Adding these will be pretty awesome.
  - zeyus 12y ago
    Jython could be interesting too.
  - hislaziness 12y ago
    So any language compiling to Java bytecode is OK?
    - dvorak42 12y ago
      A majority of them, however since we take source and compile it on the tournament servers, we'd need to get the compile chain and server working with those languages.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    Why not just time the execution instead of counting instructions?
    - ConnorBoyd 12y ago
chrishare 12y ago
This looks awesome. Are the winning bots' source available after the tournament is concluded?
- dvorak42 12y ago
  We don't explicitly require teams to open source their bot after the tournament, since sometimes teams have special restrictions on publishing their code. But some of the top teams have published their code or framework online in the past.
x0054 12y ago
I do remember back in the day playing AT Bots, it was a similar concept, only you would write the bots in assembly, which was kind of fun, because on top of the strategy, you also had to figure all the ways to profile your code. Like for instance bit shifting instead of dividing, and such. You had to keep the code light because the speed of your bot directly correlated to the how fast the code would be executed. So, each processor cycle counted towards making you faster, but speed up too much by cutting down your code, and your bot would get dumber. It would be interesting to see a game where only the API for the bot is exposed, and the actual computation takes place on a separate machine (or same machine, but separate processor). That way you can experiment with all kinds of languages, or even possible hardware combinations. For competition your code would be loaded on a VM instance or a physical machine which has identical characteristics to all the other competing machines, and you go at it. This way you are not limited to a given language or a set of libraries, and can really explore all the possibilities.
- ryusage 12y ago
  theaigames.com does this by running the game engine and bots as console apps and communicating by sending simple commands through their input and output streams. They generally provide some "starter bots" for a couple languages, in which the message parsing is already handled for you, but they accept bots in any language.
ratsimihah 12y ago
Any MIT student not participating in Battlecode here?

98 points by dvorak42 12y ago

While some of it is open to non-MIT students, it looks like to continue through to the finals you need at least 50% MIT students on your team. Should be fun anyway.

sabirc 12y ago
No, at least 50% of your team must be students.
dvorak42 12y ago
You can also compete for the top of the scrimmage rankings, and we are considering adding an Open tournament again to allow all teams compete for fame and glory.
- entropy_ 12y ago
  I definitely would like to see an open tournament. My friend and I are going to be participating but neither of us are students. Just doing it for the fun and educational value.
Vintila 12y ago
Nope >In order to be eligible to compete in the seeding, qualifying, and final tournaments, at least half of your team members must be current students (any school). http://www.battlecode.org/tournaments/ http://www.battlecode.org/tournaments/

sagichmal 12y ago

Looks fun! > What are the supported programming languages? Java and Scala. Oh. Nevermind. What's the most interesting version of a competition like this which doesn't place restrictions on implementation language?

tokenrove 12y ago
The ICFP programming contest, usually.
dvorak42 12y ago
We're not happy about the restriction either, and hopefully we'll run a Battlecode that doesn't have a programming language restriction, but we haven't found a way to deal with limited instruction count execution that we are happy with that is machine independent, and counting Java bytecode has worked for us so far. If there are other JVM languages people want supported, we'd be happy to take pull requests on Github once we make the new gameplay public tomorrow.
- johnlinvc 12y ago
  How about clojure and jruby? Adding these will be pretty awesome.
- zeyus 12y ago
  Jython could be interesting too.
- hislaziness 12y ago
  So any language compiling to Java bytecode is OK?
  - dvorak42 12y ago
    A majority of them, however since we take source and compile it on the tournament servers, we'd need to get the compile chain and server working with those languages.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Why not just time the execution instead of counting instructions?
  - ConnorBoyd 12y ago

chrishare 12y ago

This looks awesome. Are the winning bots' source available after the tournament is concluded?

dvorak42 12y ago
We don't explicitly require teams to open source their bot after the tournament, since sometimes teams have special restrictions on publishing their code. But some of the top teams have published their code or framework online in the past.

x0054 12y ago

I do remember back in the day playing AT Bots, it was a similar concept, only you would write the bots in assembly, which was kind of fun, because on top of the strategy, you also had to figure all the ways to profile your code. Like for instance bit shifting instead of dividing, and such. You had to keep the code light because the speed of your bot directly correlated to the how fast the code would be executed. So, each processor cycle counted towards making you faster, but speed up too much by cutting down your code, and your bot would get dumber. It would be interesting to see a game where only the API for the bot is exposed, and the actual computation takes place on a separate machine (or same machine, but separate processor). That way you can experiment with all kinds of languages, or even possible hardware combinations. For competition your code would be loaded on a VM instance or a physical machine which has identical characteristics to all the other competing machines, and you go at it. This way you are not limited to a given language or a set of libraries, and can really explore all the possibilities.

ryusage 12y ago
theaigames.com does this by running the game engine and bots as console apps and communicating by sending simple commands through their input and output streams. They generally provide some "starter bots" for a couple languages, in which the message parsing is already handled for you, but they accept bots in any language.

ratsimihah 12y ago

Any MIT student not participating in Battlecode here?