beat aigamedev bot for prizes

[aigamedev]

Thanks everyone for your kind words and support! Thanks jcothran for posting this too.

It's exactly why we provided the AiGameDev.com PLUS prize for beating our official bot. Our goal is to give some extra motivation for people entering the contest even if they don't expect to win! We (my wife & I, who run the company) feel it's generally very useful to encourage people who are interested in this field to take it further. We'll probably do the same sponsoring and entering our own bot for various contests, for example at the CIG (Computational Intelligence in Games) and AIIDE (Artificial Intelligence in Digital Entertainment) conferences -- or even our own Paris Game AI Conference in the future.

We believe the content is very useful and interesting, but you will no doubt find out soon enough!


Demerzel, thanks for your cynicism :-) Of course our sponsorship is PR-motivated, but not like you think! Typically, we put more into providing material for students than we get out of it. The reason we do it is because we love what we do and we think it's a fascinating field that people could be interested in, just like the AI Challenge itself. The difference is we'd like to show you how interesting it can be to work on commercial game AI, and not just AI applied to mini-games.

The prizes cannot be "cashed" (it's not a cash prize) and memberships are officially not transferable; if you'd like to donate your prize maybe we can arrange that though. If you're not interested in game AI, that's fine and you can of course continue to enjoy the PlanetWars contest without expecting to get anything.


Best of luck everyone!

Alex Champandard
Owner & Technical Director
AiGameDev.com KG

P.S. There's a new version of our official bot almost ready and coming up, but unfortunately I don't have as much time as I'd like to dedicate to it... I guess that's a good thing for you guys though :-)

[aigamedev]

Unfortunately, Jeff didn't post about the prizes anywhere on the main site as we had agreed beforehand, in fact he didn't even mention us once despite a couple reminders by email. It's probably the worst sponsorship deal ever. :-(

In short, I'm really not sure if the prizes were even approved nor if he intended to ever send them out...

Alex

[Torquemada2]

Hi Alex!

Thank you for sponsorship, you are the only company that propose some prizes. From Google contest get only its name. I knew your site
much earlier before the contest started so your prizes will be interesting for me. My bot: http://ai-contest.com/profile.php?user_id=8481

How it's possible for me and my brother get your subscriptions?


Sincerely yours.
Viktor

[aigamedev]

Even though we got nothing in return for the sponsorship of the contest (and no reply from j3camero on the organization team), we're going to provide the prizes anyway. I've been asking around for the best way to do this, and I think this is the easiest approach.

If you ranked above 633, please post your bot URL and your AiGameDev.com username like so:

BOT: http://ai-contest.com/profile.php?user_id=10752
USER: alex.champandard

I'll then get notified by email, and add your prize to your account on our site. You have until December 21st!

Alex

[siconize]

BOT: http://ai-contest.com/profile.php?user_id=11844
USER: siconize

[Meatkat]

Hey all,

Went ahead and checked out the site myself and it seems legit (once you get past the giant $/month signup thing). There is a pretty large community there discussing game ai development. Also there are some pretty cool resources. My favorite is here: http://aigamedev.com/insider/presentati ... ior-trees/ (though of course you have to sign up for a free account to see it).

[RebelXT]

Alex, thanks for deciding to issue the prizes! I was really looking forward to it.

BOT: http://ai-contest.com/profile.php?user_id=5853
USER: rebelxt

[barabanus]

(empty)

[aigamedev]

barabanus, follow the instructions or I can't give you the prize :-) What's your aigamedev username?

[barabanus]

If the prize limit isn't exceeded, I'd like to join ai gamedev community for several monthes as a prize.

BOT: http://ai-contest.com/profile.php?user_id=9336
USER: barabanus