Game Idea: Multiplayer Asteroids

[gnu264]

I think a multiplayer asteroids would be a cool choice for the next AI challenge:
- Everyone has played asteroids at some time -> it is well known and popular
- Lots of moving objects -> interesting visualizations
- Allows more than 2 players
- There is no trivial solution
- Lots of different tactics are possible

Gameplay could be like this: 2-6 players and several asteroids are placed on the playing field. If my ship is hit by an asteroid, enemy bullets or an enemy ship I'm out of the game. Every player receives scores for every second they survive and every asteroid/enemy ship they shoot down.

[BenJackson]

Multi-player asteroids = xpilot.

It would be awesome to have a contest to make a good xpilot AI. Maybe someone *has* in the years I haven't been paying attention.

(in fact I see they have now got web-based replays!)

[amstan]

I'm down. I like xpilot.

We talked about it on irc for a while:
http://contestbot.aichallenge.org/chann ... -12-14.log
grep for "2011-12-14T19:06:24"

[dimkadimon]

I like this idea.

[aerique]

Great idea indeed. I played xpilot a lot when I still attended school but for the AI Challenge I'd be more in favor of the more basic Asteroids.

So, start implementing a game server and example bots!

[amstan]

I would really like to look into this.
I might get a small test going in pyqt to see how it works.

[gaussin]

I would really like to look into this.
I might get a small test going in pyqt to see how it works.

This sounds like a good idea to explore. I found these resources related to xpilot ai that perhaps can be of use.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIyUtzL5BBw
http://www.xpilot-ai.org/

[aerique]

I've spent a couple of evening hacking the Ants code to turn it into a multi-player Asteroids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqfH5J18C30

I will upload the branch hopefully this week to my GitHub AI Challenge fork. The code is hideous which doesn't matter that much for showing the idea in action but I do want to make a somewhat non-retarded starter bot.

The bots in the video are really basic: one just flies forwards and the other turns to the left and shoots.

[Riseven]

I have an idea to make this game more visually interesting. When a player hits an asteroid, the new smaller child asteroids are painted with the color of that player. The idea is that simply seeing the colors distribution in the screen, you can see which bots are better. With the normal rules of Asteroids this is only an approximation, but it could be possible to create some rules with the color of asteroids. Just a couple examples:

- If a red asteroid collides and kills a player, the points for killing that player goes to the red player. That means that an interesting strategy for a player could be to simply try to set as many asteroids as possible to his color, but leave the asteroids that are already of his color alive, so to try to maximise his points by killing enemies. Also, trying to split asteroids near enemies to try to kill these enemies with the newly split asteroids.

- The problem with the previous rule is that asteroids are meaningless if they fail to kill any enemy, probably making a better strategy to simply destroy everything out of existence. A solution could be that each live asteroid gave points to the player of his color each second, so it makes each player best strategy to fire to enemy asteroids (to covert them to his own color) and defend own asteroids, to mine more points.

Just an idea, not really sure how it would turn out.

[cowtippervirus]

If a red asteroid collides and kills a player, the points for killing that player goes to the red player.

I would suggest, more simply, that the game continue until the following conditions are met:

• Time limit hit
• Rank stabilized (as in ants; players may or may not be left, but not enough points available for rank to change)
• Players not shooting (not razing hills)

Note that there is no cutoff for one player left... Suppose you are left in a 1v1 and your opponent has killed more asteroids than you, but you manage to kill him with an asteroid that split off. If you managed to do it early enough in the game that there's enough asteroids left, none of the cutoff rules would have been hit and you can shoot asteroids until your score tops his, at which point the rank stabilized would kick in. If you manage to die when you're the only player left, well, you don't deserve to win anyway .

Not only is this a simplification, but it should take a lot of luck out of the game. If a (high-ranked, capable) bot clips an asteroid, it's likely because there were a dozen other things nearby, asteroids from any number of players and enemy bullets. Which one gets credit for the kill is likely just dumb luck.

You do bring up an interesting point about scoring if this is to be a > 2 person game (please, please, I hope it is!). If you find that you're about to die and there's no way around it, you could theoretically pick how you die. Maybe you would crash into an asteroid so your opponent doesn't get the kill credit, or maybe you would pick which of your opponents actually kills you. The logical conclusion to this is that players should not be (directly) rewarded for killing other players. The only benefit you should derive is more asteroids for you if you take the opposing bot(s) out.

Finally, regarding visualization, I'd assume each player and his or her bullets would get colored. Should be plenty of visualization in that.