Prototype & Proposal: Multiplayer Asteroids

[aerique]

The visualize-game.sh script is no longer correct. Try this (under linux) :

visualizer/visualize_locally.py < game_logs/0.replay

I've fixed the script (it barfed when there wasn't a "tmp" directory). But, yeah, it would be better if people worked on the real visualizer (visualize_locally.py).

[akarukov]

Thank you for answer for my question about visualization.
Actually I can say that for Windows it will be cmd-file like follow:
visualize.cmd contains

Code: Select all

python visualizer/visualize_locally.py < game_logs/0.replay

[smiley1983]

Basic asteroids starter in ocaml:

https://github.com/smiley1983/ocaml-asteroids

[akarukov]

BUG REPORT
I've just discovered a bug. Bullet's tracking is wrong.
Sometimes it moves for a small distance then stay in place 1-3 turns then continue moving.
Time to live for bullets is longer then rate of fire. So we can have 2 bullets at the moment for a player.
The bug begins then we have 2 bullets.
For example:
First bullet time to live was in [turn 2 - turn 13]
Second bullet time to live was in [turn 12 - turn 19]
We will have coord tracking for second bullet : (68,86)(58,88)(48,90)(39,92)(39,92)(29,94)(19,95)(9,97)
And second bug is that time to live is not equal 12. It is 11 for first bullet and 8 for second.

[aerique]

BUG REPORT
[...]

Thank you. Please feel free to attempt to fix this yourself (anyone reading this) and issue a pull request on GitHub. I will not have time to look at this in the near future.

[agent_smith]

Take a look at this:

http://www.xpilot-ai.org/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoHSWIj0THg

Unfortunately, it doesn' t seem to run on Windows.

[smiley1983]

Bugfix for the bullet-stopping error, and some other adjustments (add proper wrap function, add ship velocity to new bullet velocity so you don't die when moving forward fast and firing):

https://github.com/smiley1983/aichallenge

[akarukov]

Thank you smiley for bugfix. I will checkout soon.
I wish to say some words about Asteroids vs 2d-turn tactical shooter proposition.
I see that 2d-shooter has lower barrier to entry and close in mind to Ants.
I think that Asteroids is fundamentally different from all previous chanallenges. I like it and I dislike it .
When I learned about Tron, Planet Wars or Ants, - the default AI for these games was clear for me: combinatorics, path findings, collaborations, heuristics.
I tried to understand the default AI for Asteroids, - it is not clear for me.
Of course we can use combinatorics+heuristics, but I feel that it is not native AI for this game.

Since this forum's topic is about game-complexity of Asteroids proposition,
I hope to learn if somebody understood the real complexity of Asteroids ?

Actually I have found only theory of "differential games". You can google it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_chauffeur_problem

[eiisolver]

I found the asteroids idea pretty cool, so based on the proposed rules I made a simple bot that bases its decisions on Monte Carlo walks, without any regard to opponent movement, see http://youtu.be/xRujVT9FhKc for a demo

Even this simple bot has no problem avoiding asteroids. In the end I think this game is all about ship-to-ship combat, which should be very interesting as there are many possible strategies.

My main concern is that a passive defensive player that moves as slowly as possible and keeps pointing at its nearest opponent might be very successful. The latest code addition where the firing ship's speed is added to the bullet speed is a good change because it gives fast moving ships a better reach than a passive ship.

Another defensive strategy would be to run away from opponents ships all the time. That's why the asteroids are a nice aspect of the game, as they can at least hinder the path of fleeing space ships. Maybe the max speed of the asteroids could be made a little higher to make navigation a bit more difficult. Another idea would be to let the smallest asteroids be immune to bullets so the number of asteroids never decreases.

All in all I like this proposal a lot!

[Equinoxe]

Or maybe firing the smallest asteroids would give them energy, and they would fusion with the next other asteroid they encounter, forming a bigger one ?
That would make cycles of asteroid sizes, and so make me enter in ... an ... infinite ... r-e-c-u--r--s---i---o----n ...