Game Idea: Haxball

[Migi32]

I've made this suggestion last year too, but then the decision of using Ants had already been made. So I'm making this suggestion again, because I think it could be pretty cool.

The idea is based on an existing game: Haxball

It's basically an extremely simple form of soccer. Your bot controls a team of 11 players (circles that move very slowly, but can kick the ball when they touch it), and the first bot to score 3 goals or something wins.

The reason I think it's so cool is that it's physics-based, with continuous states. That's very different from the discrete-state games we've had in the past 3 contests, so your bot logic will also have to be completely different: you can't just minimax your way to victory.

Now there are a few potential problems I can think of:

1. I have no idea what the "skill cap" of this game is. It could be that developing an optimal bot is relatively easy, so the top 50 would all be equally good, and games between them would be decided mostly by luck (or be draws).

2. Because the game is so simple, the matches could be a bit boring and repetitive. Maybe adding things like a sprinting mechanic or multiple balls could fix that, but then the game would lose some of its elegance.

3. Since it would use floating point numbers, we would have to deal with rounding errors. Even though the physics are really simple (just circles and straight lines), the game specification may still be pretty complex.

4. Unlike our past contests, this could be a game where beginners have no idea where to begin and this could cause frustration.

5. It may not be that much fun to program a bot for this game. Instead of incrementally making your bot better by adding hacks and heuristics left and right, you would probably develop one big machine-learning algorithm and then tweak its parameters (like learning rate), with long training cycles each time you change a parameter.

6. Robots can't play soccer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2aL9XIFQk

[jeff.cameron]

This sounds like a really fun idea. The starter package could just be "move towards the ball". It would be reasonably easy to improve on it, too.

[tomb]

That sounds pretty awesome. I was thinking about something like 3 v 3 soccer, but wasn't sure how to make it work. I like the way the haxball video looks where the player bumps the ball and it moves based on what angle on which you hit it. Looks sort of like airhockey but with 3 players per side. I think having 3 or 5 players on a team would be better than 11.

The only negative I can think of is that I think it would be nice to have a game where you can play more that 1 v 1.

[Scryer]

Looks visually interesting. No explosions yet, though.

To make it multi-player, could you perhaps have an N-sided board (2 <= N <= 6, perhaps) with a goal in the middle of each?

Also, 11 seems like a very busy number to control, and might lead to degenerate strategies, like a flying wedge or double wall. Maybe 3 or 4 pushers per bot?

[gnu264]

That game looks like sooo much fun
I don't think this game should be played with more than 2 teams - it would just be a big scrum in the middle of the field where all players smash together...

[MountieBot]

This does look like a fun idea.

One thing I liked about "ants" was the multi-player aspect. While I agree that having more than two teams on a single field is a bad idea, I wonder if you could still make it multiplayer by having each program being in control of only a single player. So a single contest would involve six programs -- three on each team. I suppose you could vary this just like in "ants" and have 2vs.2 fields, 3vs.3 fields, 4vs.4 fields, etc.

An interesting thing about this way of organizing things is that, since you'd have no idea who you'd get as team mates, a critical part of the challenge would not only be to optimize your own player, but to devise a way to determine which of your team mates actually have a useful plan.

You want to pass the ball to a team mate who looks like he's trying to get into scoring position, not one who seems intent on moving north at all costs....or one who appears to have timed out and expired on the field.

[cobracom]

I really like the game (being a complete departure from previous ones), but one big disadvantage it seems to have is having no maps. At least part of the fun in the past challenges was trying to come up with a strategy that fits different scenarios.

On the other hand, I don't think it will be that difficult to add maps, it's just going to be a bit less "soccery".

[Gajet]

isn't this game something similar to existing robocup simulation 2d league?

[Migi32]

Ah, I didn't know about the Robocup Simulation 2D League before. It's indeed quite similar, although a small difference is that in Haxball you can't "hold" the ball and then kick it in a direction you choose. Instead, you always kick the ball "away" from you.

The ideas of making it more than a 1v1 game are interesting, but I'm not sure they would work. As gnu264 said, more than 2 teams, with more than 2 goals etc would probably be a chaotic mess, so I'm against that.

But having 2 teams and multiple bots that each control 1 player, that would be pretty cool. Definitely among the top bots, who would really be aware of each other's positions and do nice coordinated plays.

I can even imagine a contest where people form teams and then those teams play against each other (and the best team wins, not the best player), with possibly trading players between teams and all that stuff. Unfortunately I'm afraid this all breaks down at the lower ranks, where bots would be completely oblivious to what the other bots on their team are doing, and most matches would look like this.

[mogron]

Ah, I didn't know about the Robocup Simulation 2D League before. It's indeed quite similar, although a small difference is that in Haxball you can't "hold" the ball and then kick it in a direction you choose. Instead, you always kick the ball "away" from you.

Robocup Simulation League has a big barrier of entry - e.g. you have to handle noisy input and stochastic actions. It would be nice to have something similar, but easier, for hobbyists.