Prototype & Proposal: Multiplayer Asteroids

[aerique]

Or "space rocks challenge" if Atari complains.

o http://youtu.be/9VeWz24_VHk
o Extensive description: http://github.com/aerique/aichallenge/t ... ids#readme

Inspired by this post: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2122 I spent a couple of evenings hacking the ants code base to turn it into a multiplayer asteroids engine: http://github.com/aerique/aichallenge/tree/asteroids

There's enough issues with the code, the engine and the sample bots but it is possible to start writing your own bot. Sample and starter bots from the ants challenge in any programming language should be easy enough to adapt for the asteroids setting.

The main point now is to see whether the idea has any merit. This should be possible with the current state of the engine.

Taking into account the idea and the expected complexities my proposal is for this challenge to be a smaller one spanning four to six weeks and to be held in the late spring or early summer so a more complex and longer challenge can be planned and worked on for the end of this year.

The README at the GitHub page (linked at the top of this post) has more specific information about the game's parameters, client server communication and possible extras once the beta has ended.

[GreenTea]

As I can see from video visualizatoin of game is continuous. But we need stepped game right? What will be time interval between bot moves? And second question which comes from previous, how much steps (game time) approximately need to find winner?

[cowtippervirus]

[aerique]

[aerique]

[aerique]

I just merged some patches from berak which add proper replay output, a first step at a visualizer and scoring.

[cobracom]

I would be interested to explore the idea of having two ships for each player. I think it will be add an interesting twist to the game. A few years back I was following JRobots (http://jrobots.sourceforge.net/jjr_match.shtml) and the double matches were usually the most interesting ones (they also have team matches and single matches).

[MagnumPU]

[akarukov]

I can't visualize a game. Can I hope for any changes for this issue in nearest future?

[smiley1983]

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

visualizer/visualize_locally.py < game_logs/0.replay

or

cat game_logs/0.replay | visualizer/visualize_locally.py

You may need this first:

chmod u+x visualizer/visualize_locally.py

I like this game idea, would be very happy to see a contest based on it at some point.