

Google AI Challenge 2011 (Ants) - db42
https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki

======
Estragon
I followed the last Google AI challenge pretty closely, and enjoyed it, but
how does the organizer Jeff Cameron keep getting away with invoking Google in
the competition's name? He has basically zero affiliation to Google, and the
last round of the competition had some pretty embarrassing snafus. (For
instance, registration was broken for quite a while because he was using the
Google SMTP server to send out messages, and when the competition opened and
his registration script starting sending out huge numbers of registration
emails, Google shut him down as a probable spammer.)

~~~
dwc
As read on the IRC channel (#aichallenge on freenode) some time ago, someone
involved worked at Google and managed to get an OK to use the name, even
though Google has nothing to do with it. Don't ask me how that happened.

Go to the IRC channel for a while and you are sure to hear this story, since
new people constantly ask why Google doesn't put more resources into the
challenge.

~~~
technomancy
That explains why it's hosted on Github instead of Google Code.

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bluelu
In the past, the google challenge results were unfair:

Your bot was ranking based on a single game against a minority of other bots
and on a random map.

At least they should have let the top 100 ranked bots played against other
multiple times.

~~~
khafra
Not unfair, exactly; but not at all certain to pick the best algorithm instead
of the luckiest.

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ajays
Here's a better page which gives a good overview:
[https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-Game-
Sp...](https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-Game-
Specification)

------
mark_l_watson
I did a git clone last night and carefully read through the starter kits for
Common Lisp, Java, and Python. A long time ago, in my book "C++ Power
Paradigms" the last example was using a genetic algorithm to train a recurrent
neural net for the Sante Fe Ant Trail problem. My original idea was starting
with weights represented with relatively few bits, and adding less significant
bits slowly during training. My hope was that I would quickly find reasonable
areas of weight values so the search for good values with a reasonable number
of bits per weight would not take too long. After I wrote that John Koza told
me that I had an interesting idea but probably not useful. That said, I am
tempted to brush off my old idea and try it again.

~~~
aerique
That makes two of us :-) I'm going to try a genetic programming bot this time.

Any comments on the CL starter kit? It still needs work and I'm not the
world's best programmer. (see my profile for my e-mail address)

~~~
mark_l_watson
The Common Lisp starter kit was implemented quite differently that the Python
and Java kits (who I think were designed and written by the same person). The
Common Lisp kit just had one example bot, so maybe it is still being worked
on.

~~~
aerique
I started working on it a couple of weeks ago using this wiki page:
[https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-
Strateg...](https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-Strategy-
Guide) Later on I found a more extensive wiki page about the same thing:
[https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-
Starter...](https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-Starter-Pack-
Guide)

Perhaps the Python and Java kits used the latter (as I should have done).

More example bots with probably not be added to the CL package by me (but feel
free to do so!). I agree with the description on one of the wiki pages that
the starter packages should be pretty minimal so that users will see
improvements quickly when they start tinkering with it.

I've just taken care of the plumbing so the participants can get started with
the fun things right away :-)

------
rouli
Choosing Ants as the next challenge is a bit of a bet. I'm a bit afraid that
the game is too random to get really interesting AIs. Fog of war + food
spawning at random places can bring early advantage to those players that
explored the map 'just right'.

Disclaimer: I really enjoyed playing the Tron and PlanetWars challenges.
Although I was a bit disappointed with my final ranking in PlanetWars (~80), I
think that game was close to perfect.

------
gfunk911
I'm planning on building a ruby bot. I'll be putting at least my "non-
proprietary" logic code up on github.

Anyone interested in working together?

------
johngalt
The battle rules look a little problematic. Seems like you'll be coding up
formations and counter formations rather than overall strategy.

[https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-Game-
Sp...](https://github.com/aichallenge/aichallenge/wiki/Ants-Game-
Specification)

------
Wolf_Larsen
Is anyone else going to build a bot? I'm going to make one in Python or
Javascript. Looking for co-commander.

~~~
cmoylan
I was going to build a bot in Python. (Javascript is also a possiblity) Care
to team up?

------
Tichy
What is the deadline?

~~~
aerique
The official start is still a couple of weeks away, although you are free to
start working on a bot already. Don't complain if the specifications (or the
whole game!) changes though.

My guess is this time the challenge will last about two months. Three months
like the last one (Planet Wars) was felt to be a little long by most
participants and the one before that (Tron) was a little short in its duration
of three or four weeks.

