Chaos Bo(a)ts Game Challenge @ js.talks(); 2020
js.talks("Bulgaria"); is a community event that will take place on November 20-21, 2020 for the sixth time in Bulgaria.
Welcome on board to Chaos Bo(a)ts Game Challenge!
Unleash your secret JS superpowers and join in a Great Sea Battle against ferocious opponents. Make your own Bo(a)t the best performer in this open source game and win some special prizes from Chaos Group. Program your own Bo(a)t by forking the GitHub repo and starting a Pull request.
Latest Game build with Bo(a)ts Leaderboard is at http://chaosgroup.github.io/chaos-boats-jstalks-2020.
Enter the challenge
To enter the challenge you need your own Bo(a)t to compete against other players. Just create a Fork of this GitHub repo, prepare and test your contender code and start a Pull request to register your score in the official game Leaderboard.
Win a prize
All Pull requests received before 7 pm on 24 November will participate in the final ranking. The Bo(a)ts with three best scores on the Leaderboard will win special prizes from Chaos Group. Chaos Developers Special Award might be bestowed in addition to the authors of some of the greatest code lines.
Some rules
Chaos Bo(a)ts Game Challenge is open to all js.talks("Bulgaria"); 2020 visitors and will stay open for Pull requests from 11 am on 20 November to 7 pm on 24 November.
You could program more than one Bo(a)t while the game is open for race, just mind the bot naming rules presented below.
The default battle setup is between two Bo(a)ts in three rounds and every round is three minutes long.
The Bo(a)t score for Leaderboard is generated in a round-robin (or all-play-all) tournament in a speed-up headless simulated environment, the two Bo(a)ts battles are in six rounds up to one minute each. We will run the tournament and update the Leaderboard once per 24 hours.
Why Open Source Game
Git is an essential tool in the hands of every developer, novice or seasoned, and open source code is the backbone for any modern software development. We want you to be part of this culture and build together a fun and challenging experience. As with any open-source software you are welcome to share with us suggestions for new game features and improvement beside your Bo(a)t code.
Initial setup
This is a JavaScript project and its base local development requirements are Node.js 14 LTS and yarn or npm. Create a Fork of this GitHub repo, clone the new repo to your computer and start your development environment by running.
yarn
yarn startAn introduction about GitHub forks and Pull requests can be found at Working with forks and Creating a pull request from a fork
What is a Bo(a)t
Bo(a)t is a Bot that controls battle Boat or a Boat that is being controlled by battle Bot, we are not completely sure... Once you have the development environment and game running in your browser (http://localhost:3003), you can check the current Leaderboard and battle boat bots that are already part of the game. Now the fun part begins, the code for every Bot can be found at static/players/ folder. The Bot is defined by a single file and is essentially a function that on every player turn receives data about the battle environment and returns instructions for boat movement and cannon fire. Let's look at the simplest case, our Dummy bot:
const onGameMessage = (typeof importScripts === 'function'
? (importScripts('port.js'), self)
: require('./port')
).port;
// stay in place
onGameMessage(() => ({
speed: 0, // 0 -> 6
rudder: 0, // -3 <- 0 -> +3
fireSector: 0, // 0, 1 -> 12
}));We can ignore the top import for now, it ensures the communication between the game and the bot and is important for automated rating battles. Our entry is onGameMessage function, it accepts a single callback function and in this case totally ignores the battle environment and returns fixed instructions to just stay in place.
The speed parameter accepts values between 0 for Stop and 6 for Full Ahead.
The rudder is 0 for heading straight, down to -3 for steering left and up to 3 for steering right.
The last parameter fireSector controls the cannon, 0 is for staying silent and every other number from 1 to 12 gives the direction of fire using 12-hour Clock position.
Our Bow(boat nose) is always on a 12-hour clock and for example the value of 3 is firing at our Starboard(right) side, 9 at Port(left) side, 6 at Stern(back) and so goes for every hour sector in between. Keep in mind this clock orientation because we are going to use it again for other angular relations in our game. With this we complete return instructions for the boat and will take a look at battle environment data next.
onGameMessage(({ ownShip, targets }) => {
//...
return { speed, rudder, fireSector };
});Battle environment data is about ownShip and array of enemy boats or just targets.
ownShip: {
health, // own health: 50 -> 0
score, // successful enemy hits: 0 -> 50
speed, // set speed: 0 -> 6
rudder, // set rudder: -3 <- 0 -> +3
fireSector, // set fire direction: 0, 1 -> 12
blockedSector, // 0, 9 -> 11, 12, 1 -> 3,
}The only parameter here that needs explanation is blockedSector. To ease our task as Bo(a)t developers we greatly reduced the amount of data that Bots need to process, in open sea battle the absolute boat position is less important than relative position against enemies. But our game map is not open sea and even has some obstacles for fun, blockedSector has a value different from 0 when our boat is against obstacles that prevents moving in the desired direction. Because the boat moves only forwards the range of values are in the upper half of clock hour sectors.
targets: [
{
health, // target health: 50 -> 0
score, // successful hits: 0 -> 50
speed, // set speed: 0 -> 6
range, // distance to target: 0 - 200 %
bearingSector, // where is the target: 1 -> 12
bowSector, // target orientation: 1 -> 12
},
];The array targets has data about enemies relative to our boat. The range is firing distance between two boats, we measure it in percent of cannon fire range, when less than 100 the enemy is in range and can be fired upon. Longer distances can have greater cannonball spread and less chance of successful hit, we are talking 17 century technology here.
Own ship and Target ship relation
bearingSector and bowSector give the relative position and orientation from 'Own ship' reference point and 'Line of sight' with 'Target ship', once more it uses the already familiar clock sectors. Generally your fireSector will match the target bearingSector, unless you want to improve accuracy by taking target movement into account and this will require bowSector. Put in the other perspective bowSector is the reversed bearingSector but from 'Target ship' point of view, for 'Own ship' this has meaning of target relative orientation and movement direction.
Your own Bo(a)t
You can start your own Bo(a)t by creating a new file in static/players, as a starting point copy one of the example ones. For better track of Bo(a)t ownership we are applying convention to use your GitHub user account as file name and optional suffix separated by underscore(_), for example jacksparrow_two.js. We will accept only Pull requests that honor this convention as this will allow for later code fixes and updates. The second step is to register your file in src/players.json and give it an appropriate name. Now your Bo(a)t will appear in the game menu and you can develop and test your code against existing bots. For faster development you can skip game menu and start a battle by adding your opponents in src/player.js. Changes in files are watched and will automatically restart the game.
// set players to enter in game automatically
export const AUTOSTART = [PLAYERS.FiringDummy, PLAYERS.JackSparrow_Two];Current simulation setup tries to keep 60 fps but onGameMessage function is called approximately 3 times per second this gives plenty of time for a Bo(a)t to process and return instructions. The game waits for bot response up to 200ms and cancels the turn afterwards. Every bot is executed in his own isolated worker process and can use local scoped variables to keep state during the battle rounds.