See the section after "Google AI Challenge Blurb" for information specific to this Scala starter package.
The files in this package are part of a starter package from the Google AI Challenge. The Google AI Challenge is an Artificial Intelligence programming contest. You can get more information by visiting www.ai-contest.com.
The entire contents of this starter package are released under the Apache license as is all code related to the Google AI Challenge. See code.google.com/p/ai-contest/ for more details.
There are a bunch of tutorials on the ai-contest.com website that tell you what to do with the contents of this starter package. For the impatient, here is a brief summary.
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In the root directory, there are a bunch of code files. These are a simple working contest entry that employs a basic strategy. These are meant to be used as a starting point for you to start writing your own entry. Alternatively, you can just package up the starter package as-is and submit it on the website.
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The tools directory contains a game engine and visualizer. This is meant to be used to test your bot. See the relevant tutorials on the website for information about how to use the tools.
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The example_bots directory contains some sample bots for you to test your own bot against.
This is the basic Scala starter package. It is implemented as per the requirements for a starter package as documented on the Google AI Challenge wiki.
The official server will be executing Scala bots using Scala 2.8.1-final. Contestants are recommended to use this version for their development.
AntsGame.scala contains the game loop. Parser.scala contains the input
parsing logic. MyBot.scala contains the actual bot AI. Currently it does
nothing more than check whether it can go either north, east, south or west
and if it can it issues an order to the server to go in that direction.
(As described in the Ants Starter Pack Guide).
The Bot.scala trait, from which MyBot.scala derives, provides the
interface for your bot.
def ordersFrom(gameState: Game): Set[Order]
Given a GameState (being all that your bot has been told about the game
state in the current round; all bodies of water ever seen; and the
parameters used to seed the game), your bot is tasked with returning a
set of Orders (being the location of ants that should move and the
direction they should move in).
The simplest possible implementation is:
def ordersFrom(gameState: Game) = Set.empty[Order]
This bot has been tested locally with data on standard input and with a locally running game engine. There may yet be undiscovered bugs within the game loop. Assume nothing. At any rate, all code in this starter package is able to be modified or removed within your own Scala bot submission.
Patches to the Scala starter bot are welcomed. Fork the offical repo if you wish. Or, fork my fork if you would like a review.