CodeSide. New game for the famous Russian AI Cup competition

The championship community and the Mail.ru Group team, in collaboration with Codeforces.com, invite you to a real slaughter, from which you will get sleepless nights and calluses on your hands, as you will participate in one of the most lively and interesting artificial intelligence programming championships in the world - Russian AI Cup . Believe me, the organizers of all this madness sold all their souls to create a game that you want to play.



You will only need access to the Internet, a computer, a head, of course, and a desire to break into the most extraordinary get-together. Perhaps coffee is still useful. Welcome!



Every year we rack our brains to come up with the theme of the next competition. So we have been doing since the distant 2012. In this article I will not talk about previous competitions. Useful links will be at the end of the article.



After rereading the entire forum and all the suggestions from the participants that they could find, our team made a secret decision to create a game in the platforming genre. For one year, we kept our entire community in real stress, not telling anything about the new challenge. We were tortured, but no one succumbed to provocation.



Today, November 27, the day of the opening of beta testing, we will tell and show what we came up with and created! So, to begin with, the code name for the new championship is CodeSide.

CodeSide 2019

All participants are invited to write artificial intelligence (strategy), which will manage a team of units in the virtual world. Obviously, the task of this artificial intelligence is to defeat other similar intelligences written by other participants.









I will say right away that in this championship of physics there will not be as many as you thought. We generally believe that it does not exist. For example, as an argument, the units in this game do not have acceleration. We tried to do everything so that the participants could concentrate on writing smart strategies, and not on bicycles with physics.



Your unit can run, jump, fall. An action can be blocked by an entity, so you need to constantly monitor them. All entities in the game are rectangular.







The game world is two-dimensional, and it changes depending on the level. The architecture of the map is walls, platforms, stairs and jumps. All units are located in the initial positions, without weapons and have no advantages over others. In addition, loot randomly appears on the map - weapons, first-aid kits, and mines.







To win, you need to be able to aim and shoot at the enemy. Each weapon has constant parameters:

• clip size
  
  
• rate of fire
  
  
• reload speed
  
  
• minimum and maximum spread,
  
  
• return
  
  
• aiming speed
  
  
• bullet parameters
  
  
• explosion parameters.
  
  

In addition, there are also changing parameters:

• number of rounds
  
  
• scatter value
  
  
• time until the next shot,
  
  
• angular parameter (aiming angle).
  
  

The bullets are unusual. Firstly, they are square. Secondly, if an explosion parameter is present, then a square explosion is created, causing additional damage to all units. In general, all entities are rectangular, so the model is quite simplified.



If you want to undermine someone a little later, and not immediately, then you can put mines. They can be stored in inventory, installed when you want.

Fast start

On the championship website you will find complete documentation that will allow you to join the fight in just a couple of minutes. In it, you will learn the rules, download language packs and a special version of the game simulator (application) for participants - LocalRunner, which will allow you to run test games locally on your computer.



Our testing system supports almost all popular programming languages: C ++, C #, D, Go, Java, Kotlin, Python, Ruby, Rust. If you need a different programming language, we can add it. In addition, in the repository or on the championship website you can download examples of strategies.

Community

We live in Telegram. We have a chat , there is a channel . We try to help each other and just communicate. We will be glad to see you in our ranks!

schedule

Traditionally, the championship takes place in several stages.

1. November 27 - December 7: Beta testing of the game.
   
   During this period, changes to the balance sheet can be made, errors fixed, infrastructure optimized. A beta result does not affect other results. Before the next step, the rating is reset.
   
   
2. December 7 - December 14: Sandbox.
   
   Based on the results of this stage, strategies for the first round will be selected by rating.
   
   
3. December 14 - December 15: The first round.
   
   Top rated strategies move into the second round.
   
   
4. December 21 - December 22: Second round.
   
   Top rated strategies go to the finals.
   
   
5. December 28 - December 30: Final.
   
   According to the results of the final, we announce the winners and prize-winners of the championship
   
   

Gifts

All winners of the finals will receive good New Year gifts:



1st place - MacBook Pro 15 ".

2nd place - MacBook Pro 13 ".

3rd place - Apple iPad.

4th place - Samsung Gear S3 or Apple Watch S3.

5th place - WD My Cloud 6 TB.

6th place - WD My Passport Ultra 4TB.



In addition, the top 6 sandbox winners will be able to get WD My Passport Ultra 2TB.



All participants in the second round will get t-shirts, and the participants in the finals will get hoodies.