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More than two players

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 12:35 am
by JamesCFraser
Whilst it may not currently be being run as part of the contest, I'd like to know how to setup a match between more than two bots using the SDK.

I've looked at the graphics, and seen that you've definitely thought of it. So if it's possible to launch a match between more than two players, I'd really like to know how.


Thanks
________
Home made vaporizer

Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 3:23 am
by adum
i never quite finished that part... i decided that it wasn't particularly interesting, unlike for wormageddon. i wouldn't mind letting the simulator run 4-player games, but i never finished implementing it, and don't have any plans for running official 4-player contests.

cheers,
adum

Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 2:55 pm
by MichaBln
Hi,

the idea came to my mind to ... but the longer I "played" the more I realized, that more than 2 players would alot be like rolling the dice because you could eliminate 2 opponents just to loose to the third one that was just waiting and building up an army ... there would be totally new strategies which just base on the fact, that you can win by eliminating only 1 opponent.

It could be possible anyways ... if theres a ranking-system which takes in account how many units you destroyed or how many cities were captured. But that seems like quiet some work todo.

For your bot it wouldn't make a difference anyways ... since its just bots from another faction. Bots will never be able to really analyze the strategies of the enemies or to communicate them in a global way, so it wouldn't make any difference, knowing which faction a bot is from.

What would be an interesting and not to hard thing would be kinda BitBath-challenges. Meaning you have a some kind of fixed levels. Each level would have always the same seed and always the same opponent-bot. Your bot always starts at Level 1 and has to get as far as possible.

Unfortunatly the 4 standard bots aren't enough to do that .. but I think a lot of users would send in bots (which of course can't be changed afterwards, to maintain the difficulty of each level) for that purpose.

BitBath really has potential to get way more complex and deep as it is right know ... but maybe its a good thing, that it focuses on just some aspects of strategy-AIs so new guys like me have a chance to compete.

When I started I was lucky when my bot was able to beat "Genghis" in the long run (of course it does now).
Sometimes an easy idea is better than a way too comlex bot which gets "over-controled" ( don't know a better way to say it .. it just means that the more complexe my algorithms got that more collusions between the single ideas I put in that bot occured).

And anyways, I'm pretty sure adum has a job besides hacker.org ... if you know what I mean :)

Michael