Surround, bite, cut: the new Mini AI Cup # 4 competition / Mail.ru Group Blog

Hello! Most of us, experts in the IT field, love to play games - card, board, computer and others. It often happens that games do not bring any benefits, but I would like everything at once - pleasure, fan and knowledge. Especially for you, we are trying to invent "games for programmers" that combine all of the above. We invite you to meet them and invite you to take part in the Mini AI Cup # 4 artificial intelligence competition!

Mini AI Cups Competition History

In 2017, we launched the venue for the AI Cups artificial intelligence championships , which responded to many requests from the IT community who wanted to try themselves in tasks similar to those found in the famous Russian AI Cup championship .


Not everyone can come close to loading a meaningful strategy with their programming and development skills. In addition, participants demanded more interesting contests, and not once a year. In addition, for training they need to solve more problems. For these reasons, the AI ​​Cups platform was opened.

Over two years, 3,000 people registered on the portal, 600 of whom took part in three mini-competitions and sent their own strategies. Other users continue to prepare in the sandbox (training contests) for the next championship.

Past competitions

Mini AI Cup # 1 / Lifts

The first Mini AI Cup test championship was held in September 2017. 217 people participated. The essence of the problem is the strategy for transporting passengers in the elevator, taking into account factors affecting the algorithm of distribution. The winners were Anton Kozlovsky, Denis Utkin, Daniil Nikolenko.

Mini AI Cup # 2 / AgarIO

The second Mini AI cup began in February 2018. The task was to program the bot for a game similar to Agar.io. About 1200 participants were registered, more than 300 active players. The winners were Alexei Dichkovsky, Andrei Tokarev, Anton Kozlovsky.

Mini AI Cup # 3 / MadCars

The championship began on August 30, 2018 and was developed based on the game Drive Ahead. Each player was given a car with a button. The task was to write a bot that controls the machine, whose goal is to press the button of the enemy faster than he does. Each player has 5 lives.

Winners: Alexey Dichkovsky, Anton Kozlovsky, Alexander Kiselev

New Mini AI Cup # 4 / PaperIO Competition

This time they decided to implement an analogue of Paper.io, specialized for writing bots. The mechanics are quite simple, there is no physics. There is only a playing field, players, rules and bonuses.



You will learn more about this on launch day (if we tell now, someone will already write bots, which will not be very honest with others).

Supported JP

Everything is standard here - solutions can be sent in any programming language from the list of supported ones: C ++ 11, C ++ 14, C ++ 17, C #, Java 1.8, Kotlin, Haskell, Go, Python 2.7, Python 3.6, PHP7, Node JS, Elixir, Rust, Scala.

For the convenience of participants, as well as to reduce peak loads on the startup system, we have prepared a program for local launch and debugging - Local Runner .



The utility is written in Python 3.6 using the Pyglet visualizer and comes as source code. Detailed instructions for setting up and using you will find in the rules.

Solution Architecture

The simplest solution in the Python 3 programming language will consist of a single main.py file. The client program initiates the session and runs this script at the beginning of work. The client hides within himself the work with the network and error handling, is an intermediary between the game mechanics and the decision of the participant. It passes JSON from the world to the standard input stream (stdin) and takes the response from the standard output stream (stdout) (for Python, these are sys.stdin and sys.stdout).

For correct operation, the solution must be launched with parameters for input / output without a buffer (for Python, this is the -u flag when the interpreter starts).

The solution starts once and then works in an infinite loop. Handling a stop is optional, at the end of the dockerd gameshut down all containers. Inside the loop, I / O processing is performed, JSON is processed and the main handler is called.

Examples of strategies and quickstart will be published on launch day.

Schedule and Gifts

So, we start on July 18 at 19:00, we finish on August 18. In these intervals three rounds will be held, namely:

1. Beta testing (does not affect the results) to fix possible bugs - 1 week.
   
2. Rating games (2 weeks).
   
3. Final games (1 week).
   

Of the ranked games, 25% of the participants will go to the finals. All participants who qualified for the finals will receive traditional T-shirts.

In addition, the best participants will receive valuable gifts:

• first place - Apple MacBook Air;
  
• second and third place - Apple iPad;
  
• fourth, fifth, sixth places - Samsung Gear S3.
  

Community

For more fun and fun, join the telegram community of participants (@aicups). We are already more than 900 people!

Good luck!

Useful

1. A bit about physics at almost Agar IO on aicups.ru
   
2. “Creating a bot on a recurrent neural network to participate in Mini AI Cups”
   
3. Creating a bot to participate in AI mini cup 2018 based on a recurrent neural network
   
4. Creating a bot to participate in AI mini cup 2018 based on a recurrent neural network (part 2)
   
5. Creating a bot to participate in the AI ​​mini cup. GPU Experience
   
6. Creating a bot to participate in AI mini cup 2018 based on a recurrent neural network (part 3)
   
7. Mini ai cup 2 or almost AgarIO - what could be done to win
   
8. Launch Mini AI Cup # 3 Battle of cars in tight enclosed spaces
   
9. Mini AI Cup # 3 Writing a Top Bot