StarCraft AI Competition

The Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz will be hosting a StarCraft competition at AIIDE 2010:

The 2010 conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE 2010) will be hosting a StarCraft AI competition as part of the conference program. This competition enables academic researchers to evaluate their AI systems in a robust commercial RTS environment.

The competition will be held in the weeks leading up to the conference. The final matches will be held live at the conference with commentary. Exhibition matches will also be held between skilled human players and the top performing bots.

1 Page Flyer here

News

• 1.23.10: Five-minute talk about the competition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbjsL5E1Idw
• 1.4.10: Follow the competition on Twitter @StarCraftAIComp
• 12.21.09: There is a new BWAPI version, with bug fixes and new features.
• 12.20.09: We have reached 50 competition participants!
• 12.3.09: LUA Bindings
• 12.2.09: A Youtube channel has been set up for showing off bots, send youtube bot links to bgweber@gmail.com
• 12.2.2009: A new JNI Java ProxyBot communicates directly with StarCraft, no sockets.
• 11.30.2009: A Ruby version of the ProxyBot is available here
• 11.26.2009: The list of participants has been updated. Participants should create a thread for their bot here.
• 11.23.2009: Haskell fans will enjoy this version of the ProxyBot
• 11.23.2009: A google code project has been set up for the Java ProxyBot
• 11.23.2009: A php version of the ProxyBot is avilable here
• 11.21.2009: A python version of the ProxyBot is available here
• 11.18.2009: This competition is open to the public. Affiliation with a university is not a requirement to enter
• 11.17.2009: A Forum has been set up for the competition.
• 11.16.2009: A new version of the ProxyBot is available here. The new version provides performance fixes and adds functionality
• 11.15.2009: Participants should use the new BWAPI Beta which provides faster builds, faster menu speeds, and faster game speeds
• 11.14.2009: A port of the ProxyBot to .NET is available for C#. Get the lastest version here
• 11.14.2009: Participants are allowed to use the BWTA and BWSAL libraries
• 11.13.2009: The competition will be using the BWAPI Beta 2

Forum

Getting Started

Bots for StarCraft can be developed using the Broodwar API, which provides hooks into StarCraft and enables the development of custom AI for StarCraft. A C++ interface enables developers to query the current state of the game and issue orders to units.

• Instructions for setting up the environment are available here.

• An introduction to the Broodwar API is available here.

• Instructions for building a bot that communicates with a remote process are available here.

• There is also a Forum

We encourage submission of bots that make use of advanced AI techniques. Some ideas are:

• Planning
• Data Mining
• Machine Learning
• Case-Based Reasoning

Tournaments

Tournament 1: Micro-management

Tournament 2: Small-scale combat

Tournament 3: Tech-limited Game

Tournament 4: Complete Game

Rules

Tournament rules are available here

Submission

Information about bot submission is available here

Deadlines

• Registration: Now - 9.1.2010
• Submission and Testing: 9.1.2010 - 9.15.2010
• Competition: 9.15.2010 - 10.15.2010
• Finals:10.15.2010

Registration

Registration is free and easy. Email Ben Weber at bgweber@gmail.com with the title "StarCraft AI Registration”. In the body of the email, include your name, affiliation, the tournaments you are interested in participating in and a short description of your bot.

We encourage participants to notify us as soon as possible if you plan on submitting a bot.

Participants