The final run is over, the results are as follows

1. S.V. Pranay and Karthik, IIT M

2. Pavan Kumar, IIT M

3. Prathab, IIT M

4. Goutham, CVR College of Engineering

Ever felt frustrated being beaten hands down at a game of chess by a computer bot? Ever wondered how the hell one keeps track of tens of hundreds of look aheads on the fly when playing a strategy game? Now is your chance for revenge. For, we give you the chance to expand your runtime stack capacity from the passably limited organic version of your cerebrum to gigabytes of silicon and more.

Intrigued? Read on...

Dots and Boxes is a two player pencil and paper strategy game, commonly played by fourth graders around the world. Briefly, players alternately connect edges in a grid of points and a player gets to 'own' a square if he completes the fourth side of that square in the grid. But sadly, few see the rich mathematical intricacies behind this sophisticated child's play. We would like to change that.

 

In Fighting Bots, we would like you to build the AI for the game of Dots And Boxes, conforming to a very simple API we'll be providing. (Don't get turned off by the geek talk, you would just have to generate the next move, given the current board state). The API provided by us takes care of connecting to a server, getting you a second player, and giving you visual feedback of a running game.

 

In essence, you would be translating your thought process/strategy into a structured algorithm, and put it according to a simple interface specified by us and voila! You have just built your very own bot! The rules are straightforward. Your bot fights it out with the others in various knock out rounds online. The best bot wins.

Teams of a maximum of two are allowed. It is enough for the team leader to register and submit. All submissions should contain the names and contact info of the team members. We shall be contacting winners via e-mail. Results will be put up on the web too.

 

Downloads are provided for both the client API and the server application. One may develop their respective clients and test it against themselves, or their friends (or even against the provided sample game) through the server application.

Completed programs may be emailed to fightingbots[at]exebit.org as a single executable jar file. Any number of submissions is allowed but only the final one will be considered for competitive evaluation.

 

Prize Money:

1st Place:	Rs. 6000
2nd Place:	Rs. 4000
3rd Place:	Rs. 2000

Both the server application and the client APIs have been developed in Java.
The client API consists of three functions to interact with the server

1. Start(String name): It returns information like grid size and starting player info
2. MakeMove(move): It returns your move to the server
3. GetMove(): It returns the opponents move

 

The API imposes a one minute restriction for the move time. Exceeding the time limit leads to disqualification for that game.

 

Click on Quick Start Guide for a quick tutorial with a few examples.
Detailed documentation can be viewed in this javadoc [download].

But the basic idea is to call the functions in the logical order. If not, the player who made the invalid move is disqualified by the server application instantaneously.

 

Downloads :

1. SquaresClientAPI.jar : This is the Client API, and is cross platform.
2. SquaresGameSampleClient.jar : This is the executable sample client program
3. SquaresGameServerLinux.jar : This is the server for Linux platforms
4. SquaresGameServerWindows.jar : This is the server for windows platforms

If you face any problems, just ensure you have the latest version of Java in your computer. If problems persist, mail your queries to the coordinator.

In case of any queries, please contact:
Rajkishan G
Email: fightingbots[at]exebit.org