For a bit of fun...
Now announcing the general availability of Ant Wars
<http://ant-wars.com>, a spin off of this year's 2004 ICFP Programming
Contest. In it, programmers create finite state machine 'ant brains',
which control the members of a species of ant. The ant has the ability
to move and sense adjacent cells and pheromones in a hexagonal world,
and must use that limited sense to harvest food, repel attackers, or
raid enemy ant hills.
Programming the brains can be done at a bytecode level, and assembler
level, or in a LISPy high level language (compiled to bytecode using SISC).
Ant Wars is a competitive online game, where ant brains are submitted
and used to challenge others in several King of the Hill style arenas.
The matches are visualized in the browser in real time using Formicidae,
the Ant Wars simulator.
In the test period we've already creative strategies including
blockading and luring enemies into traps. Come check it out!
Scott
In article <············@wolfberry.srv.cs.cmu.edu>, Scott G. Miller wrote:
> Programming the brains can be done at a bytecode level, and assembler
> level, or in a LISPy high level language (compiled to bytecode using SISC).
Douglas Hofstadter for you on line two. ;-)
Bruce
--
·······@sdf.lonestar.org www.not-art.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
The Mouser felt a compulsive urge to take out his dagger and stab himself
in the heart. A man had to die when he saw something like that.
(Fritz Leiber)
There's a CMUCL demo program called "Planet of the Feebs" that works
just like the "ant wars" program. You program a brain in Common Lisp
and it controls a creature in a maze. The creature eats and blasts
its fellow creatures (just like real life, this game). It also
starves if it runs out of energy.
--
Fred Gilham ······@csl.sri.com
99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name. -- Steve Wright
This is off-topic for this list, sorry.
But I'd like to know why the authors of AntWars changed
1- the rules of the ant world (water? why is it interesting?)
2- the format used to specify ant brains
with respect to the ICFP context? These changes prevent all of the
ants submitted to the context to take part to AntWars.
Best regards,
-francesco
fra wrote:
> This is off-topic for this list, sorry.
>
> But I'd like to know why the authors of AntWars changed
>
> 1- the rules of the ant world (water? why is it interesting?)
We aren't using water for the time being precisely because it isn't well
balanced in game play. But for the future, the idea is that ants drown
in water unless they are adjacent to a friend ant. When they drown,
they become three pellets of food (just like ordinary ant death), and
the pellets move randomly in water until they reach shore.
> 2- the format used to specify ant brains
The bytecode format is a bit more flexible. It allows for more states,
and has room for new instructions. Ant Wars is not really trying to be
ICFP 2004 continued, so we didn't feel like we needed to preserve the
format. That said, someone has written a translator from the ICFP form
to the Ant Wars one.
>
> with respect to the ICFP context? These changes prevent all of the
> ants submitted to the context to take part to AntWars.
They can be ported with minimal effort using the translator.
Scott
"Scott G. Miller" <········@freenetproject.org> writes:
> fra wrote:
> > This is off-topic for this list, sorry. But I'd like to know why
> > the authors of AntWars changed
> > 1- the rules of the ant world (water? why is it interesting?)
>
> We aren't using water for the time being precisely because it isn't
> well balanced in game play. But for the future, the idea is that ants
> drown in water unless they are adjacent to a friend ant. When they
> drown, they become three pellets of food (just like ordinary ant
> death), and the pellets move randomly in water until they reach shore.
Real ants may live (survive) up to a fortnight under water. Once out
of the water, they resume their activity.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we.
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> "Scott G. Miller" <········@freenetproject.org> writes:
>
>>fra wrote:
>>
>>>This is off-topic for this list, sorry. But I'd like to know why
>>>the authors of AntWars changed
>>>1- the rules of the ant world (water? why is it interesting?)
>>
>>We aren't using water for the time being precisely because it isn't
>>well balanced in game play. But for the future, the idea is that ants
>>drown in water unless they are adjacent to a friend ant. When they
>>drown, they become three pellets of food (just like ordinary ant
>>death), and the pellets move randomly in water until they reach shore.
>
>
> Real ants may live (survive) up to a fortnight under water. Once out
> of the water, they resume their activity.
>
So I hear. This is definitely a topic of debate. A more realistic
approach is to have water slowly but randomly move the objects on it,
ants included, and prevent any command from being effective while an ant
is in water.