🛀🏿 🤽 🤘 Russian AI Cup 2020 - a new strategy game for developers 📓 🔣 🚠

This year has transformed many processes, traditions and habits have changed. The rhythm has changed, additional uncertainty and tension have appeared. But the soul of an IT specialist requires variety, and many developers asked us - will there be an annual Russian AI Cup ? Will there be an announcement? What is the theme of the upcoming championship? Should I take a vacation?

Not unchanged, but in keeping with the best traditions. On the eve of the start, we are announcing one of the largest online championships in artificial intelligence programming - the Russian AI Cup . We invite you to go down in history!

The history of the championship began in 2012. Every year at Mail.ru Group, together with Codeforces, we come up with a game problem for developers from all over the world. The goal is to implement in any programming language a strategy or a bot that will play in the virtual world for its creator against other bots. About 2,000 people take part in the championship every year.

Those who participated once cannot miss a new event. There are no former participants. Since there is a one-year break between the Russian AI Cup, the developers participate in other similar initiatives, for example, in the Mini AI Cup or other international platforms such as CodinGame. A whole culture has already been formed. You can remember or read about all the past championships in other articles. Links will be at the end.

Now aboutRussian AI Cup (or RAIC): CodeCraft is this year's competition.

Championship schedule

You can take part on any day of the championship, but there are stages:

Beta week (November 28).
Sandbox (December 5th until the end of the competition).
First round (December 12-13).
Second round (December 19 - 20).
Final (December 26 - 28).

Traditionally, the championship opens with a test week (beta week). During this time, the participants taste the problem, and we check that everything works, and fix errors, balance and any other problems found. All you need is to load the code with the strategy into the system. The launch system will look for an opponent for your strategy, show you visually how the game was played, and determine the winner of the battle.

The sandbox starts right after the beta and lasts until the end of the competition. Participants in the first round are selected according to the rating for the first week. If you did not succeed in the first round, you can continue to improve your strategy and fight for the Sandbox prizes until the end of the championship. In addition, the best Sandbox strategies also make it to the finals.

After each stage, the difficulty of the game increases. Additional objects, relationships between them and rules are added. All this is described in advance in the documentation.

Those who hit the first round will need to improve their strategy before the start of the round. The best participants in the first round go to the second, and from the second to the final.

Thus, the final can be reached in two ways - via the main branch or via the Sandbox. The choice is yours!

Prizes

In the past years, the winners have received equipment from us (MacBooks, iPads, watches and hard drives). In addition, we presented 60 hoodies and 360 T-shirts as a keepsake.

Unfortunately, the participants of the previous RAIC received the T-shirts only almost a year later (we delivered the equipment). In a pandemic, we were powerless and not ready.

In this regard, we thought to cancel the merch in this competition, but a flurry of indignation fell upon us. “No promotional codes or other virtual prizes needed, T-shirts and sweatshirts are needed,” I quote from the community.

Change 1 : the prizes are now not physical, but cash. This year's winners will receive:

1st place - 250,000 rubles
2nd place - 200,000 rubles
3rd place - 150,000 rubles
4th place - RUB 125,000
5th place - 100,000 rubles
6th place - 75,000 rubles

Sandbox winners (also 6 people) will receive 10,000 rubles each. Amounts are after taxes. We have significantly increased the prize pool.

Change 2 : T-shirts and hoodies will be available, but delivery will not be until February. If you don't want to wait, you can exchange your promotional gift for a promotional code in Mail.ru Group services (cloud, etc.).

All participants in the second round will receive T-shirts, and the finalists will receive sweatshirts.

CodeCraft

In 2017, we tried to make a game similar to StarCraft. The competition was then called CodeWars. As a result, we made Total War with nuclear strikes on sandwiches (who played, he will understand).

Two years later, they returned to the idea of creating a strategy, but with elements of the economy. For example, I was inspired by Stronghold Crusader, Empire Earth and other classic strategy games.

In our game CodeCraft, you have to manage a set of units, build buildings, collect resources and attack opponents. We hope you enjoy the new game.

The full rules of the game will be available at the opening of the beta, so here I will describe the basic scenario and key objects in the game.

The game can be downloaded and played locally. Versions are available for Linux, MacOS and Windows.

It will be possible to program strategies in most programming languages: C #, C ++, D, F #, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Python, Ruby, Rust and Scala.

Basic entities

There is a fixed set of entity types in the game, and entities of the same types have the same properties:

A resource is the only entity that cannot be controlled. It can only be collected.
Unit builder. The main purpose of this unit is to extract resources and build buildings.
Melee unit. Basic melee damage unit.
Ranged unit. Deals damage at a distance.
Base of builders / melee units / ranged units - these buildings will allow you to buy new units of the corresponding type. Can be built by the builder.
The wall is a small building blocking the passage for the enemy.
A house is a building that produces food.
A turret is a building capable of attacking enemies. Has no ability to move.

We decided not to add many different units or objects to the map, since this does not diversify strategies, but complicates the game.

Map

Our theme is cosmic. The playing field is a rectangular grid divided into cells. All game entities are square and located in integer coordinates.

The distance between two cells in the game is the number of cells that must be traversed in order to reach the goal, moving only along neighboring cells.

You might think that every object has a height. This is not true. This time also without 3D.

main idea

In general, the idea is simple - to destroy the enemy base. You need to feed the population, build buildings, buy units, and you also need to defend yourself and conquer other territories.

First of all, you will start collecting resources (farming) and building buildings (or buying units), and immediately fight. Already at this stage, the player chooses whether to go to development or to the army.

If your base was attacked and damaged, then you can repair the remaining buildings.

Each unit or building has health, and attacking entities have a limited attack range.

The population needs to be fed! The house produces food and some people use it. Watch this.

And the last thing is the range of vision. If Fog of War is turned on, your strategy will only see entities that are located no further than a specified distance from any entity that you control.

Specificity

The Fog of War will only be available in Round 2.

The game will be 1v1 in the final, and before it 1v3.

All rules and entities will be available in the Sandbox.

And yes - remember the simple A * algorithm . It will be useful to you.

Community

Join our friendly Telegram community . We communicate and answer each other's questions. Waiting for you!

The game, language packs and full rules will be available on November 28 at 00:00 UTC.

We wish you fun, interest and good luck!

useful links

2012 CodeTanks

Russian AI Cup 2012

Russian AI Cup 2012

Russian AI Cup

Russian AI Cup. Tactics Field

Russian AI Cup. Code of tanks

2013 CodeTroopers

Russian AI Cup:

Russian AI Cup 2013 —

Russian AI Cup

2014 CodeHockey

Russian AI Cup 2014:

Russian AI Cup

Russian AI Cup 2014

Solit 2015. «Russian AI Cup 2014: AI »

:

AI Cup 2015 News: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07.

2015 CodeRacing

Russian AI Cup 2015

5- Russian AI Cup 2015

2016 CodeWizards

AI Cup. Code Wizards 2016

Dota — Russian AI Cup

( ) Russian AI Cup 2016

Deep Learning Agent for RussianAICup 2016

2017 CodeWars

3 Russian AI Cup 2017

Russian AI Cup 2017

Russian AI Cup:

:

Game from Russian AI Cup 2017 CodeWizards

2018 CodeBall

( ) Russian AI Cup 2018 — CodeBall

Russian AI Cup 2018: CodeBall

Russian AI Cup 2018, 9

Russian AI Cup 2018 CodeBall

Russian AI Cup CodeBall 2018

Russian AI Cup Codeball

Russian AI Cup 2018: My Renderer

Russian AI Cup 2018: CodeBall

2019 CodeSide

CodeSide. Russian AI Cup

Russian AI Cup 2019

Russian AI Cup 2019

Russian AI Cup 2020 - a new strategy game for developers