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2004 ICFP Contest Spinoff Game

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the games-people-hack dept.

TheRealFoxFire writes "Taking a page from the popular Corewars competitive programming game, the 2004 ICFP Programming Contest task has been turned into an online competition: Ant Wars. In the game, programmers create state-machine ant "brains" which battle against each other for food and programmer glory. And just in time for the ICFP contest itself, where this year's winners will be announced."

11 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. ...but that would be cool, too... by BalorTFL · · Score: 4, Funny

    Totally misread this the first time around:

    ...In the game, programmers with state-machine ant "brains" battle against each other for food and programmer glory...

  2. Very cute but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...if you'd like to see a more advanced simulator which has an ant demo, see MASON. A nice paper on it was presented at AAMAS this year.

  3. Sounds like IBM's Robocode contest from... by Hollinger · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This sounds like IBM's Robocode contest from a while back. In that particular game, you wrote a robot class built around a predefined basic robot, using a provided API for stuff like "radar," and sensing when you're in the line of fire. Your robot would battle with N other robots in an arena, and the last left standing would win.

    I think whoever won the contest last time won a new ThinkPad Notebook, but that was two years ago. By now, I think Robocode's been set aside within IBM.

    Now it looks like some Third Party's built a competition around IBM's Robocode.

    --
    Michael C. Hollinger
    1. Re:Sounds like IBM's Robocode contest from... by Fjornir · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Let's not forget C Robots! A similiar game where you hack your robot's instructions with a psuedo-c.

      There's a C++ variant as well.

      There was a less interesting (but much more complex) programmable-robot game floating around in the BBS days which used a BASIC. Although it had a beautiful GUI (for the era) its biggest failing was that it allowed customization of your robot's chasis, weaponry, etc. Unfortunately this wasn't well balanced, and the competition we had running quickly degraded and we all lost interest.

      --
      I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
  4. My entry... by Black+Parrot · · Score: 4, Funny


    [start] --> [attackjudges]
    [attackjudges] --> [checkrankings]
    [checkrankings] --> [idle] , if rank is "1st"
    [checkrankings] --> [attackjudges] , otherwise
    [idle] --> [checkrankings]

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  5. corewars.org?! Try http://www.corewar.info instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.corewar.info/ Is maintained by Christrian Schmidt, one of the great corewars men. Or you could go to http://www.corewar.co.uk/ Maintained by John Metcalf, corewar hall of famer.

    Or better yet, you could try www.koth.org or sal.math.ualberta.ca and go straight to the hills.

  6. Bug Brain by tuxter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is quite a nice visual program. The idea is to build a brain to "run" a bug. Nice educational tool....

  7. Intro to the game by Rightcoast · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is a very simple introduction for anyone new to the game and interested in playing.



    http://www.koth.org/info/corewars_for_dummies/dumm ies.html
  8. Check out the Google ads on the Ant Wars page by corporatemutantninja · · Score: 3, Funny

    I guess the Google algorithm took the words "ant" and "programmer" and assumed some kind of nasty infestation.

    --
    Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
  9. Acronym by Noksagt · · Score: 3, Informative

    Slashdot submitters: try to explain acronyms you use in your submission. Same should go to people who make the original websites too. It took a lot of poking around to figure out ICFP=International Conference on Functional Programming.

  10. Corewar links correction by lastfish · · Score: 3, Informative

    The corewars site linked to in the story has never been known to be active or complete.

    The KOTH server is home to the "pro" hills of which 94NOP is the most active.
    The most up-to-date site for info & links is Fizmo's.

    There are beginner's hills and others at
    SAL hills
    Yellow hills

    There's also an IRC channel at irc://irc.koth.org#corewars

    Ant wars looks interesting - pity the event is over