I had an idea on a competition in a highly constrained environment: 32x32 matrix, with bots running code you write! The live site is <a href="https://kingofthegrid.com/" rel="nofollow">https://kingofthegrid.com/</a>.<p>Each bot emulates Z80 CPU and they all get equal execution time, so the most efficient algorithm wins.<p>Bots can move, eat, clone themselves, and most importantly, survive the competition.<p>Each submission, leaderboard is re-calculated, such that each participant has a match against each other, and the bot that makes the most wins gets to the top.<p>It includes includes an online in-browser IDE: <a href="https://kingofthegrid.com/ide/" rel="nofollow">https://kingofthegrid.com/ide/</a> that way you don't even have to download anything to spitball ideas. After compiling, you can test your code in browser as well.<p>I am also hoping for submitters to come up with ingenious ideas that would force others to re-think the strategy, etc.
In 2006, Symantec ran a programming competition of sorts for University students, where you had to write code for a tiny bot that was trying to collect as many resources as possible from the game map. What made it particularly interesting was that one of the features of the instruction set was a peek/poke operation that would let you modify the memory of other bots, letting you try to break them and take control of them to help your cause.<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060224022835/http://www.symantec.com/specprog/university/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20060224022835/http://www.symant...</a>
Ah looks interesting. Perhaps this is inspired by Core War?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War</a>
Isn't it just a case of cloning yourself as many time as possible until you encounter an enemy, and then you have superior number even with a lesser good algorithm?
Reminds me (in spirit) of screeps <a href="https://screeps.com/" rel="nofollow">https://screeps.com/</a> - any inspiration?