Vindinium: An artificial intelligence programming challenge

If you&#x27;re interested in this kind of thing and want a gentle introduction, I highly recommend CodeCombat [1], which offers both a single player version for learning the system and a multiplayer version for writing AI code.<p>[1] <a href="http://codecombat.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;codecombat.com</a>

I saw this a while ago and thought that I would love to try playing this game as a human, so I could explore different strategies, or just have fun. Well, that is finally possible.<p>I just created LiveHumanBot – a “bot” that really just lets you, a human, type in directions to control your character. Here is its code, with instructions: <a href="https://github.com/roryokane/vindinium-live-human-bot" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;roryokane&#x2F;vindinium-live-human-bot</a>. I fare pretty well against other bots: <a href="http://vindinium.org/ai/p20qptiv" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vindinium.org&#x2F;ai&#x2F;p20qptiv</a>.

This looks promising. Will this fill the hole in my soul that Google Ants left behind?

Can anyone comment on general strategies that would be applicable to this game? Has anyone tried some kind of crazy machine learning stuff, or is it dominated by relatively simple algorithms?

Is it normal for x to reference the vertical, and y the horizontal in such games?<p>Maybe I don&#x27;t understand how they&#x27;re normally represented. take this map: <a href="http://vindinium.org/4mx1xu9j" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vindinium.org&#x2F;4mx1xu9j</a><p>it returns the locations of the mines as: {(5, 9): u&#x27;-&#x27;, (4, 9): u&#x27;-&#x27;, (5, 0): u&#x27;-&#x27;, (4, 0): u&#x27;-&#x27;}<p>So that top left most mine is 4,0 instead of 0,4 that I&#x27;d would expect.<p>It also has the location of my hero (althalus, right at the top left) as (0,1) vs my expected (1,0)

This looks really fun. Always wanted to participate in one of these. Good job on making it programming language agnostic :)

I&#x27;ve found this great project some months ago.<p>I written a couple of robots which end up on this <i>robot runner</i>[1] mainly as a toy project for trying the game with some friends.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/eridal/Vindinium" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;eridal&#x2F;Vindinium</a>

Oh, neat to see this here! This was part of a local competition I participated in several months ago. Nice to see it has improved quite a bit since.<p>I&#x27;m far from knowledgable on AI stuff, but I found this a great way to learn about some very basics, like pathfinding.

I would recommend having bot names be case sensitive, as well as a limit on how many a user can register. I really like the first use UX, and how easy it is to get started, but you can register as many names as you want.

This reminds me of a the Student Starcraft AI Tournament: <a href="http://www.sscaitournament.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sscaitournament.com</a>

Does someone here has already created a bot for the game ?

Dude, this is awesome! I like it

It would be nice if the Java library allowed you to simply download the .jar instead of forcing you to use maven. This is supposed to be a game, not some massive web-scale project.

Over use of term &quot;AI&quot; is back. It&#x27;s 80s all over again :). These kind of &quot;challenges&quot; are no where close to AI. They are just bit complex program whoes behavior is fully programmed by humans and they are only good at for very very specific &quot;challange&quot;. These programs would be unable to hold a conversation with humans or read a newspaper and create their internal belief system. Stop calling these things &quot;AI&quot;.

Seems like something that Google or Microsoft would ask as an interview question. You have all day to complete it, on your laptop, but once done, no matter how much code it is, they want it transcribed from your computer onto a physical white-board, because the only thing they know how to read is white-boards. If you tell them they are crazy and try to end the interview right then and there, you are hired, because you have guts, and you know what can and cannot be done, and will not waste your time with jerks.