2008 ORTS RTS Game AI Competition

Welcome to the ORTS competition page. The third RTS game AI competition will be held August 1-8, 2008. On this page you can find descriptions of the game categories, the tournament rules, and a brief ORTS overview. We encourage students, AI researchers, and hobbyists interested in real-time strategy games to get familiar with the ORTS project and to participate in this year's competition. Everybody is welcome. Game 1,2,3 are identical (except for hp changes), but we added 20 siege tanks to game 4, to encourage working on tactical AI for heterogenous forces. Also, programs are now allowed to save data in directory ~/game-data, which can be used to implement opponent modeling algorithms.
We need more entries for category 3 - the "full-blown RTS" game. Software modules are now in place (e.g. a commander system, pathfinding, gathering minerals), that vastly simplify the creation of scripted ORTS game AI systems. See trunk/docs/. Please consider developing an entry for this challenging category, so that we have a true competition in August. We will also set up ORTS so that human players can play against category 3 entries at AIIDE-08.

News

Oct. 20 2008: tournament source code available
Mar. 6, 2008: tournament moved to Aug 1st.
Feb. 24, 2008: game parameter changes: worker hp=60, marine hp=40, smaller cooldown and greater attack power and range for siege tanks.
Feb. 22, 2008: added ability to save/load data during game-play.
Feb. 18, 2008: page created. Some of the files linked from this page have not been updated to the 2008 setting yet.
(see also ORTS news here)

Tournament Entry Source Code

uofa1,3: stored in apps/rtscomp08
Johan Hagelbäck, Blekinge Institute of Technology, BTH, Sweden [blekinge1,2,3]
Andrew Downing, Fremont CA, USA [downing4]
Pawel Lichocki and Wojciech Jaskowski, University of Technology, Poznan, Poland [lichocki4]
Lucas Martinez and Diego Martinez, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Argentina [lidia2]
Lim Zhan Wei, National University of Singapore [nus2]

Tournament Results

Game 1: Collaborative Pathfinding (20 workers gather resources)

Current results (updated every 20 seconds)

Final result after 250 games (average number of minerals gathered within 10 minutes):

name       matches    average    disconnect 

uofa1      250        4839.6     0          
blekinge1  250        5630.72    30

Congratulations team blekinge! UofA used its last year's entry scoring less this time which was probably caused by a pathfinding bug we introduced.

Game 2: Strategic Combat (5 bases, 50 tanks)

Updated every 20 seconds:
games so far - result summary - tmanager output

Final result after 250 games (average number of minerals gathered within 10 minutes):

name       score      matches    ratio

blekinge2  196.0      200        0.98 
nus2       18.0       200        0.09 
lidia2     86.0       200        0.43

Congratulations again, team blekinge! Almost a perfect score against team lidia and NUS's entry from last year.

Game 3: Complete RTS Game (economy, fog-of-war, small techtree)

Updated every 20 seconds:
games so far - result summary - tmanager output

Final result after 2x200 games:

name       score      matches    ratio      disconnect 

uofa3      35.0       200        0.175      3          
blekinge3  165.0      200        0.825      0

Congratulations yet again, team blekinge! Well done.

Game 4: Tactical Combat (20 siege tanks + 50 marines each, flat terrain)

Updated every 20 seconds:
games so far - result summary

name       score      matches    ratio      disconnect

downing4   166.5      200        0.8325     0         
lichocki4  33.5       200        0.1675     26

Congratulations to Andrew Downing!

Time Line

Starting now: installing and testing ORTS software. We need feedback regarding the installation process and the functionality of the game scripts to rectify problems as early as possible. Please report issues in the ORTS help forum. Note that the game 4 implementation is not finished yet.
July 20, 2008: entry registration deadline. Send email to mburo (at) cs.ualberta.ca with the following information: name, affiliation, and game categories you want to participate in. We also need to know what software tools and components you need to have installed on Linux machines to run your code. See rules for details about software requirements.
July 20-31, 2008:: testing software installation. You will get the opportunity to install and test your software on our machines.
August 1-8, 2008: running the tournament.

Getting Started

Overview [PDF][To be updated]
Download and Installation
ORTS client documentation you can find in orts3/misc/doc/client-code.
A Sample AI Client is provided in directory orts3/apps/sampleai.
Tournament related files are located in directory orts3/tournament

Source code of all entries of 2007 (230 MB total)

Tournament Details

(copy of orts3/tournament-2008)

README : tournament directory files, ORTS overview
rules : tournament rules
installation : how to install your software, team list
changes : compared to the 2007 competition
game1 : describes game category 1 "gathering resources"
game2 : describes game category 2 "strategic combat"
game3 : describes game category 3 "a real RTS game"
game4 : describes game category 4 "tactical combat"
getting_started.pdf : more tournament informatioon

Hardware/software available to each entry: P4 2.4GHz (32 bit CPU), 512MB RAM, GNU/Linux 2.4.34, gcc 3.4.6

Some slides on RTS game AI research and the competition.
Initial proposal
2007 Competition Page
2006 Tournament Report

If you have questions about the tournament please send me email at mburo@cs-ualberta.ca (replace - by .). For ORTS software installation questions please post to the ORTS sourceforge help forum.