Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

helloworldopen.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 86 posts

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#21

Post by omahlama »

tinco wrote: post #13

It sounds like a cool competition, but it would be nice if they gave a little more explanation about their technical solution. If it's true that the only way to test your bot is by uploading it to them and waiting for the CI to finish (once per day), then that's not very nice at all. Will the participants get an environment in which they can test their bots outside of the competition CI?

Servers are available for testing during development, running the code on your own computer - the CI server is useful in that it verifies that your code compiles and runs on the linux machine used during the competition.

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#22

Post by egeozcan »

bencoder wrote: post #20

Was about to apply but I'm confused about the rules requiring all members to be the same nationality. I have a French passport, so my nationality would legally be French, but I live in the UK, and work with English, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian developers(all living and working in the UK), some of whom I was considering asking to join a team with me. I think this rule needs some amendment. Edit: also to explain some m…

Yeah, I have a Turkish passport and I live in Germany with a residence permit. I joined with two German colleagues, hoping that would be OK.

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#23

Post by GFischer »

kriro wrote: post #15

Are there any limitations on the licensing of my AI (didn't see anything on the front page rules)? I'm somewhat concerned this is just an cool way of outsourcing the AI development for one of their mobile games :D [at the very least it seems like a smart investment for recruiting] Otherwise the competition seems cool and Helsinki is a nice place. Will certainly think about participating. All members being from the sa…

About the licensing: "All code created by teams must be licensed with Apache License v2.0."

I guess it might be something like RoboCode, probably more advanced :)

http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#24

Post by spuz »

> The server will send you track details and car positions and your job is to send car control messages to the server. You'll communicate with a game server using JSON over TCP. More details will be delivered later.”

I don't understand how this could work for a real-time game. I don't know what the input format is like but assuming you need to provide control commands eg:

    {accelerate:1.0, steer:-0.01, brake:0}
Then the behaviour of my car depends wholly on when that command arrives at the server. If there is a small delay it could have a dramatic effect on the position of the car. Similarly, my AI needs to react to information sent by the server which similarly could be delayed when sending over TCP.

Assuming the input format is the actual status of the car, eg:

    {positionx:123, positiony:234}
Then what is to stop me from submitting illegal inputs? Validation might work but it will be impossible for me to validate the output of my AI without access to the simulation code (apparently that is being kept closed source).

Maybe there is another technical solution I haven't thought of? Or maybe the simulation won't run in realtime but will actually work on fixed time steps?

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#25

Post by omahlama »

spuz wrote: post #24

> The server will send you track details and car positions and your job is to send car control messages to the server. You'll communicate with a game server using JSON over TCP. More details will be delivered later.” I don't understand how this could work for a real-time game. I don't know what the input format is like but assuming you need to provide control commands eg: {accelerate:1.0, steer:-0.01, brake:0} Then t…

It does work - I've seen it :) It does depend on a low ping between the bots and the server, but that is taken care of by the organizers.

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#27

Post by TeMPOraL »

omahlama wrote: post #25
spuz wrote: post #24

> The server will send you track details and car positions and your job is to send car control messages to the server. You'll communicate with a game server using JSON over TCP. More details will be delivered later.” I don't understand how this could work for a real-time game. I don't know what the input format is like but assuming you need to provide control commands eg: {accelerate:1.0, steer:-0.01, brake:0} Then t…

It does work - I've seen it :) It does depend on a low ping between the bots and the server, but that is taken care of by the organizers.

Well, the ping (and uncertainty of it) is just a parameter in an closed-loop feedback control system ;). You can handle it.

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#28

Post by omahlama »

egeozcan wrote: post #22
bencoder wrote: post #20

Was about to apply but I'm confused about the rules requiring all members to be the same nationality. I have a French passport, so my nationality would legally be French, but I live in the UK, and work with English, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian developers(all living and working in the UK), some of whom I was considering asking to join a team with me. I think this rule needs some amendment. Edit: also to explain some m…

Yeah, I have a Turkish passport and I live in Germany with a residence permit. I joined with two German colleagues, hoping that would be OK.

(Disclaimer: I'm not part of the organizing team, but I do work for Reaktor - so this is just my opinion, not an official position.) As I've understood, the same country requirement works just like in sports: you need to be a citizen of the country if you want to play in the national team.

I would suggest contacting the organizers about your situation.

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#29

Post by mikko-apo »

spuz wrote: post #24

> The server will send you track details and car positions and your job is to send car control messages to the server. You'll communicate with a game server using JSON over TCP. More details will be delivered later.” I don't understand how this could work for a real-time game. I don't know what the input format is like but assuming you need to provide control commands eg: {accelerate:1.0, steer:-0.01, brake:0} Then t…

Hi!

Very good question :) The message protocol is synchronized because of latency. When the developers test their bots against the game servers, the server allows long response times. When automated races are run in the cloud (with low latency), the response times need to be more strict.

Re: Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure

#30

Post by jwr »

omahlama wrote: post #28
egeozcan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I have a Turkish passport and I live in Germany with a residence permit. I joined with two German colleagues, hoping that would be OK.

(Disclaimer: I'm not part of the organizing team, but I do work for Reaktor - so this is just my opinion, not an official position.) As I've understood, the same country requirement works just like in sports: you need to be a citizen of the country if you want to play in the national team. I would suggest contacting the organizers about your situation.

I think what people are trying to point out is that within the hacker community the concept of a "national team" is obsolete.
Post reply on HN