Battleship Tournament

A Ruby sparring tournament. Compete by building a computer AI for the classic Battleship game.

Participating

There are 4 simple steps to participate.

1 Install the battleship_tournament gem

  sudo gem install battleship_tournament

2 Create a player (computer AI) with a creative and unique name

  generate_battleship_player "Some Creative and Unique Name"

3 Build and install your player‘s ruby gem

  # Install the rspec gem if needed
  # sudo gem install rspec
  cd some_creative_and_unique_name
  rake gem
  sudo gem install pkg/some_creative_and_unique_name-1.0.gem

4 Enter data, choose password, and submit your player

  # Edit Rakefile and provide the information indicated.
  rake submit

Battle Your Player

You‘ll need Limelight to watch your player battle.

1 Download an installer from limelight.8thlight.com 2 Install 3 Create a Limelight Link file

  echo "http://sparring.rubyforge.org/battleship/battleship.llp" > ~/Desktop/battleship.lll

4 Go to your desktop and double click on battleship.llp

You should see your player in the list along with Sergeant Simple and Rear Admiral Randy. Select a competator and begin the battle. Who will win?

Improve Your Player‘s AI

The source code for your player is contained in one file:

  some_creative_and_unique_name/lib/some_creative_and_unique_name/some_creative_and_unique_name.rb

You‘ll also find an lack of specs in the file:

  some_creative_and_unique_name/spec/some_creative_and_unique_name/some_creative_and_unique_name_spec.rb

Use of rSpec is required.

There are plenty of comments in the generated source code. Go nuts! Add code. Change code. Add files. Turn your player into a masterfull battleship AI.

Whe your player is ready, be sure to submit again. Make sure you remember your players password. You may submit as many times as you like. Each submission will overwrite the previous submission.

  rake submit

Email List

Join the email list. Use it for questions and discussion about the tournament.

Subscribe: rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/sparring-battleship Email: sparring-battleship@rubyforge.org

Rules

You have until November 30th, 2008 to submit your final solution. On December 1st, competition begins. Each player will be matched against every other player in round robin fashion. Each match it a best-of-21 games. The first player to win 11 games, wins the match. The Tournament Champion will be the player with the most match wins.

However, there is a more prestegious title to which players should aspire. The Tournament Master. This coveted title is awarded not to the player who wins the most battles but to the player that also has the best source code. A series of metrics will be collected on your player‘s source code and compiled into an all-round score. The player with the best all-round score will be honored as Tournament Master.

The Battleship Limelight production provides a Locker Room scene where you can run some sample analysis on your player. This is just an example of the analysis that will be perfomed but it should give you an idea of what is expected.

Solutions may NOT make use of ruby gems. The tournament is about crafting a complete solution.

Analysis Dependancies

To run full analysis, you will have to have the following gems, and their dependancies, installed:

 * flog
 * rCov
 * rSpec

Terms for Disqualification

 1 Attempting to open or modify classes, modules, or objects in the Battleship engine.
 2 Tampering with the Battleship.Rakefile file.
 3 Providing invalid ship placements.
 4 Providing invalid targets.
 5 Attempting to open or modify opponent player's classes, modules, or objects.
 6 Making use of Kernel.set_trace_func
 7 Tampering or abusing tournament infractruscure and facilities

Troubleshooting

"None of the players are showing up in the player lists." First check that the player gems are installed. It‘s likely that the Battleship engine cannot find them. We‘ll have to tell it where it can find the gems. Mac:

  ruby -r "rubygems" -e "File.open(File.expand_path('~/.gem_home'), 'w') { |f| f.write Gem.dir }"

Windows: Find your gem directory. In you home directory (C:\Documents and Settings\Micah) create a file named ‘gem_home.txt’ containing the path to your gem directory.