Show HN: A competition game to write bots for the most efficient algo
5 comments
·February 22, 2025keyle
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?
desertkun
When you clone yourself you spend energy – and you must specify how much energy you sacrifice. With explosive cloning you will die fast. At least that's my assumption, this is all being refined as we speak.
anta40
Ah looks interesting. Perhaps this is inspired by Core War?
desertkun
Actually, I've been referenced to this already, but I have completely missed it.
I have been messing around with Z80 processor for some time and given how it's slow and simple I had to do some really dirtry tricks to make game code efficient, and that made me thinking "hey, this has potential as a benchmark, what if I make a competition where speed of decision making is key". Since Z80 Emulators allow for precise tick control, every bot gets equal chance.
And because of Z80 simplicity I was able to go 100% deterministic route: every game has a seed and it's guaranteed that games with the same seed and players end up the same, so players can debug what happened after they've lost, etc.
There are C compilers for it, but I am also curious if somebody with enough Rust-fu just provides a binding for it, since this is technically not about C, but about machine code.
anta40
At lease there's a difference: Core War uses fictional CPU architecture, while this one uses Z80. BTW, the first GameBoy is also a Z80 device, yes?
Something to have fun with on weekend :)
I had an idea on a competition in a highly constrained environment: 32x32 matrix, with bots running code you write! The live site is https://kingofthegrid.com/.
Each bot emulates Z80 CPU and they all get equal execution time, so the most efficient algorithm wins.
Bots can move, eat, clone themselves, and most importantly, survive the competition.
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.
It includes includes an online in-browser IDE: https://kingofthegrid.com/ide/ that way you don't even have to download anything to spitball ideas. After compiling, you can test your code in browser as well.
I am also hoping for submitters to come up with ingenious ideas that would force others to re-think the strategy, etc.