Asteroids playing contest
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Asteroids playing contest         


Author: Anton Ertl
Date: Apr 16, 2008 03:47

On pages 176-179 of c't 9/2008 there is a description of how the
Asteroids Arcade game (from 1979) works, and a contest for writing a
program to play the game. For this they have adapted MAME to take its
input and produce its output on UDP ports. The output is in the form
of data for the vector graphics hardware (at most 1KB per frame).

This might be an interesting task for competetition-loving Forth
programmers. The contest runs until June 30. The winner of the
competition wins some hardware or (his choice) EUR 3000, and there are
prizes for the top 25 entries.

- anton
5 Comments
Re: Asteroids playing contest         


Author: Marcel Hendrix
Date: Apr 16, 2008 10:34

anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) wrote Re: Asteroids playing contest
> On pages 176-179 of c't 9/2008 there is a description of how the
> Asteroids Arcade game (from 1979) works, and a contest for writing a
> program to play the game. For this they have adapted MAME to take its
> input and produce its output on UDP ports. The output is in the form
> of data for the vector graphics hardware (at most 1KB per frame).
> This might be an interesting task for competetition-loving Forth
> programmers. The contest runs until June 30. The winner of the
> competition wins some hardware or (his choice) EUR 3000, and there are
> prizes for the top 25 entries.

Obviously, a perfect-playing program is possible in at least two ways.

Any volunteers to write the player algorithm? The vector drawing looks
simple and anyway, it isn't really needed to play and win the game :-)

-marcel
no comments
Re: Asteroids playing contest         


Author: Robert Spykerman
Date: Apr 17, 2008 00:03

On Apr 16, 8:47 pm, an...@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl)
wrote:
> On pages 176-179 of c't 9/2008 there is a description of how the
> Asteroids Arcade game (from 1979) works, and a contest for writing a
> program to play the game. For this they have adapted MAME to take its
> input and produce its output on UDP ports. The output is in the form
> of data for the vector graphics hardware (at most 1KB per frame).
>
> This might be an interesting task for competetition-loving Forth
> programmers. The contest runs until June 30. The winner of the
> competition wins some hardware or (his choice) EUR 3000, and there are
> prizes for the top 25 entries.

Wow, I hadn't heard of MAME till I saw this post. Do you actually have
a link for the contest? Tried googling but no joy.

Not that I expect I have the time or am good enough, it looks like fun
to look at anyways.
> - anton

Robert Spykerman
no comments
Re: Asteroids playing contest         


Author: Anton Ertl
Date: Apr 17, 2008 07:43

Robert Spykerman gmail.com> writes:
>Do you actually have
>a link for the contest?

<http://www.heise.de/ct/creativ/08/02/details/> (in German)

For the ROM image of Asteroids they suggest registering for the
contest, and they will send it to you per email (with the consent of
the copyright holder). I guess, though, that you can find ROM images
of the game around in the web.

I would recommend that somebody who knows German is part of the team.
That will be especially important for the part of the program that
interprets the output of the game. Alternatively, if you are better
in C++ than in German, you can also interpret the simple C++ playing
program that they provide.

- anton
no comments
Re: Asteroids playing contest         


Author: Anton Ertl
Date: Apr 17, 2008 07:53

mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) writes:
>Obviously, a perfect-playing program is possible in at least two ways.

Can you elaborate on that?
>Any volunteers to write the player algorithm? The vector drawing looks
>simple and anyway, it isn't really needed to play and win the game :-)

I guess that the MAME server presents the output graphically in
addition to sending it to the playing program.

- anton
no comments
Re: Asteroids playing contest         


Author: Albert van der Horst
Date: Apr 17, 2008 10:51

In article <33893639193559@frunobulax.edu>, Marcel Hendrix wrote:
>anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) wrote Re: Asteroids playing contest
>
>> On pages 176-179 of c't 9/2008 there is a description of how the
>> Asteroids Arcade game (from 1979) works, and a contest for writing a
>> program to play the game. For this they have adapted MAME to take its
>> input and produce its output on UDP ports. The output is in the form
>> of data for the vector graphics hardware (at most 1KB per frame).
>
>> This might be an interesting task for competetition-loving Forth
>> programmers. The contest runs until June 30. The winner of the
>> competition wins some hardware or (his choice) EUR 3000, and there are
>> prizes for the top 25 entries.
>
>Obviously, a perfect-playing program...
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