BagelCon BattleBots 2020

This year's BattleBots competition is a modified version of Rock/Paper/Scissors.

Each bot will be provided with the entire history of the game as a command line parameter, and will be expected to both return a json-formatted dictionary on stdout and exit with code 0.

All bots must be submitted as self contained docker images.

Modified Rock Paper Scissors Rules

Each player must play one of "ROCK", "PAPER", or "SCISSORS".

After each player submits their hand, the rules are decided as follows, moving to the next stage if the players tie

1. Basic rock paper scissors rules.
   • Rock beats Scissors
   • Scissors beats Paper
   • Paper beats Rock
2. Whoever has played that hand more often in this game wins
3. Whoever has played the hand that would beat this hand more often in this game wins
4. Random Choice

Each game will be played over the course of 51 rounds.

Example

Round 1: P1: ROCK P2: PAPER P2 Wins naturally

Round 2: P1: ROCK P2: ROCK No natural winner P1 has played ROCK more often, P1 wins

Round 3: P1: PAPER P2: ROCK P1 Wins naturally

Round 4: P1: ROCK P2: ROCK No natural winner both players have played ROCK the same number of times both players have played PAPER the same number of times Winner is random.choice([1, 2])

Calling Conventions

Input

Bots will be called with the entire game's history as the only command line parameter. The history is formatted as a string of 3-tuples separated by ; characters.

Each of the 3-tuples is of the format (player-one-hand,player-two-hand,winner)

History Example

If the provided history looks like rp2;sp1 then

• We know there have been two rounds so far in the game, and we're on round 3
• In the first round, player one played "rock", player 2 played "paper", and player 2 won
• In the second round, player one played "scissors", player 2 played "paper", and player 1 won

Note: This history string abbreviates "rock" to "r", "paper" to "p", and "scissors" to "s". This same transformation is not valid for the output of your program - you must output the full words, in all caps.

Output

Basic Output

Each bot is expected to output, on a single line, a json formatted dictionary of the form

{"move": "MOVE"}

The value for move must be one of ROCK, PAPER, or SCISSORS.

Your bot must also exit with code 0. If a different exit code is provided, your bot will automatically forfeit the round.

Art Output

In addition the regular rock/paper/scissors competition, we're going to have an art competition! Each bot may include an "art" key in their json output. The value for this key is a 2-dimensional matrix with up to 60 rows and 60 columns.

These images will be displayed in some way during

{"art": [], "move": "MOVE"}

The value for the art key can be an array of up to 60 strings, and each of those strings can have a max of 60 characters. In effect, this gives a 60x60 grid to produce ascii art alongside your gameplay.

For example, to embed the ascii image

     ***********                  ***********
  *****************            *****************
*********************        *********************
***********************      ***********************
************************    ************************
*************************  *************************
 **************************************************
  ************************************************
    ********************************************
      ****************************************
         **********************************
           ******************************
              ************************
                ********************
                   **************
                     **********
                       ******
                         **

you would output

{"move": "ROCK", "art": ["     ***********                  ***********         ","  *****************            *****************      ","*********************        *********************    ","***********************      ***********************  ","************************    ************************  ","*************************  *************************  "," **************************************************   ","  ************************************************    ","    ********************************************      ","      ****************************************        ","         **********************************           ","           ******************************             ","              ************************                ","                ********************                  ","                   **************                     ","                     **********                       ","                       ******                         ","                         **                           "]}

The images collected from the 51 rounds of play will be strung together to form a gif, with each image being one frame in the gif.

As an example, the images in sample-art were strung together to create

Getting Started

There are example bots with modification instructions in the examples/ directory. Each of these examples is configured to produce a docker image that follows all of the rules and conventions described in this document.

So long as you also follow the rules and conventions described in this document, you're free to submit any docker image you like - there's no need to start with any of the provided examples.

Submitting Your Bot

All bots must be submitted as runnable docker images. For a submitted image IMAGE, it will be run as

docker run \
    --network=none \
    ${IMAGE} "${HISTORY}"

Note: HISTORY will be an empty string for the first round, and your bot must be able to handle that.

Note: containers will be given 5 seconds to run, after which they will be forfeit and be terminated

Note: network=none means that your code will not be able to access any form of network or internet at runtime. This is to prevent people from using external resources to track other bot performance.

Docker images must be published to either Docker Hub or Github Packages. See me for more help if you need it.

We're using external docker repositories over any internal image repositories for security, cost, and ease-of-use reasons.

Testing Your Bot with the Bot Runner

To test your bot using the same bot runner that will be used for the tournament, run the following

# P1_IMAGE should be set to the name of your docker image
P1_IMAGE=yourimage
P1_NAME=yourname

# P2_IMAGE is your opponent. You can test with friends, you can use the same as P1_IMAGE and test against yourself
P2_IMAGE=opponentimage
P2_NAME=opponentname

docker run \
    -t \
    -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
    -v $(pwd)/art:/art \
    docker.pkg.github.com/tylerlubeck/battlebots/battlebots:latest \
        rps $P1_NAME $P1_IMAGE $P2_NAME $P2_IMAGE /art --rounds 11

Testing ASCII Art

To speed up ASCII Art testing, there's a utility built in to the battlebot runner to generate GIFs from ascii art files

Create a folder and fill it with files representing the frames of your gif. These files must end in .ascii and will be loaded in alphabetical order to create frames.

You can then create a gif as such:

IMAGE_PATH=/path/to/ascii/folder
docker run \
    -v ${IMAGE_PATH}:/images  \
    docker.pkg.github.com/tylerlubeck/battlebots/battlebots:latest \
        generate-gif /images /images/output.gif

The Tournament

The Tournament will consist of two competitions

1. A rock/paper/scissors competition, run tournament bracket style
2. An art competition, where conference attendees will vote on the best art piece created by your bot

On tournament day, image names will be collected from participants. We'll then download the images and use the downloaded versions for the tournament - this means no updating images during the tournament!