GDC08: Thwarting the XNA AI challenge

by Ross Miller { Feb 21st 2008 at 11:30PM }

Located in the back of Moscone West's show floor, Microsoft is holding an XNA Game Studio AI Challenge, where contestants (divided into two teams of four each hour) have 50 minutes to program an artificial intelligence script (in C#) that will defeat the other three members on their team in a shoot-em-up multiplayer match (think: four Geometry Wars ships shooting each other for scores). The winner of each round receives "Invite Only passes to the XNA party" (which is happening tonight).

Tags: experimental-games, gdc08

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Kyle N. @ Feb 21st 2008 11:50PM

Haha, this sounds awesome. I hope they put up videos of the different matches!

NukeAssault @ Feb 21st 2008 11:55PM

Definitely. Id love to see it.

iofthestorm @ Feb 22nd 2008 12:20AM

Indeed, Microsoft seems to be doing so many things right recently. I suppose their Windows department is a little behind on things, but I can't say I don't like Vista honestly. It's just the usual MS bugs and patches that break people's computers (but somehow never mine).

Eggy @ Feb 22nd 2008 6:54AM

Try playing a game on Vista. :P

NATO_Duke @ Feb 22nd 2008 10:11AM

I have had nothing but probs with my gaming pc since I installed Vista. Damn shame.

It was the final nail that made me become a console gamer.

Tiptup300 @ Feb 21st 2008 11:52PM

epic win

flYY @ Feb 22nd 2008 12:25AM

...It's the mirrors

War Machine @ Feb 22nd 2008 12:43AM

NEEEEEEEERDS!!!
Ha ha ha!
j/k

Boostjunkie @ Feb 22nd 2008 12:51AM

Their nerds, but very smart ones. I wish I new c# and not just some vb.net. I don't think any of us commenting on Joystiq can call someone else a nerd.

War Machine @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:00AM

It's a joke, man. Lighten up.

I know Java and am learning C. Assembly Language Programing FTW!!!

Yubastard @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:36AM

Assembly is good and all but I feel C# (and languages like it) does so much more in terms of making you productive in the least amount of time...

War Machine @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:49AM

Do I have to explain all my jokes?

Of course higher level language programming is easier!

Platinum_Skeet @ Feb 22nd 2008 8:35AM

War Machine I laughed...

I always can go for a Revenge Of The Nerds reference anyday...

badarsemother3k @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:25AM

How cool is that party going to be? Lol this is a great idea for a competition though.

ThornedVenom (Ludwig Defense Force) @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:40AM

And thus Skynet was born.

ScallionN @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:51AM

Probably one of the geekiest competitions in human history. The guy with the ponytail on the opposite side looks so intense.

waynski1457 @ Feb 22nd 2008 3:00AM

god id love to take a shot at that!

Gimbal @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:18AM

I love C-Robots! I want something like this on XBL. Or even something Carnage Heart like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crobots

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage_Heart

Anam @ Feb 22nd 2008 10:44AM

I would love to see the outcome of this. Will the uber-complicated AI win or will the "determine location of nearest enemy then shoot there" AI put the over-thinkers to shame?

Rob Accomando @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:35PM

nice scam to get some FREE AI programming fom XNA games, Microsoft!

Matt Picioccio @ Feb 22nd 2008 8:29PM

Hi, everyone. My name is Matt Picioccio, and I'm the guy on the XNA Game Studio team who wrote the framework for the challenge, and I worked the booth along with a many others.

The event was terrific, and everybody had a great time. The finals at the Microsoft XNA Party was INTENSE. We'll have a page of info up on http://creators.xna.com about it "soon" (i.e. after we recover from GDC), but sadly no video (I'm pretty sure not, at least).

SeDemonSuicide @ Feb 22nd 2008 8:54PM

Hi Matt, how did my bot do? I gave away my pass to the party, as I had to get back to work. :-(

Matt Picioccio @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:25PM

SeDemonSuicide,

We'll have full results posted soon, and you should be hearing from Charles Cox in the early part of next week, if not sooner.

Thanks for participating!

SeDemonSuicide @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:03PM

Just in case anyone is interested, here's a basic rundown:

It's 4 ships shooting at each other. Asteroids are also on play field. I think its +1/kill, -1/asteroid death and -2/enemy kill?

All AI Processing needs to be run under 3 ms. You get the positions of all ships, asteroids and projectiles. All you have to do is set direction to shoot, direction to go, and how much thrust to burn.

All in all, it's like Iron Chef... the clock runs so fast, and you can't implement everything you want. Overall, it was fun, and a interesting intro to C#/XNA.

Matt Picioccio @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:27PM

When someone dies:
-1 for the person who dies.
-1 for the person who dies if they died by hitting an asteroid (i.e. -2).
+1 for the person who fired the shot that killed you.
+1 for the person who did at least 50% of the damage to you this "life", if there is one.

We'll have more details on the Creators Club website soon.

SeDemonSuicide @ Feb 22nd 2008 11:13PM

Hey Matt, can you contact me via email? I wrote it down on the sign up sheet with this name. Thanks!

Matt Picioccio @ Feb 23rd 2008 12:11AM

SeDemonSuicide:

Charles Cox has your contact info from the sheet, and he will be contacting you next week.

Ordonator @ Feb 26th 2008 10:59AM

I advanced to the finals round at the XNA party, and Matt was dead-on, it was actually pretty intense. Kind of like watching a dog fight, but a lot more humane and no betting involved (although that would have made things even more interesting). The party was absolutely fantastic. This XNA stuff is really exciting, especially to someone looking at some new avenues in the business.

The challenge itself was a lot of fun. I actually ended up getting to the finals with a fairly simple solution that was capitalized more on the mechanics of the game than intelligent design. With only 50 minutes to code the AI, I didn't have time to do anything complex, not to mention I spend the first half of it learning the classes and dusting off my memory on vector math.

In the end though, it seems like I lost to over-thinkers. Maybe next year :).