Submissions for the 2012 Student Starcraft Artificial Intelligence (SSCAI) Tournament have now begun.

Using the Broodwar Application Programming Interface (BWAPI), you must write a bot that can play Starcraft: Broodwar, and submit your final entry before December. From now until December, you can write and submit incomplete versions of your bot to participate in endless matches that are being streamed in real-time which can help you identify its strengths, weaknesses, and bugs.

The prize pool? A whopping $1300.


What's the catch?

• The tournament is only available to students.
  
• You must use C++ to program your bot (this is a good chance to learn it).
  
• You must share your source code (as the submission).
  

What are the advantages?

• An opportunity (or excuse) to learn or practice C .
  
• A chance to win prizes.
  
• An activity/project to include on applications/resumes.
  
• A chance to "play" Starcraft: Broodwar and say "I'm busy working on a project".
  
• A platform that Computer Science students can use to test theories and use for research projects.
  

Some other competitions may also include CIG2012 and AIIDE2012, whose details have yet to be announced.

Ah, pity. If I was a programmer this would have seemed like the natural thing to do after ZAPOC. I am no student, though, never have been. In either case, I'm proud that your project has reached such heights of potential, Heinermann.

Thanks. I actually expect Starcraft: Broodwar (and BWAPI) to be a platform of choice for experimenting with RTS AI for another few years still.

Some people have said that the API is easy to use, and when I roll out BWAPI4, it will be even easier.

The video is not available in my country.
I live in Germany.

I have no idea why it wouldn't be available. It might be possible because of the music it uses? I don't know.

The video is this:

• Queue music "Invaders Must Die".
  
• Fade in Starcraft Student AI Tournament logo.
  
• Fade out and fade in text "First of all, gather some resources..."
  
• Cube-rotate to writing related source code (sped-up).
  
• Cube-rotate to a Starcraft game showing Terran workers mining and some debug information printed in-game.
  
• Cut to same view of Zerg workers.
  
• Fade out and fade in text "Now build yourself a base..."
  
• Cube-rotate to writing related source code (sped-up).
  
• Cube rotate to game showing a Terran walling (debug info is in every game in this video).
  
• Cut to opponent Zerg view sunkening up.
  
• Cut to different game with populated Protoss base, merging an Archon.
  
• Fade out and fade in text "And crush your enemies!!!"
  
• Cube-rotate to writing related source code (sped-up).
  
• Cube rotate to game showing a Terran owning a Zerg with M&M and Firebats.
  
• Cut to other game of Protoss defending a base from Hydras with mass carriers.
  
• Cut to other game of Zerg owning a Protoss base with guardians and lings.
  
• Cut to other game with Protoss attacking a ridiculous mass-sunken base with Dragoons and Archons.
  
• Cut to other game of Terran attacking a Zerg with a variety of units, including Siege Tank using Siege Mode and Spider Mines.
  
• Fade out and fade in text "SSCAI"
  
• The red "AI" part of "SSCAI" changes about every second into Heuristics, Evolution Algorithms, Logic Programming, Neural Networks, Threat-Aware Pathfinding, Machine Learning, Potential Field Control, Swarm Intelligence, and back to AI
  
• The URL is added below
  
• The end
  

But don't let that intimidate you, you can just use if's and else's like old-style AI's. Don't forget though that BWAPI follows the rules of the fog of war and doesn't give you any information on the opponent unless you can explicitly see their units.

Does the program have a few tutorials/built in commands? I would like to try this, but I don't know any C coding

Quote

You must use C to program your bot (this is a good chance to learn it).

Quote

Code your C++ intelligence bot and join the battle!

Really, there's hardly a difference. C++ is C with classes.

So... Does this program have a dummies guide? Cuz I certainly am a dummy but I still want to try it.

Quote from Roy

Really, there's hardly a difference. C++ is C with classes.

We know.

Quote from Ahli

The video is not available in my country.
I live in Germany.

Quote from Heinermann

I have no idea why it wouldn't be available. It might be possible because of the music it uses? I don't know.

Yes. In Germany we have laws that force youtube to take down any videos that contain music not made by yourself.

But there's hope Ahli:
https://proxtube.com/

This works like a charm, for now.

I feel dumb...

Is it possible to make a guide for someone who has never used... Winrar, MPQ files or anything that is needed to run this...?

I downloaded 2010 C++ and opened the example AI, but I'm stumped beyond that point, i don't know how to "inject" BWAPI using any of the pathers...? And all of the instructions are very vague for someone who has no idea what they are doing... Plz make a tutorial, I want to try and make some A.I. For brood war. And if u dont do that at least make the instructions more noob friendly for people like me (I hope im not the only person having problems ) please and thank you

It was supposed to be C++, not C. Guess the ++ was removed when the post was moved.
You can inject by running Chaoslauncher, and you must use Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 (Express will work just fine) for compilation.

Hopefully we get better tutorials up at some point, but managing the entire project myself is starting to get difficult.

ok, I have followed all instructions, and I don't know how this thing is supposed to work, but I get 2 errors when I start up ChaosLauncher.

They go as follows:

Could not find file "C:\Users\Sterling\Desktop\ChaosLauncher\BWAPI.dll\BWAPI.dll". - The system cannot find the path specified.

I have tried creating a folder named "BWAPI.dll" because it appears to be looking for this folder, and BWAPI.dll in it... but every time I try it says there is already a folder with that name, when there isn't...

The other didn't go into the errors notepad but it said something like this:

First off it couldnt load the "BWAPI_ChaosLauncherInjectord.bwl"
Could not load plugin because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect.

Is this my fault? Sorry for all the trouble

Edit:

Made progress =D

I have placed the .dll file in the AI folder in starcraft, but when I run the game using Chaos, it says file path not found. I have checked and double checked the text document that checks for the filepath (Atleast I think it is, its got the filepath name and folders) but the error continues. Any input?

The program is searching for the ai in "bwapi.ini", is this the bwapi system configuration file? If so I have the ai field set to AI\ExampleAIModule.dll

The latest version of BWAPI is 3.7.2, make sure you download that one. Also make sure you've updated Starcraft to 1.16.1.

After downloading, copy the contents of Starcraft to your actual Starcraft installation directory (C:\Program Files\Starcraft\ for example).
Copy the contents of WINDOWS to your C:\Windows folder. This contains some dependency DLLs needed for some modules to function properly.

Go to the Chaoslauncher folder and run Chaoslauncher - MultiInstance.exe. Make sure you check only ONE BWAPI launcher, preferably the one that says BWAPI Injector (1.16.1) RELEASE.

Compile ExampleAIModule with VC++ 2008 Express in WIN32 RELEASE mode. Go to the Release folder that was created and copy ExampleAIModule.dll to C:\Program Files\Starcraft\bwapi-data\AI\ (or wherever you installed Starcraft).

It should then immediately work without problems (for most people).
Set-up will be made easier in BWAPI 4.0 once released.

Thank you, i got it to work, I was trying to load in the basic AI, not the example one. The basic asks for reference 3975 or something like that, and then it doesnt work =/ but the example works great and I got my workers to mine minerals properly. Thanks again!

Quote from Roy

Really, there's hardly a difference. C++ is C with classes.

Eehhh this isn't really true at all ><

There's generic programming for example. There's just a whole lot more to C++ than just C with classes.

I'm not geeking out on this,

But this is truly something to marvel at...

Also, 1300$?!? WIN IT FOR US, HEINERMANN! WE SUPPORT YOU!!