COMP222 - 2018 - Second CA Assignment

Individual coursework

Robocode tank

Assessment Information

Assignment Number 2 (of 2)

Weighting 10%

Assignment Circulated 15 March 2018

Deadline Friday April 27, 15:00

Submission Mode Electronic

Learning outcome assessed 2. An appreciation of the fundamental concepts associ￾ated with game development: game physics, game arti-

ficial intelligence, content generation;

3. The ability to implement a simple game using an

existing game engine

Purpose of assessment To design and implement a tank bot for the Robocode

tank battle game

Marking criteria The marking scheme can be found in Seciton 3

Submission necessary in order No

to satisfy Module requirements?

Late Submission Penalty Standard UoL Policy.

1

1 Robocode

Robocode is a programming game, where the goal is to develop a robot battle tank to battle

against other tanks. The robot battles are running in real-time and on-screen. Robots can

move, shoot at each other, scan for each other, and hit the walls (or other robots). More

details can be found on the project web site, http://robocode.sourceforge.net/

2 Objectives

This assignment requires you to design and implement a tank bot for the Robocode tank

battle game. You need to choose a game AI behaviour model (such as, for example, finite

state machine, decision trees, behaviour trees, or any other mechanism of your choice) and

implement your robot based on this behaviour model.

3 Marking scheme

I enforce a “no error policy” in this module: If your code does not

compile, your overall assignment mark will be capped at 40%. Thus, you

may get a higher mark for an incomplete solution than for an advanced

sketch.

If you want to show me your attempt to add some features that does not compile TO￾GETHER with your working code, feel free to submit TWO jar files clearly indicating which

one of them contains working code and which contains an incomplete one. In this case, you

will not be penalised and you can get a higher mark.

You are required to submit Java code and an electronic document describing your design

and implementation. The contribution of subtasks is as follows.

3.1 Documentation (40% of the mark)

You are required to submit a 700 to 1 000 words document containing:

1. A short description of the behaviour control model of your choice (e.g., FSM, Decision

trees, etc.). You only need to write a couple of paragraphs to show your understanding

of how the model works. 10 marks

2. A Robocode bot design description. In your design you should use the chosen behaviour

control mechanism. For example, if you choose FSMs to represent bot’s behaviour,

give a graphical representation of states, transitions, and conditions under which the

machine switches from one state to another. If you choose a tree-based model, give

a graphical representation of the tree and clearly indicate tests and actions. Justify

your design decisions, in particular, comment on why you believe these design decisions

makes your bot more likely win the tournament. 20 marks

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3. A description of you implementation. Explain what classes and methods are used to

implement the chosen behaviour model. You are not restricted in HOW you implement

the bot (you can hard-code the behaviour in an ad-hoc manner, implement a general

scheme, or use a third-party library) but your mark will depend on how closely you

follow the design. You are allowed to deviated from the design; however, if your im￾plementation does differ from the design, clearly identify and justify the modifications.

10 marks

3.2 Implementation (30% of the mark)

When you create a new robot in the editor use the following naming convention

Robot name: Please try to give your robot a unique name. That could be FirstnameSecond￾name (for example, I would use XiaoweiHuang) without spaces and special characters

or a name that is unlikely to be chosen by others, e.g., Crusher15041991.

Please put your full name and student ID as a comment in the beginning of every Java

file that you submit.

Package name: use comp222

If you use a different package name, your bot might be lost and not make

it to the competition.

The implementation will be marked as follows:

• Providing response to battle events (onScannedRobot, onHitByBullet, onHitWall,. . . )

10 marks

• Following the design 10 marks

• Clarity and style of code 10 marks

3.3 Battle competition(30% of the mark)

Submitted bots will take part in a tournament. In order to qualify to participate in the

tournament, you should make a reasonable effort to modify the default (bot skeleton in the

editor) behaviour. Additionally, no robot with code taken from elsewhere (with or

without acknowledging the source) will be allowed in the competition.

In the tournament bots will be randomly divided in groups of about 10 bots each (de￾pending on the number of submission); group winners will progress to battle in the next

round.

The battlefield size is Robocode default.

In the end, bots will be ranked by the Robocode Total Score. Those in the upper

third of the ranking will get extra 30%, those in the middle third will get extra 20%, and

those in the lower third will get extra 10%.

If for some reason you do not wish your robot to take part in the tournament, please let

me know in advance.

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4 Deadlines and How to Submit

• Deadline for submitting the second assignment is Friday, 27 April 2018 at 3pm.

• Submission is via the departmental submission system accessible (from withing the

department) from

http://intranet.csc.liv.ac.uk/teaching/modules/module.php?code=COMP222.

• In order to submit your bot, export it as a Jar file by choosing

Robot→“Package robot for upload” in the Robocode menu.