[mikko-apo]

Hi!

Very good question :) The message protocol is synchronized because of latency. When the developers test their bots against the game servers, the server allows long response times. When automated races are run in the cloud (with low latency), the response times need to be more strict.

[mcv]

Can you test your own bots? As far as I can tell, the rules only specify that they're automatically tested daily. I'd like the ability to test whenever I need to.

[mikko-apo]

Yes, we'll provide test game servers that you can use.

[mcv]

Are there limits to how much you can use them? Suppose I want to use AI techniques that require tons of tests to be run. Is that okay?

[mikko-apo]

Unfortunately due budget constraints we can't allow unlimited access to test game servers. Do you have an estimate on how many rounds would you need to evolve the algorithm enough?

[aerique]

The Google AI challenges allowed one to run a game server locally so testing was only limited by one's own resources. (A bot made using genetic programming did pretty well: http://planetwars.aichallenge.org/profile.php?user_id=4038)

[mcv]

No idea. I have no idea how complex the simulation is going to be. How about a simple version that can be run locally?

[mikko-apo]

I would image the complexity being really high because the game is about racing against other AIs. What do you think?

And I'm afraid local versions are out because:

1. players would reverse engineer the server's simulation code

2. we don't want to give access to other team's bots

[SixSigma]

Couldn't you record the received messages and replay them?

[mcv]

I don't see what use that would be. If the test server was a simple data repository, it would be useless for testing algorithms.

[d_theorist]

I would like to know the answer to this.