[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.