News
[4/6/2000] - The results of the first ever maze navigation challenge are
here.
[31/5/2000] - Welcome to this new tournament! The first tournament will
be held on the 4th of June.
Rules
The objective of each 'battle' is to get to the strategy node as fast as
possible. Each map contains a 16 by 16 maze in the top left corner and
the 'maze queen' cybug, which is programmed to end the battle by self destructing
when the maze is complete. The only other start location is in the top
left corner. To complete the maze the cybug must reach the strategy node
within 300 clicks.
There are five mazes and each cybug will be attempt each maze once.
The first maze is available to download for programmers to practice on;
the other four are harder and will only be made available after the tournament.
There is a small element of luck in that the direction that the cybug faces
at the start is random. After all the cybugs have run the maze they will
be ranked by how fast they solved it and score points as follows:
| Placing |
Points |
| 1st |
9 |
| 2nd |
6 |
| 3rd |
4 |
| 4th |
3 |
| 5th |
2 |
| 6th |
1 |
Each cybug which solves the maze will also receive one point for each cybug
which failed to complete it. The points from each maze are added up to
determine the overall winner of the tournament. All of the mazes and participating
cybugs will be made available to download after the tournament.
Click here
to download the scenario file, maze queen, first maze and 'Minotaur' -
a simple demonstration cybug (3KB).
How to Enter
Just write your cybug and email it to robertj@flashmail.com.
Its not very hard - Minotaur took me about 30 minutes (though its not very
good). Send it as an attachment, either as an .ai file or zipped. Anyone
can enter except the maze designer (me).
The Future
If people are interested I'd like this to become a regular fixture; once
a month perhaps. However, I thought up this whole thing because I thought
it'd be fun to write a navigation bug, but it would be unfair if I entered
because I designed the maze. In future I'd like to write a good navigation
bug for this tournament but then someone else would have to design the
mazes. Any volenteers? You could just do it one off and the mazes don't
have to follow my 16 by 16 pattern - you could use the whole map if you
liked. All it needs is a maze queen hidden somewhere safe from attack and
lots of walls.