Starting your own LiteRumble

Does anyone have some advice for starting up a custom and/or private LiteRumble? I've got a new batch of programming students that I'm leading through Robocode and I'd love to run a custom bracket with just my kids in it as I've done in years past.

Sure, it's easy enough.

1. Create your own app on Google AppEngine
2. Download and extract the code from bitbucket
3. Change the app name in app.yaml to the name of the app you created
4. Download and install the Google AppEngine python SDK
5. Run the following in the code directory: appcfg.py update . && appcfg.py update batchratings.yaml
6. This should give you an empty LiteRumble instance running on your app

Once you have a copy of LiteRumble running, all you need to do is modify the rumble client in roborumble.txt to point to your new server for uploads. You also need a new participants list, which you can host on appengine too if you don't mind continually re-deploying, or you can make a wiki page somewhere. The client just parses everything between the two <pre> tags.

Have fun!

Excellent. I can just host participants on a Dropbox text file. Thanks for the info!

By the way, a favorite thing I do when introducing my kids to Robocode is to have a pair of them (driver and gunner) pilot sample.Interactive at a moderate simulation speed against some sample bots until they get used to it. Then they face DrussGT. Thought you'd want to know that you've caused some laughter and groans of frustration from some prospective high school coders!

Brilliant. I've always found the sample.Interactive very difficult to control, I don't think I'd stand a chance against DrussGT =) I bet if I set the bullet colour to something more similar to the background it would make it even harder for interactive users >:-D

That's always the kicker is that they have a very very hard time adapting to a top of the line bot like DrussGT or Diamond. I've had students say it's like the bot is reading their mind. Then I drop the bomb that the bot can't see bullets, while the students can. It's a great and impactful "Math is POWERFUL" moment!

Of course, set the sim speed low enough and get a patient non-wasteful gunner, and they will trash DrussGT because they can dance juuust aside of each bullet. But as long as I set the sim speed such to keep them on their toes, it's a rough but educational ride. Fun for spectators too!

I have some ideas about dealing with interactive users - closer range, not letting energy levels get below the enemy, varying colours of dark blue and grey bullets - perhaps that should be something I work on next. I've neglected Robocode and I've been working on more pure ML/AI problems instead, but this is something more in the behavioural side which AFAIK hasn't been done yet.

Yeah, get close enough so that no matter how they move they will have a very hard time dodging your bullets.

Awww, high school students have all the fun. XD

The sample bot Interactive is hard to control. For 1v1, all you would really have to change in response to what you see is orbit direction, distancing, current aiming GF, and bulletpower/when to fire. Everything else could be automatic 99+% of the time.

Would anyone be interested in a SuperInteractive wiki collaboration? Perhaps a challenge for driving it against DrussGT?

I was thinking of a fairly simple "SuperInteractive" which does regular wave-surfing, but also allows you to click on enemy bullets, which it will then dodge. Targeting, I feel, would be stronger without any human intervention.