Bot Battle

This is a simple bot-battling framework designed to make it more fun to learn Ruby. To get started, from the repository's base directory run:

bundle
ruby game.rb

Choose "Quick battle", follow the prompts to select your combatants, and enjoy the show!

Creating bots

The real fun starts when you define your own bot to fight in the arena. The game attempts to load bots from the ./bots directory. You can see an example bot class in ./bots/d_bot.rb. To make your own bot AI, you must:

• Create a new file in the bots directory and give it a name corresponding to your class name. The file must be in snake_case and the class name in TitleCase. For example, if your bot class is named KillerBot, the filename would be killer_bot.rb.
• In the new file, define a class (with the name matching the filename as just described). This class must provide two public methods: name and act.
  • The name method must return a string that is the human-readable bot name. This can be whatever you like.
  • The act method must accept two arguments: GameState and BotState. The first is an object defining the current state of the world (as your bot sees it - this could differ from reality!) and the second is an object defining the current state of your bot (available energy, position on the field, direction it is facing, etc.). The act method must return a symbol indicating which action your bot is going to take. (More on this below.)

During a battle, the game orchestrator will instantiate your bot class and each time it is your bot's turn to do something, the orchestrator will call the act method with the current game state and your bot's state. Your bot must then decide what to do based on the available information.

The act method in detail

Your bot's act method should evaluate the current game and bot state and decide on an action to take. The first argument, game_state, is a FilteredGameState and includes the following properties:

• arena_size (Models::Size) - an object with two attributes, width and height, representing the number of columns and rows in the arena respectively.
• enemies (array of BotState) - an array of BotState objects, each representing the current state of a bot on the map. This array will not include your own bot.

The second argument to act, bot_state, includes information about your bot's current condition. Attributes include:

• available_energy (int) - how much energy your bot currently has.
• health (int) - how many hitpoints your bot has remaining.
• facing (symbol) - the direction your bot is currently facing. Valid values include :north, :east, :south, and :west.
• position (Models::Point) - the X and Y coordinates of your bot on the current arena. 0,0 is the top left corner of the arena.

With this information, you must decide which action to take and return a symbol from the act method. Valid actions are as follows (each symbol is followed by its cost in energy):

• :face_north (1 energy) - face your bot north.
• :face_east (1 energy) - face your bot east.
• :face_south (1 energy) - face your bot south.
• :face_west (1 energy) - face your bot west.
• :advance (1 energy) - move forward one space.
• :reverse (1 energy) - move backward one space.
• :repair (20 energy) - restore 3 health to your bot, up to the starting maximum value.
• :lunge (5 energy) - move forward three spaces. If your bot runs into a wall, it will take 2 damage. If it runs into an enemy, your bot will take 1 damage and the enemy will take 1 damage and be shoved into the next space in the direction you are lunging. If that space is already occupied, the enemy will instead take 2 damage.
• :fire_laser (5 energy) - fire your laser in the current direction you are facing.
• :fire_flamethrower (20 energy) - fire a flamethrower in a cone-shaped pattern, setting afire any bots which are in the path.
• :charge_battery (0 energy) - sit still and regain energy for one second. The floor of the arena is designed to provide power to idle bots; for each turn you spend sitting still you regain 5 energy.