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nmalaguti's Halite Bots

Code Organization

I started out with a few different programming languages. As you go through the commit history you'll see different top level directories for different languages.

Notably:

  • javascript contains many of the bots in my tutorial
  • python early attempts at bots, eventually used as a way to bootstrap other languages
  • java basically just a simple bot before I switched to Kotlin
  • kotlin the majority of my bots

There are also some other projects that started as subdirectories. Some were eventually split into their own standalone community tools.

Notably:

  • halite-lite became mini-halite
  • aws was the source for CloudBots
  • tournament was a script I wrote to run local tournaments between my bots. I eventually wrote mini-halite as an alternative. It also contains some python code for quick iteration on ideas and a script to upload bots to a server of mine that was always running matches.

Building The Kotlin Bot

You'll need a Java 8+ JDK installed. I use Gradle to compile and package my bot.

To build a zip for upload:

$ cd kotlin
$ ./gradlew cleanDistZip distZip

This will make a MyBot.zip file in kotlin/build/distributions/.

To build a jar that can be used directly:

$ cd kotlin
$ ./gradlew installDist

This will make a MyBot.jar file in kotlin/build/install/MyBot/.

To run the jar: java -jar MyBot.jar

Evolution Of My Bots

From BetterBot to FrugalBot

These bots are my original inspiration for the "So you've Improved the Random Bot. Now what?" tutorial.

The tutorial basically chronicles my approach to building them. Notable differences were that I was using strength / (production * production) instead of just strength / production that I switched to later. I thought that production would be more valuable over time so it should be more heavily weighted, but it turns out that the straight ratio worked out better.

These bots had some improvements over OverkillBot:

  • Joint moves so that 2 pieces next to an environment piece could capture it sooner
  • Abandon moves so that a piece would move somewhere else if its objective would take too long to capture
  • Assist moves so that a piece would help a neighbor capture a nearby piece
  • Wastage prevention to avoid combining pieces above the 255 cap - this was super hacky and did not work great

I also played around with A* and other ways to try to get the "pathing" or "tunneling" behavior that djma has. None of them were very effective and although the code is there, it went mostly unused in my submitted bots.

Crossing the Chasm: LazyBot

I spent what felt like an eternity (but was more like 4 days) trying to move away from blob-like OverkillBot behavior and switch to something that could tunnel.

I eventually landed on building a BFS grid where I assigned a value to every border cell and then walked the BFS grid inward increasing each cells value by 1 each time. This worked much better than FrugalBot and was the starting point for the rest of my bots.

From DoubleBot to ThugBot

Final Ranking Of My Bots

Bot Mu Sigma Score Games
disallowedshovebot 31.848 0.704 29.735 643
disallowedshoveprodbot 30.833 0.703 28.724 622
parametermixbot 30.815 0.701 28.713 2008
claimcombatbot 30.738 0.683 28.689 1746
waittoattackbot 30.480 0.684 28.428 2086
sharpfocusbot 30.451 0.687 28.389 4598
sharpparametermixbot 30.218 0.680 28.178 1666
variabledirwalkbot 30.209 0.683 28.161 2079
shovecrossnotclaimbot 30.205 0.692 28.130 996
parametermixwaitmorebot 29.844 0.732 27.650 119
shoveblackoutbot 29.672 0.691 27.599 1148
punchthroughbot 29.404 0.675 27.380 1547
sharpparametermix2bot 29.398 0.683 27.350 1632
minvariabledirwalkbot 29.183 0.672 27.167 2116
focusbot 29.068 0.682 27.023 4901
purenapbot 28.926 0.677 26.893 5248
contactsquaredbot 28.871 0.672 26.856 3707
inbetweensquaredbot 28.841 0.683 26.792 2084
boxofrocksblackoutbot 28.732 0.683 26.682 462
shovestrict64mixbot 28.775 0.703 26.667 207
shovestrict64bot 28.794 0.711 26.661 192
finebattlebotv2-nobruise 28.501 0.684 26.450 6702
napbot 28.395 0.680 26.354 5076
shovecrossbot 28.281 0.687 26.220 1000
shovebetterbattlebot 28.220 0.684 26.169 1098
krakenbot 28.212 0.682 26.167 4632
justsquaredbot 28.178 0.684 26.126 3470
boxofrocksequalbot 28.246 0.710 26.116 158
thugclassicduobot 28.137 0.682 26.090 1234
thugclassicpunchbot 27.943 0.687 25.882 1092
finebattlebotv2 27.910 0.688 25.846 6653
shoveoldstylebot 27.944 0.713 25.805 146
thugclassicbot 27.803 0.682 25.757 1188
spaghettistillbot 27.785 0.703 25.675 594
shovebot 27.675 0.692 25.600 161
spaghettibot 27.478 0.727 25.298 114
superhungrybot 27.313 0.689 25.244 5816
idlestrengthbotv8 27.261 0.695 25.175 6704
canidobetterbotv19 27.173 0.683 25.123 6952
purestrengthbot 27.124 0.682 25.079 5158
thugclassicanyduobot 26.883 0.690 24.813 1196
compressbugfixbot 26.808 0.685 24.754 5229
lastgaspbot 27.174 0.833 24.677 66
spartanbot 26.639 0.682 24.594 5287
shovefinerbattlebot 26.675 0.734 24.474 118
lastgasptoobot 27.123 0.887 24.463 59
compressbot 26.484 0.686 24.425 5411
hungrybot 26.456 0.679 24.420 4920
orientationbot 25.625 0.678 23.590 4732
fighterbot 25.011 0.691 22.938 4000
shoveblackborderbot 25.596 0.906 22.879 52
boxofrocksbot 26.546 1.266 22.747 23
thugbot 23.086 0.702 20.979 3544
blacklistbot 21.453 0.735 19.249 3648
doublebot 20.607 0.738 18.392 3844
swarmbot 18.528 0.766 16.230 3327

Bot Development Process

Final Bot Code In Detail