Battlecode 2020

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Repository Structure

• /backend: Backend API in Django Rest Framework
• /frontend: Frontend dashboard in React
• /engine: Game engine in Java
• /schema: Game serialization schema (basically, an encoding of all units and events in a game)
• /client: Game client (visualizer and playback) in TypeScript
• /example-bots: A bunch of example bots for the game!

Development

Website

To get set up, make sure you have Node and Docker installed. For Windows, you will need Docker Toolbox. If you have Windows, I'd also recommend installing Cygwin, since we have some bash scripts that won't work with the standard Windows command prompt. (Docker is not strictly necessary, but it makes stuff easier, especially if you want to work on the backend of the website.)

First, install all required packages: run ./install_frontend.sh in the main folder. (If this fails, run npm install in each of the four folders /schema, /client/playback, /client/visualizer, /frontend.)

Then, you can start the frontend by running npm run start in the /frontend folder. (If this fails on Windows, make sure you are using Cygwin.) After this step, you should be able to view the website at http://localhost:3000.

If you also want to run the backend (which will enable things like signing in to the website, and a rankings table, etc) then run docker-compose -f docker-compose-b.yml up --build in this folder. If you don't have Docker, you can try following the instructions in the /backend folder instead.

You can also run both the backend and the frontend in a Docker container, by running docker-compose up --build, but that might be slower.

Engine

Windows users: Instead of ./gradlew, use gradlew for all commands.

(whenever Gradle has problems with something, run ./gradlew clean and see if it helps)

To run a game, run

./gradlew headless

The replay file will be in /matches. Use headlessX for bots that are in battlecode20-internal-test-bots. You can specify the robot code and map like this: ./gradlew headless -Pmaps=maptestsmall -PteamA=examplefuncsplayer -PteamB=examplefuncsplayer.

Client

(Make sure you have a recent version of npm: sudo npm cache clean -f && sudo npm install -g n && sudo n stable && PATH="$PATH".)

First run npm install in the schema folder, followed by npm run install_all in the client folder. You can then run

npm run watch

which will launch the client on http://localhost:8080 (if available).

Docs

You can generate javadocs as follows:

./gradlew release_docs_zip -Prelease_version=2020.0.0.0.0.1

This will create a zip file. Unzip and open the index.html file in it to view the docs. In particular, looking at the documentation for RobotController will be helpful.

Notes for porting this to battlecode21

When Battlecode 2021 comes around, it will probably useful to reuse a fair amount of this codebase. Mainting git history is nice, but not trivial. The following steps were taken to port battlecode19 to this repo and maintain history (assuming we start in this repo):

cd ..
git clone https://github.com/battlecode/battlecode19
cd battlecode19
git checkout -b battlecode20export
git filter-branch --prune-empty --index-filter 'var=$(git ls-files | grep -v "^api\|^app") && test "$var" && git rm $var --cached'
cd ..
cd battlecode20
git pull ../battlecode19 --allow-unrelated-histories
mv api backend
mv app frontend

This procedure keeps the history nicely.