Catalog

The Battlecode Programming Competition

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science MIT CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 8 lectures

This course is conducted as an artificial intelligence programming contest in Java. Students work in teams to program virtual robots to play Battlecode, a real-time strategy game. Optional lectures are provided on topics and programming practices relevant to the game, and students learn and improve their programming skills experientially. The competition culminates in a live Battlecode tournament. This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

Syllabus

  1. 1 Lecture 1: Introduction to Battlecode
  2. 2 Lecture 2: Writing Your First Player
  3. 3 Lecture 3: Navigation
  4. 4 Lecture 4: Git Repository
  5. 5 Lecture 5: Swarms, Artillery, and Mines
  6. 6 Lecture 6: Numerical Strategy
  7. 7 Lecture 7: The Lost Lecture
  8. 8 Lecture 8: Lessons from the Sprint Tournament

Course materials