Thanks for a great competition

#1

Thanks Two Sigma for hosting this competition.

The first AI competition I ever did was the Ants AI Challenge in 2012. That was my first year learning how to code, and I remember I got hooked. I was looking forward to going to class each day just to learn things to add in my bot haha… and this later led me to choosing to major in CS in college. I’m sure with this competition you guys have sparked an interest in CS for many students.

It’s also very cool to see some familiar faces here from past competitions like Ants and other ones. Hope you guys do this again next year.

#2

+1.

I also participated for the first time in an AI competition in the ants 2012. I like to participate in Two Sigma because I have the same great feeling of that time.
Thanks Two Sigma, it is a great competition and very well organized ! Please come back next year !!!

#3

Seconded. It was wonderfully done with a lot of effort, time and attention put on it. Thanks Two Sigma for doing this! Would definitely play if this there going to be a Halite 4 or something else.

I have played in Ants before but somehow did not hear about Halite 1 and joined the Halite 2 at half way stage, remaining a huge fan ever since.

Some suggestions too for the future , if I may.

  1. A more lightweight web based game player, lightweight means it can be played on most browsers (including most phones) and can be played quickly. Ability to see a game with least amount of hassle is doing a lot for the popularization of the game I think.

  2. Some form of active battles (similar to Ants, planet wars or Halite 2) make viewing of a game much more interesting to all levels of people, again would help to attract more players and viewers.

  3. If a bot can write to a simple text file, suddenly there would be more possibilities open for machine learning and adaptive algorithms to flourish since bots could try to learn from previous games. Say, data.txt with 100KB of max size.

  4. leaderboard with pagination size of 100 players per page. (like was in Ants) Think this simple change will improve competitive level and enthusiasm and intensity for many, humans like to appear on front pages :slight_smile:

  5. Now that you have a flourishing and committed community, may be can initiate some kind of a collaborative project in between times of competitions. It could be some AI related research or charity based open source development project. I would like to contribute if there is some initiative. Think there would be many more if the project sounds interesting and useful towards some worthwhile objective.

Thanks again!

#4

+1

Great competition. Perfect organization, very appropriate game and competition rules, much appreciated. I definitely hope there will be a Halite 4.

#5

Thanks from here, too. It was great fun. I only heard about it in late November, and didn’t actually get around to looking at it until the turn of the year. Three weeks later, I’m addicted. Also: embarrassed at all things I didn’t get to implement yet in my bot, along with its slipshod construction and lack of rigor.

Any suggestions for other similar competitions to tide one over until (hopefully) Halite 4?

#6

yes halite 3 was almost a perfect level of complexity and competition and ability to see results visually, many kaggle competitions seem a bit boring by comparison. Is there anything else like Halite out there?

#7

There’s appear to be an active ladder in this slightly more cpmplicated game & blizzard has also released AI apis for starcraft 1 and 2:
https://sc2ai.net/