JERRY MAO: All right, thanks to everybody,
for coming out tonight.
Tonight, we'll be launching Battlecode 2023, Tempest.
Let's get started.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lightning booms in the distance and mountains
crack as they shift about.
Rampant anomalies destroy the very fabric
of reality spurred by the misuse of mutation and alchemy.
SERENA LI: In a last ditch effort to save humanity,
alchemists have torn open unstable portals
to a new universe, but you are not alone.
Escapees from another reality have fled to this world as well
and seek to take it for themselves.
The battle of realities has begun,
and only one will survive.
JERRY MAO: Battlecode is MIT'S largest student
run AI programming competition.
It actually started all the way back in 2001.
SERENA LI: Our competitors write software programs called bots
that we play against each other in a strategy game.
JERRY MAO: And it's about coming up
with the best strategy you can in just one month's time.
ANDY WANG: So what we do is we hold lectures for the first two
weeks.
JERRY MAO: These lectures cover all
of the fundamentals of how to write perhaps, your first ever
AI bot and really introduce our beginner computer
scientists to the world of AI and how to really get started.
SPEAKER 1: So it looks like there is some kind of issue
here.
Let's see if we can figure out what it was.
SPEAKER 2: Does anyone have any ideas
of what we should do if we don't find any robots?
SERENA LI: In this year's game, the goal
was to capture more space on the map than the enemy team.
ANDY WANG: Contestants will write code
to attack in certain ways, defend in other situations,
and they make small improvements.
So they improve their pathfinding.
They improve their attacks.
They improve their resource gathering.
JERRY MAO: A big part of Battlecode
is writing down your strategy trying something
that you think might work.
And then really just watching it play a lot of games.
SPEAKER 3: All right, so without any further ado,
let's start with our very first round
Super Cow Powers versus Baby Ducks.
And they'll be meeting on TACOCAT.
SERENA LI: So today is the sprint 1 tournament,
which is where competitors submit their first bots to kind
of test out the waters and see what the typical strategies are
and also just how well their bot fares against other people.
SPEAKER 3: Already entering a bit of a fight in the middle.
A huge economy here.
Look at that swarm of robots as a result.
SPEAKER 4: We'll see if this ends up being successful.
SERENA LI: I think for participants,
Battlecode is a really good way to practice working in a team
and kind of develop a polished piece of software.
JERRY MAO: One month is a very short time
frame for making something so impressive.
Note some contestants end up with 10,000 lines of code
largely from scratch.
We have a very active server where
people are always talking to each other asking questions
about strategy, debugging.
And I think this really leads to a very close community
and a very close bond.
SERENA LI: For the final tournament,
we actually fly in all of our finalists from around the world
and also around the US so that they
can meet the other competitors that they've been talking with.
They get to see their bots play out on a big screen,
and it went really well.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
JERRY MAO: I still remember when I was back in high school,
I used to actually be a competitor in Battlecode
from halfway across the world.
And I remember becoming a finalist team
and flying all the way here and having my first opportunity
to get to know MIT to get to know the people who
have shared this same interest, the same fascination for AI.
I think it's something that really connects us.
And I think, quite largely thanks to Battlecode,
that I've really found a home here.
Give it up for your Battlecode 2023 winners,
Producing Perfection.