CS344M: Autonomous Multiagent Systems -- Fall 2008: Programming Assignment 4

Programming Assignment 4 for Autonomous Multiagent Systems (cs344M)

This assignment is designed to get you familiar with the code base that you will be using for your final project. For this, you will have two choices:

UvA Trilearn 2003. UvA won the 2003 competition and is known to have generally well-written and well-commented code. Research done here at UT using the keepaway domain was built off of the UvA Trilearn code.
Brainstormers. The Brainstormers won the 2005 competition, and have code that features many different learned behaviors. It is new, so less well-tested and documented. But it may be stronger in some ways.

Both of these teams include all of the parsing, server interaction, and individual skills (such as passing, dribbling, intercepting, etc.). The high-level strategy that was used in the competitions is missing from both teams, however. Instead, each team has a fairly simple "placeholder" high-level strategy.

Your goal is to create a team of agents that can play a full game of soccer as follows:

Each player should be given a "home position" where it returns when the ball is not near. You choose the home positions. Specifically, you should change the home positions from the defaults.
When the player thinks that no teammate could get to the ball more quickly, it should try to get to the ball.
Once it has the ball, it should choose to dribble, pass, or shoot (kick). In all cases you will need to specify a direction. Again, you should change the decision from the defaults.

When your team is ready, have it play 2 games and turn in the logfiles. One game should be against a team of agents that all go to the ball (for example 11 of your assignment 2 agents). The other should be against itself.

Using UvA Trilearn

To begin using the UvA Trilearn code, follow these steps. First, copy the code to your account:

  % cp /projects/cs344M.pstone/trilearn_base_sources-3.3.tar.gz .

Uncompress the archive:

  % tar zxvf trilearn_base_sources-3.3.tar.gz

Go into the resulting directory:

  % cd trilearn_base_sources-3.3

Run configure to generate an appropriate Makefile:

  % ./configure

Run make to compile the code:

  % make

If everything worked, you should now have a player binary in the "src/" directory called "trilearn_player". You can run this player like you ran your players from the previous assignments by starting the soccer server and then typing:

  % src/trilearn_player

Alternatively, you can run the "start.sh" script to start a whole team of trilearn_players:

  % ./start.sh

Remember to start the soccer server first!

Help on UVA_trilearn

Hints : You may want to look at the following files (though you are encouraged to go through every file and understand the functionality, not necessarily every detail).
1. /src/WorldModel.cpp
2. /src/BasicPlayer.cpp
3. /src/Player.cpp
4. /src/PlayerTeams.cpp
The player API's are mostly in BasicPlayer.cpp and Player.cpp. You may start of by looking at the PlayerTeams.cpp and from there branch to other files. WorldModel.cpp would give you run time information about the world.

Using the Brainstormers

To begin using the Brainstormers code, follow these steps. Begin by copying the code into your account:

  % cp /projects/cs344M.pstone/BS05PubRel.tar.gz .

Uncompress the archive:

  % tar zxvf BS05PubRel.tar.gz

Change to the main directory:

  % cd Brainstormers05PublicRelease/bs2k/

Run make to compile the code:

  % make

If all goes well, you should now have a Brainstormers player in the "artagent/" directory named "BS2kAgent". You can run this player like you ran your players from previous assignments by starting the soccer server and then typing:

  % artagent/BS2kAgent

You can also start a whole team of Brainstormers by running the "start_team.sh" script from the bs2k directory:

  % ../scripts/start_team.sh

Remember to start the soccer server first!

Some details:

Make sure that you get a new copy of .rcssserver-server.conf (or undo the changes you made previously).
You can create your team with a single executable by having the player's uniform number determine its home position.
Don't worry about making a goalie with special behavior (unless you want to!).
There is A LOT of functionality in these code bases. You don't need it all. But the point of this assignment is to try to become familiar with one of the bases, so you know what you would like to build on top of it for your final project.
IMPORTANT: IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS EMAIL THEM TO THE LIST! Everyone is going to have to get familiar with one of these code bases in order to come up with an interesting project. Remember, the point of this assignment is just to become familiar with the code so that you are prepared for the final project.

What to turn in:

2 logfiles of games as described above. The one against the team of players that all go to the ball should be called [yourlogin]-vs-herd.rcg. The one against itself should be called [yourlogin]-vs-self.rcg. In both cases, run the game until a goal is scored or for at least 1000 cycles.
Your tarred, gzipped source code, [yourlogin]-source.tar.gz. You only need include files you've modified.
To turn in your files, use the turnin program with grader "pstone" and assignment label "prog4". When the assignment is there, send us an email to that effect with a brief description of what your team does.

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