NAME stratego - Interface to manage games of stratego between AI programs and/or human players WARNING This program is still a work in progress. Consider it a Beta version. SYNOPSIS stratego {[-gpirb] [-o output_file ] [-t stall_time] [-T timeout_time] [-m max_turns] {red_player blue_player | -f input_file} | {-h | --help} } DESCRIPTION stratego manages a game of Stratego. It stores the state of the board, and uses a simple protocol to interface with AI programs. By itself, stratego does not "play" the game. An external AI program must be used. stratego is intended to be used for the testing of various AI strategies, written in any programming language. It will be used for the UCC Programming Competition 2012. Unless the -h (--help) or -f switch is given, both red_player and blue_player must be supplied. red_player Should be either a path to an executable file which will control the Red player, or "human". If set to "human", stratego will request the user to make moves for the Red player using stdin. NOTES 1. There is no plan to support AI programs named "human". Deal with it. 2. The graphical interface for human players is... basic. Deal with it. blue_player As red_player, except for controlling the Blue player. A WARNING ABOUT BUFFERING The AI programs must unbuffer their stdin and stdout streams, otherwise it will be seen to be non-responsive. If you C and you know a way to force the process started by exec() to have unbuffered stdin/stdout, please email the author. In C or C++, unbuffering is accomplished with the following lines, which should appear near the start of main() setbuf(stdin, NULL); setbuf(stdout, NULL); In python, unbuffering is accomplished by passing the -u switch to the interpreter, ie: The first line of a script reads: #!/usr/bin/python -u OPTIONS -g NOTE: This switch only functions if stratego is built with graphics enabled. See BUILDING for more information. By default, graphics are disabled. If the -g switch is present, stratego will draw the game as it is played using SDL/OpenGL -p By default, even if graphics are disabled, the board state is not printed. If -p is present, the board will be printed to stdout. If the system supports colour, the characters will be in colour. Yes, If -p and -g are both present you will see both behaviours (overkill)! -i By default, stratego will exit if a move which is deemed "illegal" is made. If the -i switch is present, illegal moves will be ignored. That is, the move will not be made (effectively the player making the illegal move loses a turn). NOTE: If -i is not given and a human player accidentally(?) makes an illegal move, they will be asked to make a different move. The game will continue. This is intended to prevent fits of rage due to the horrible graphical interface causing humans to make illegal moves. -r By default, the identities of all pieces are shown. If the -r switch is present, and graphics are enabled, red pieces will be disguised. If graphics are disabled, the -r switch has no effect. Pieces which have previously taken part in combat (and survived) will be revealed. -b As -r, except blue pieces will be disguised. NOTE: Both -r and -b may be used together. -o By default, stratego does not log moves. If the -o switch is present, the result of each move is printed to a file. If output_file is "stdout" then stdout will be used instead of a text file. -t By default, stratego executes moves as fast as they are recieved. If the -t switch is present, a delay of stall_time will be introduced between each move. If stall_time is negative or "inf", stratego will wait for the user to press enter before moving to the next move. It is tentatively planned to allow the user to enter various commands to alter the game or proceed to specified turns. However this is slightly complicated. So it might never be done. -T By default, stratego allows AI programs 2 seconds to respond before declaring their move ILLEGAL due to a timeout. If the -T switch is present, AI programs will be allowed timeout_time to respond before their move is declared ILLEGAL. If timeout_time is negative or "inf", stratego will never declare moves illegal due to timeouts. Human players are never subject to timeouts. -m By default, the game is declared a Draw after 5000 turns have ellapsed. Use this option to change the maximum number of turns. To play for an infinite number of turns, supply "inf" as max_number. This is not recommended for obvious reasons. -f By default, stratego requires red_player and blue_player to enact a game. If this option is supplied, a file previously produced by using the -o switch is read, and the game reenacted. All switches function as normal with -f. NOTE: It is recommended that -g is used with -f. -h, --help If the -h switch is used, this page will be printed and stratego will exit. GAME RULES Each player controls up to 40 pieces on the Board. The pieces are represented by the following characters: Piece Name Rank Number Abilities 1 Marshal 1 1 Dies if attacked by Spy 2 General 2 1 3 Colonel 3 2 4 Major 4 3 5 Captain 5 4 6 Lieutenant 6 4 7 Sergeant 7 4 8 Miner 8 5 Destroys Bombs 9 Scout 9 8 May move more through multiple empty squares s Spy 10 1 If the Spy attacks the Marshal, the Marshal dies B Bomb NA 6 Immobile. If any piece (except a Miner) attacks an enemy Bomb, that piece is destroyed. F Flag NA 1 Immobile. If any piece attacks the enemy Flag, the controlling player wins. Additional pieces, not controlled by the player: Piece Name Number Notes + Obstacle 8 Immobile. Do not belong to either player. Can't be passed through. # Enemy Piece 0 - 40 Indicates that the position on the board is occupied by an enemy piece. . Empty NA Indicates that the position on the board is empty. Players take turns to move their pieces. RED begins the game. Pieces may only move one square horizontally or vertically unless otherwise stated. Pieces may not move through squares occupied by allied pieces, or Obstacle (+) pieces. Pieces may move into squares occupied by Enemy Pieces (#), in which case the piece with the lower rank (higher number) is destroyed. Each player's pieces are hidden from the other player. When two pieces encounter each other, the ranks will be revealed. The objective is to either destroy all enemy pieces except the Bombs and Flag, or to capture the Flag. Since 20/12 Bombs reflect the traditional rules; they are only destroyed by Miners. In previous versions contact of an attacker other than a Miner with a Bomb destroyed the Bomb as well as the attacking piece. PROTOCOL In order to interface with stratego, an AI program must satisfy the following protocol. Each query is followed by a newline, and responses are expected to be followed with a newline. The queries are recieved through stdin, and responses should be written to stdout. 1. SETUP QUERY: YOUR_COLOUR OPPONENT_ID BOARD_WIDTH BOARD_HEIGHT RESPONSE: 4 lines, each of length BOARD_WIDTH, of characters. Each character represents a piece. The characters are shown above. RED's pieces are placed at the top of the board, and BLUE's pieces are placed at the bottom. An AI program does not have to place all 40 pieces, but must at least place the flag ('F'). 2. TURN QUERY: START | CONFIRMATION BOARD_STATE On the first turn, "START" is printed to the Red player. On subsequent turns, the CONFIRMATION of the opponent's last turn is printed (see below). BOARD_STATE consists of a BOARD_HEIGHT lines of length BOARD_WIDTH characters, each of which represents a single piece as described in the GAME_RULES section. Each line ends with the newline character. RESPONSE: X Y DIRECTION [MULTIPLIER=1] X and Y are the coords (starting from 0) of the piece to move DIRECTION is either UP, DOWN, LEFT or RIGHT MULTIPLIER is optional and only valid for units of type Scout. Scouts may move through any number of unblocked squares in one direction. CONFIRMATION: X Y DIRECTION [MULTIPLIER=1] OUTCOME | QUIT [RESULT] OUTCOME may be either OK, ILLEGAL, KILLS or DIES OK - Move was successful ILLEGAL - Move was not allowed. If stratego was not started with the -i switch, the game will end. KILLS ATTACKER_RANK DEFENDER_RANK - The piece moved into an occupied square and killed the defender. DIES ATTACKER_RANK DEFENDER_RANK - The piece moved into an occupied square and was killed by the defender. QUIT will only be sent when the game is about to end. 3. END GAME If the CONFIRMATION line is of the form: QUIT [RESULT] Then the game is about to end. If present, RESULT will be a direct copy of the message to stdout described in the EXIT/OUTPUT section below. 4. TIMEOUTS If a program fails to respond to a query, the game will end and that AI will be sent the ILLEGAL result. Human players are not subject to the timeout restriction. Please see the information on the -T switch. EXIT/OUTPUT If the game ends due to a player either winning, or making an illegal move, stratego will print one of the following result messages to stdout. NAME COLOUR OUTCOME TURN_NUMBER OUTCOME RED_PIECE_VALUE BLUE_PIECE_VALUE Where: NAME is the name of the player on whose turn the game ended, COLOUR is the colour of that player, OUTCOME is one of the following: VICTORY - The indicated player won DEFEAT - The indicated player lost SURRENDER - The indicated player surrendered DRAW - The game ended in a draw because neither player moved DRAW_DEFAULT - The game ended in a draw because the maximum number of moves was exceeded ILLEGAL - The indicated player loses due to an Illegal move/response DEFAULT - The indicated player wins by default due to the other player making an Illegal move/response BOTH_ILLEGAL - Both players made an Illegal move/response. Usually occurs due to simultaneous setup errors, or bad executable paths. INTERNAL_ERROR - The game ended, even though it shouldn't have. TURN_NUMBER is the number of turns that elapsed before the game ended RED_PIECE_VALUE and BLUE_PIECE_VALUE are the summed piece values of the pieces of RED and BLUE respectively. Bombs and Flags are worth zero, and the ranked pieces (Spys -> Marshal) are worth (11 - rank). So the Spy is worth 1 point, ... the Marshal is worth 10. (The initial piece values can be determined by running with -m 0) stratego will then return exit code 0. If an error occurs within stratego itself, an error message will be printed to stderr and return exit code 1. If possible, stratego will print the message "QUIT" to both AI programs, and they should exit as soon as possible. BUILDING To build from source, simply run make in the source directory. You will need the C pthread library (which should come with gcc) stratego can be built with or without graphics enabled. By default, graphics are disabled. To enable graphics: 1. Ensure that the first line of the source file "graphics.h" reads: #define BUILD_GRAPHICS 2. In "Makefile", uncomment the line "LIBRARIES = -lSDL -lGL -lpthread" and comment out the line "LIBRARIES = -lpthread" To disable graphics: 1. Comment out the first line of "graphics.h" i.e ensure that it reads: //#define BUILD_GRAPHICS 2. In "Makefile", uncomment the line "LIBRARIES = -lpthread" and comment out the line "LIBRARIES = -lSDL -lGL -lpthread" If you intend to build with graphics enabled, you will need the SDL and OpenGL developement libraries installed first. If you intend to use graphics, please ensure the "images" directory is located in the executable's run directory. BUGS Occasionally the result is not printed at the end of the game. So far this has only been observed to occur when RED wins the game by Flag capture. stratego is still a work in progress. Report another bug to the AUTHOR (see below). AUTHORS Sam Moore (for the UCC Programming Competition 2012) NOTES 0. This program is still a work in progress and subject to changes. 1. UCC Programming Competition 2012 Description http://matches.ucc.asn.au/stratego/ 2. UCC Programming Competition 2012 Git repository git://git.ucc.asn.au/progcomp2012.git 3. IRC Channel irc://irc.ucc.asn.au #progcomp THIS PAGE LAST UPDATED 3/01/12 by Sam Moore