Setup Instructions

• Install Node.js on your computer (I used v16.13.0 to set up this repo)
• Enter npm install into terminal - this will install the necessary dependencies (i.e. the Pokémon Showdown Node package)
• Run the program by running node bot.js in terminal (currently doesn't do anything)
• Need to also now run npm install @smogon/calc (if this doesn't work, delete package.json / package.lock and just re-run npm install)

Technical Investigations

• Interface with the battle simulator by using the stream object created upon initialization
  • stream.write() to input commands
  • stream.read().then(r => {STUFF}) to get one line of output from the stream
• 3 commands always necessary to start any battle:
  • >start {"formatid": "{FORMAT}"} - initializes battle format
  • >player p1 {"name": "{NAME}"} - initializes player 1
  • >player p2 {"name": "{NAME}"} - initializes player 2
  • Can add TEAM field to player JSON if not a random battle; doing this for testing purposes
• After that, input >p1 {ACTION} and >p2 {ACTION} e.g. >p1 move 1, p2 move 1
• Stream will output sideupdates for both sides and an update of the overall game state, then wait for next input of actions
• We can use the Dex library to query moves + Pokémon types. A naive heuristic we could use is to simply pick the move/action that maximizes damage, which we can do relatively easily.
  • I haven't found a way for Dex to natively give us specific type effectiveness on a given Pokémon, but that should be relatively easy to hardcode into a dictionary or something.