Amazing Dojo

This program is a game where players compete to write functions in Clojure that can find their way through randomly generated mazes.

Instructions

The maze solving funtion

The maze solving function must take 5 arguments.

(fn [n-view e-view s-view w-view path] 'your-code-here)

Each view is a vector containing 3 numbers. The first number tells the function the length of the path to the next wall in that direction. For example if the next northerly wall is right next to the current position then n-view’s first number will be 0. If the player has room to move north 3 spaces then n-view’s first number will be 3. The second and third values in each vector are the number of side passages along the path, leading to the right and to the left respectively.

Picture the scene - you are in a maze facing south - about 10 metres directly ahead of you there is a wall. There is a wall immediately to your left (east) and another passage to your right (west). Up ahead, before the wall you can also make out another passage off to the left. In this situation the s-view argument to the function would be [5 1 1]. The 5 is the distance to the next wall (assuming 2 metres for each space). The first 1 is the passage immediately to your right. The second 1 is the passage up ahead leading left. Note that you are not told how far away any side passages are, only how many of them there are.

The path argument is a list of all the moves the player has made so far.

The function does not get told its absolute position within the maze, nor the size of the maze, but know the maze is a square of between 10 and 20 units on each side. You begin at position 0 (north-west) and succeed you reach the south-east corner, e.g. position 99 in a 10x10 maze.

Each turn, the function must return a keyword, one of :n, :e, :s or :w.

If your move is invalid the function will be called again with the same inputs, except one try will have been used.

Running the function

Running against a server

To upload a function to a running server just follow the upload link on the server’s index page. You can upload a whole file with a namespace, or just paste in a single form.

When pasting code directly, the server expects a single form that evaluates to a function. This means that any helper functions must be defined in a letfn form that returns the main function. For example:

(letfn [(helper-fn [arg] 'helper-code)
        (another-helper [arg] 'more-code)]
  (fn [n-view e-view s-view w-view path] 'your-code-which-calls-helpers))

When uploading a file, the server expects to find a function called solver in the namespace provided.

(ns team-42)

(defn solver [n-view e-view s-view w-view path]
  'your-code)

Running manually

To run the code first clone the project.

$ git clone https://github.com/bloat/maze-game.git

Then start a repl - you can use swank if you prefer at this point.

$ cd maze-game
$ lein deps
$ lein repl
user=> (require 'maze.www)

You can generate a maze using the maze-gen function.

(maze.gen/maze-gen)

You can print the maze using the draw-maze function.

(use 'maze.gen)
(use 'maze.draw)
(draw-maze (maze-gen))

You can run your maze solving function using the play-maze function. The first argument is the maze. The second is your function. The third is the start point, use 0 here, which is the most north-westerly location. The fourth argument is the number of turns your function will get before giving up. The game server allows 5000 turns. The last argument is your path so far, so start with an empty vector.

(use 'maze.gen)
(use 'maze.play)
(play-maze (maze-gen) your-fn 0 1000 [])

Running your own server

To start the web server start a repl as above. Use the following code in the repl.

(require 'maze.www)
(in-ns 'maze.www)
(use 'ring.adapter.jetty)
(.start (Thread. #(run-jetty app {:port 3003})))

This will start the server and allow competitors to upload their entries, but the server will not actually run any matches until the game is started. To do this you can visit

http://<yourhost>/control

You can also start and stop the game from the repl.

(in-ns 'maze.controller)
(start)
(stop)

Security

There is no protection against malicious usage. Any function that is uploaded will be executed! Run the server on a throw away VM.

LICENSE

This file is part of Amazing Dojo.

Amazing Dojo is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Amazing Dojo is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Amazing Dojo. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.