The other day I read about the current c’t programming contest and got addicted immediately. The task is to create a program which plays the Atari Asteroids game from 1979:
Unfortunately they do not send that gem to everyone 
, but they do send the original 8 KB of ROM, so you can play it on the MAME emulator.
So far I got the emulator and the game running, and have a Python script which tracks the objects and their velocity vectors. I spent half of the weekend doing the vector analysis bits with good old pencil and paper. Reviving all the maths bits from school (about 11 years ago) was a lot of fun! Now I have useful formulas for determining the shooting angle to hit a moving comet from a moving and decelerating ship, determining if and when two moving objects with given radius collide, etc. In my head I have a first cut of a strategy, too.
Now I just need to find some time to actually implement all of this…
Once the contest is over, I’ll publish my sources, in case anyone else is interested.
Tags: asteroids, hobby, programming, python
May 7, 2008 at 13:07 |
The page is in German, is there one in English?
May 7, 2008 at 16:47 |
EvilDead, unfortunately not. It’s a German computer magazine.
July 7, 2008 at 13:10 |
[...] bot submitted, publishing source A while ago I blogged about my participation in the c’t programming contest to write a bot that plays against the 1979 Atari console. Submission deadline was June 30th, and [...]