Author Topic: Running Leagues Yourself  (Read 7515 times)

Offline Jez

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Running Leagues Yourself
« on: December 04, 2006, 02:53:20 PM »
Running leagues should be made easier in the future but until then here's how to run leagues;

Running one of the existing leagues on your own pc; (I.e. F1)

1. In your Darwinbots folder you need to have a 'leagues' folder

2. In the leagues folder you need to have a folder with the name of the league you are running ~ 'F1league'
In this folder you will need to put all the bots you have in the league, new entries can be used from anywhere but once they are in the league table their DNA will need to be here.

3.In the leagues folder you need to have a leaguetable.txt file with the name of the league ~ 'F1leaguetable'

4. In the leaguetable.txt file you need the name of at least one competitor with the same name as that bot is saved in your F1league folder I.e;
'1 - Carnatus Orbis (F1)(PY)' (all the bots have a number by their name to show their position, it's [number][space][-][space][botname] or if it's a double digit number [number][number][-][botname])
'12- Carnatus Orbis (F1)(PY)'

5. Now select the F1 league button under the simulation settings/restart and leagues tab, tick the 'run leagues on start, make sure you have the algae first in the list(normally Alga_Minimalis) selected plus the bot (or bots) you want to enter into the league. (Also make sure physics & costs 'The Big Blue Screen Acts Like A' is set to metal and physics & costs 'costs' is set to F1 default).

6. Start the simulation, at the end, if you save the results, the new entries into the league will be added to the leaguetable.txt file. It will also number the F1leaguetable.txt file to 30 using EMPTY to fill the spaces.

7. Add the code for the new bots in the F1leaguetable.txt file into the F1league folder (some leagues do this automatically).

Running your own league;

You need to follow steps 1, 2 and 3. If you called it MYleague then you need to use a MYleague folder and a MYleaguetable.text in the Darwinbots/leagues folder.
Step 4 is the same but for step 5, instead of selecting the F1 tab write the name of your league in the 'league name' box ~ MY
Also; if you want to use different settings to F1 make sure you have loaded your personal settings file and don't tick the use F1 conditions box.
Step 6 and 7 are the same.

Problems with leagues;

Leagues do sometimes crash, almost always because of a fixable problem or user oversight.

1. Make sure you don't have any .tmp or .bak files in the darwinbots/leagues folder
2. Make sure the bots code you are using is valid
3. Make sure the bots name in the txt file is the same as in the relevant league folder
4. Make sure you have bots in the txt file saved in the relevant league folder
5. Make sure your 'loaded species list' start with an algae (Alga_Minimalis) and that it is ticked as a autotrof

I've probably missed some stuff so if you are still having problems please post them here and I'll try to help.
I will check the posted league lists and while you should be able to copy them straight into your .txt file it is probably safer (less likely to have bugs/naming issues) to just download the relevant leaguetable.txt file with the league zip file at the bottom of each league list. (Bot names are being changed to give more info atm which may cause problems but I'll try to keep them the same as the bestiary)

EDIT
For the F1, F2, MB and SB leagues you can now download both a file with all the relevant bots in and a leaguetable.txt

EDIT

Botsareus has completely redesigned all league components. See below for new info. Sorry I did not explain right away as I only have seen this thread just now. Thank you. Good luck and have fun.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2014, 01:42:36 PM by Botsareus »
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Offline Moonfisher

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Re: Running Leagues Yourself
« Reply #1 on: March 31, 2014, 08:46:52 AM »
I rejoiced when I saw there was a version 2.47.00 of DB, which mentioned that leagues where now working.
So I downloaded DB 2.1, installed it, then 2.47 and installed it.
Tried running the league. (Was a bit confused about the new menu in the restart and league. Basically just a button for each league, but doesn't clearly show anywhere that you are about to run a league though.
Then remembered there was something about some folders I had to add.
So came in here and read the instructions.
Added a folder called "leagues"
Added a folder called "F1league" inside it
Inside that folder i then added a text file called "F1leaguetable.txt"
And in that file I just put the text in the first post in this topic: http://forum.darwinbots.com/index.php/topic,3058.0.html
I also put all the bots from the zip file attached to the same post.
Then I tried again, but kept getting the error that I had only added one bot. If I added 2 it would just be a single match between the two. (Same with 3 or more)

So basically would like to ask:
How do you run the leagues yourself with 2.47.00 ?
Also is there any way it could be made easy to launch a league. Was thinking of trying to do some PR to get people who are into programming games to come here and push some life back into the forum. But would help if people could just dive right into it the leagues, preferably without it being too complicated. (Think it may already be a bit confusing that people need to install 2.1 and then 2.47 afterwards, we could probably easily make a bundle with a self extracting installer that runs a bat file or something which installs both. Would also be nice to include the latest leagues in the installer, so the folders and leaguetable files are there to begin with.)
Basically the closer we could get to just: download, install, run the league with some bot; the better.
Not saying I can be much use. But could make a self extracting installer if there are no better options on the table atm. Bit hacky though.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Running Leagues Yourself
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2014, 01:35:46 PM »
Here is a direct link to a self extracting installer. (You can also get this on the wiki under downloads.)

Remember, you MUST have Restarter.exe in your DB folder or the leagues will NOT run.

There is several steps to run a league.

Step 1.) Just add all your vegys.

Step 2.) (see picky) Configure all your settings. Makes sure your league folder points to an actual folder with your league robots.

Now the way the new league works is it ALWAYS checks just two robots at a time. At the end it will check all robots. This is somewhat along the lines of what Griz was suggesting a long time ago.

You do have a choice to run a stepladder league or a tournament league. Stepladder is generally slower because it is the same as a "n(O^2)" sorter (hope I got that right)

The tournament league is nice but it does not produce a clean list of results as it calculates to first place only. (You can get second place and third/fourth place edit: just by looking on your file system under your "league" folder that is self generated) One more thing to add about the tournament league. Following Numsgil's suggestion, the league always does seeding first. You will have to wait until the program finishes seeding for the actual league to start.

So, if you want to run 300 or more robots, imo your best bet is to check both check boxes and run a compound league.

If you just want to add new robots and run just these (I really do not recommend this option due to major changes to the inner workings of the program such as Chloroplasts) Then just bundle the robots into a single folder, add the new robots and run a stepladder league. Just remember to pass the folder path to the 'Source directory' (see picky.)
« Last Edit: April 28, 2014, 01:08:18 PM by Botsareus »

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Running Leagues Yourself
« Reply #3 on: April 02, 2014, 11:39:47 AM »
Does it work on your computer Moonfisher? I need to know if the program restarts correctly because of how much I hacked the api to get that effect.

Offline Moonfisher

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Re: Running Leagues Yourself
« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2014, 01:03:32 AM »
I tried following your instructions, but couldn't get it to work.
Program restarted but stepladder didn't start.
Haven't really been going at it hard though, haven't tried running as admin or messing with folder permission and stuff like that.
Also wasn't sure if I was supposed to add a bot first, and if I should add an alge.

When it restarts it sais it'll need to remove a bot, then I klick ok and it restarts, but then complains there is no bot.

I'll have a look at this later (Maybe today if I have time) and get you the exact description of what I did and what messages I got.

Offline Botsareus

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Re: Running Leagues Yourself
« Reply #5 on: October 15, 2014, 01:17:11 PM »
Sorry for my earlier commenter mess here, I was ranting a bit. In general, the leagues work if used as instructed.  :)