pyTanks

- A battleground for Python AIs to fight it out.

See it live at pytanks.csh.rit.edu.

pyTanks is a project in three modules:

• Server - A Python server that hosts a top-down, simplistic game of tanks. This takes care of maintaining the game state, handling commands from the players, and sending game state updates to both viewers and players.
• Player - A Python AI that connects to the server and plays the game of tanks.
• Viewer - A JavaScript/HTML UI for humans to view the ongoing battle.

Requirements

• Python 3.5 or newer
• websockets 7.0 (pip3 install websockets==7.0)

Server

Usage

python3 start.py

The pyTanks player uses the settings found in config.py to control how the client works. Those values can be changed directly or be overridden by appending one or more of these command line args:

• log=n - Overrides the default logging level.
• minPlayers=n - Overrides the minimum number of players required to start a game.
• ip:port - Overrides the ip and port used to host the server.

The log level must be one of:

• 0 for no logging
• 1 for connect/disconnect and new game
• 2 for server status and client errors
• 3 for FPS and client counts
• 4 for server IO
• 5 for verbose websocket logs

(All log events of a log level equal to or less than the set log level will be printed.)

The minimum player count must be at least 2. Setting this override is useful during development when you want to test the performance of your tank against one other player. For example, setting minPlayers=2 will start a new round as soon as your tank dies.

Project structure

The pyTanks server is built around ansycio tasks with a main game logic task, an incoming messages task for each connected player, and an outgoing messages task for each connected client of either kind.

Here's a quick overview of how the code is laid out:

• dataModels - Contains the classes used for storing and organizing game and server state.
• gameLogic - Contains all the logic for running the game (game clock, per-frame logic, game state update generation, and so on).
• serverLogic - Contains all the logic for running the server (websocket io tasks, client management, logging, and so on).
• config.py - Stores the settings and constants used by the server.
• start.py - A startup script which handles the command line args and checks the requirements.

The files, functions, and classes contain pretty thorough documentation on the design and structure of the server.

Licensing note

The contents of collisionDetector.py are based of off a Python implementation of Separating Axis Theorem created by Juan Antonio Aldea Armenteros. The original version is available here. That code is under the GNU General Public License, but I (Joel Eager) have received written permission to distribute this modified version under the MIT license.

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(For the other modules see the repos linked at the top of this readme.)