Documentation

Game initialization

Your bot communicates with the game engine though standard output and standard input. You cannot use standard ouput and standard input for anything else. If you need to log something, write it to a file.

The first thing your bot must do is sending its name, prefixed with: 0:. So if you name your bot MySuperBot, you must send 0:MySuperBot.

Right after sending its name, your bot must read from standard input for its player index. It's its position in the players dictionary.

Game loop

Through standard input, and at each tick, your bot will receive the current state of the game serialized as JSON. It will have to decide whether to go left, right, up, down, to stay or drop a bomb within one second.

These actions must be sent though standard output, prefixed with the tick number, like this: 42:down.

The game state object

{
  "tick": 54,
  "width": 13,
  "height": 11,
  // flattened grid tiles, see tile type descriptions below
  "tiles": "....+++++.....#.#*#+#+#.#.+.****+++....+#.#*#+#+#.#..+++++++.+.+++#+#+#.#+#.#.+....++..+.++.#.#+#+#.#.#......++.......#.#+#+#.#.#....++++++++..",
  // learn more about sudden death below
  "suddenDeathCountdown": 186,   // number of ticks until the sudden death starts
  "isSuddenDeathEnabled": false, // whether or not the sudden death is active
  "isFinished": false,
  "players": {
    "0": {
      "id": "0",
      "name": "Askaiser",
      "x": 2,
      "y": 9,
      "startingCorner": "bl",
      "bombsLeft": 0,
      "maxBombs": 1,
      "bombRange": 2,
      "isAlive": true,  // if false, the player has been killed by the sudden death and is no longer in the game
      "respawning": 0, // if positive, the player has been blown by a bomb and is now respawning for this amount of ticks
      "score": 40, // zero of positive number of points
      "timedOut": false,
      "color": 2001125
    },
    "1": { ... },
    "2": { ... },
    "3": { ... }
  },
  "bombs": {
    "18": {
      "x": 12,
      "y": 2,
      "playerId": "1",
      "countdown": 5, // when countdown reach zero, the bomb explodes and is removed from this collection
      "range": 3
    },
    "16": { ... },
    "17": { ... }
  },
  "bonuses": {
    "19": {
      "x": 4,
      "y": 1,
      "kind": "fire" // possible values: bomb (increases maxBombs) and fire (increases bombRange)
    },
    "20" { ... }
  }
}

Tile types

Character	Description	Image
.	Walkable empty tile
*	Explosion
+	Destructible block
#	Non-destructible wall

Bonuses

Players get permanent bonuses by walking on them.

Type	Description	Image
bomb	Increases player.maxBombs property
fire	Increases player.bombRange property

Bomberjam engine CLI arguments

Usage: bomberjam [OPTION]... [BOTPATH]...
Example: bomberjam -q -r 42 -o "replay#n.json" "dotnet MyBot.dll" "java -classpath "".;*"" MyBot" "node MyBot.js" "python MyBot.py"

Options:
  -r, --repeat=VALUE         The number of games to play
  -o, --output=VALUE         Path of saved games, use placeholder #n to insert game index
  -s, --seed=VALUE           The random generator seed number
  -t, --no-timeout           Disabe all timeouts for debugging
  -q, --quiet                Suppress output logging
  -h, --help                 Show help and exit

Troubleshoot your bot

Using the C# starter

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
    var isDebugging = args.Any(x => "--debug".Equals(x, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
    if (isDebugging)
        Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));

    // [...]
}

• The new bot argument for one of the four bots: dotnet [...]/MyBot.dll --debug
• The --no-timeout to the bomberjam.exe engine so it will wait indefinitely for your bot to send its name and all the actions