About

What is Battlecode?

Battlecode is a real-time strategy game, for which you will write an autonomous player. Your player will need to strategically manage a robot army and control how your robots work together to defeat the enemy team. As a contestant, you will learn to use artificial intelligence, pathfinding, distributed algorithms, and communications to make your player as competitive as possible.

Teams are given the Battlecode software and a specification of the game rules in early January. Throughout the month, you will refine your player, and compete in scrimmages and tournaments against other teams. During these tournaments, the autonomous players are pitted against each other in a dramatic head-to-head fashion. At the end of the month, the Final Tournament is played out in front of a live audience at MIT, with the top teams receiving cash prizes. The total prize pool is over $15,000 and all Final Tournament attendees receive t-shirts and other swag.

MIT Class

Our official MIT course number is 6.9610. Register for the class by IAP to receive 6 units of credit for participating in Battlecode!

Eligibility

Anyone can write a bot, create a team, and participate in scrimmage matches/rankings. The Sprint Tournaments are open to everyone, but the other tournaments have stricter eligibility rules.

Your team must meet all three conditions by a tournament’s submission deadline to be eligible for it:

Have uploaded a bot
Have correctly indicated your eligibility on your Team Profile page
Have all members upload a resume, at your personal profile page. (This condition does not apply to the Sprint Tournaments).

Tournament specific eligibility is listed below:

Sprint Tournaments: All teams are eligible.
US Qualifier: Teams must consist entirely of US college students studying full-time, or in a transition phase.
International Qualifier: Teams must consist entirely of college students studying full-time, or in a transition phase, where at least one team member is not a US student.
MIT Newbie Tournament: Teams must consist entirely of MIT students who have never competed in Battlecode before.
High School Tournament: Teams must consist entirely of high school students.
Final Tournament: Teams must have qualified via the US or International Qualifier. The final match of the Newbie and High School tournaments will also be played at the final tournament.