Players

As mentioned above two teams compete with each other. Their goal collect as much apples as possible in a limited time.

In order to distinguish the players of each team different color are used. Two colors are available, white or black. On screen these colors are used as background for each player. Granted it is not a very nice looking solution but has the nice property of avoiding any confusion ;-)

So what does a team look like? Well, a team consists of 4 different kinds of players. Their advantages and disadvantages will be explained later on in more detail. We start will a revue of the players here under. Next to each name you see the how of each kind of players looks like on the screen. The players types are :

eaters
explorers
ghosts
hunters

You have no choice as for the composition of your team. Each and every team has exactly these four kind of players once. The only way for your team to make a difference is in the way you program your player to behave!

Later in this text the different capabilities of the players will be described. It is however useful to point out that you will need to make you players act like a team. Indeed, each of the player has a quite specific function. Some players can run faster where others can bring items back to the home cells. You will soon find out that you need to work a some strategy to maximize your chances of success.

More about the players

Normally there can only be 1 player per cell. The only exception are the home cells there is no limitation. That is there can be several player in one home cells. You already know that there are 4 types of players: eater, hunter, ghost, explorer. Each camp has only one eater, one hunter and one explorer. You can however have several ghosts if you feel up to it, you need at least one ghost.

We now describe the capabilities and limits of each type of player. It is important that you keep these in mind when programming then so that you use them in an optimal way.

What players can do

The possible actions are:

Move

A player is limited to the walls of the arena labyrinth, cannot go into an opponent home cell or into a cell with another player (jumping over a player is also impossible).
A player can go into a cell with an element.
After a player picked up something or killed a player, he can continue to move...

Each turn each player can communicate with the other players by sending them a message of 3 characters: only one message to all players. Note that the opponents can read it!

Players specific :

An Eater can pick up Apples and drop them in its home cells. Only when an apple is in the home cell will the team get the points.
An Explorer can pick up a Bonus and put a mine in an empty cell (but not in a home cell).
A Ghost can kill opponent Eaters and Explorers.
A Hunter can however kill opponent Ghosts!

What players can see/know

Of course in order to behave in an intelligent way the different players should get some information about the game situation. Here are the different information elements a player can get. Note that the information can be different for each player. This for instance that case for the visual information a player can get. This being dependent on its visibility.

You do not get all this information automatically. The player has to ask for this information explicitly (this is done by using the appropriate procedures in your program).

A player knows the Arena Labyrinth.
A player sees players and elements around him, but limited to its visibility (see further).
A player hears the communication of all other players (also opponent players).
A player knows the number of elements and other players in the arena.

Common properties

There are some properties common to all types of player, these are:

The number of moves he can do in one turn. Some can take several steps in one turn, thus making them faster than others

Eater: for each 2 apples, he looses 1 move of speed, thus an eater can carry at most 7 apples.

	# moves	typical actions	visibility
*Eater*	4 (-1 for 2 apples)	take Apples, put at home	directions + radius
*Ghost*	5	kill Eaters & Explorers	directions
*Hunter*	5	kill Ghosts	directions
*Explorer*	6	take Bonus -> put Mines	directions + radius

Visibility: the elements and players they see

Here are the rules which govern what can be seen by a player. We therefore define several terms:

directions visibility = a player sees everything in all directions, but not through the walls
radius visibility = a player sees everything in a certain radius around him

The following rules apply to the visibility of the players (see table for a more general overview):

Mines are only seen by Explorers when they walk over them (an Eplorer thus act like a mine detector).

Birth & Kill

Elements and player are submitted to some rules as far as the moment when they appear in the arena or when they are killed.

All players start the game at their home cells.
When a player is killed, the opposite camp receives 2 points.
When an Eater, an Explorer or a Hunter is killed, he goes back to one of the Home cells (randomly chosen).
A killed Ghost is not reborn.
New Ghosts come regularly out of the Ghost Home cells, at a certain rate or when they are all killed (like Apples & Bonus generation).

When an Eater is killed, the apples he carries are randomly scattered around the position where he died (in a radius of 2 cells).

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