Connectionists: Reminder: Mario AI Competition 2009

[Julian Togelius]

The Mario AI Competition is about creating the best controller (agent)
for a version of the classic Super Mario Bros game. The best
controller is the one that manages to take Mario jumping, shooting and
running through as many levels as possible. This is a challenging
problem, and we expect that learning and optimization algorithms (such
as evolutionary computation and TD-learning) will be useful in
creating a winning controller. But we welcome controllers of any type,
including completely hand-coded controllers, as long as they can
interface to the Java software provided with the competition.

The competition is being run in two phases, each in association with
an IEEE conference: the Games and Innovation Conference (and ICE-GIC)
and the Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG).
Sessions will be held at both conferences presenting the results of
the competition phase, where authors of winning controllers will be
invited to present their contributions.

Cash prizes will also be awarded to the authors of the best
controllers submitted in time for each conference. At ICE-GIC, the
three best controllers will be awarded USD 200, 100 and 50
respectively; at CIG, the winner will be awarded USD 500. (The prize
money will be awarded to the best contributor that has registered at
and attends the conference; however, it is possible to win the
competition phase and receive a certificate for this without attending
the conference.)

The deadline for submitting a controller to the ICE-GIC phase of the
competition is August 18, and the deadline for the CIG phase is
September 3. It is possible to enter each phase of the competition
separately, but controllers entered to the ICE-GIC phase will by
default also be entered into the CIG phase; competitors will have the
opportunity to update their submissions after the results of the first
phase are announced. At the end of the full competition, source code
of all controllers will be published on the competition website.

Four source code, sample controllers and further instructions see:
http://julian.togelius.com/mariocompetition2009

-- 
Julian Togelius
IT University of Copenhagen
Rued Langgaards Vej 7
2300 Copenhagen  S
Denmark
julian at togelius.com
http://julian.togelius.com
+46-705-192088