Ant Competition FAQ

  1. How will the simulator work?
    Initially the simulator will read in files representing the two ants (red ant and black ant) and the ant world. Your simulator should populate the red ant hill with red ants and the black ant hill with black ants. (see section 2.12 of specification for rules on how to start the simulator). Once all initializations have been made the simulator will start processing ants in rounds. Whenever an ant is processed (the step function for each ant is called), the simulator will take some action corresponding to its state. In a single round all the ants will be processed sequentially in ascending order. The game is played for 100,000 such rounds.
  2. How will the command-line based simulator work?
    The simulator will work in two modes. In the regular mode it will just simulate 100,000 rounds and then print the results. In the debug mode it will print traces of its actions to stderr. See further details at: http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/~hendren/303/Assignments/proj_phase1.html.
  3. Do the students have to make their own world, or are they given its dimensions? No, students do not have to make their own world files. A collection of random worlds satisfying the specifications can be found "http://icfpcontest.org/worlds/" or local copies can be found in http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/~hendren/303/AntCompetition . For JUnit testing, you might want to define some very small worlds yourself as fixtures.
  4. Do the students have to consider extensibility of the design? Yes, it is always advisable to consider extensibility of the design. It is all the more relevant in your case as initially a command-line version is required that will be enhanced with a GUI in later phases.
  5. Are the students allowed to use random number generator from Java? To match the trace output given by the contest you must implement a random number generator as given in section 2.10 of the specifications. However, to make things easier, you may use the random number generator provided in Java, and we will provide you with a trace file using the Java generator with a seed of 12345.
  6. Are the students required to build a Compiler from high-level language to finite-state-machines? -OR- a Compiler for language that builds into ant instructions? In phase #1 of the project you are just building a simulator that will have to parse the ant specifications and store the specification in a suitable internal form. The simulator is really like an interpreter which keeps the state of the world and the state of each ant. On each round the state of each ant is updated according the ant specification. Later on, in phase #5 you are asked to develop your own ant. You may write this ant directly in the ant language given in the project specification (which may be painful) or you may build some tools (like a small compiler) that translates from another high-level ant specification. It is this last phase where you can chose to do something simple (use existing tools from ICFP contest winners to generate an ant, modify an existing ant) or something more complex (define your own ant language and a translator from your new, higher-level language to the state-based ant language understood by the simulator). If you use existing tools or existing ants then you must clearly document what you used, and show that you understand how they work and what you have changed. Of course, more sophisticated solutions will receive more marks. You may start to work on phase #5 as soon as you have a running simulator.
  7. What is the total number of states for ants? Ants can have maximum of 10000 states (numbered 0 to 9999). It depends on your design/strategy as to how many states you use for your ant. A simple ant described in section 1.0 of specifications just had 16 states. Another sample ant file is available at http://icfpcontest.org/sample.ant or http://www.sable.mcgill.ca/~hendren/303/AntCompetition . You may also find other example ants on the ICFP winners' web sites, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/proj/plclub/contest/results.php.
  8. Why are the ants referred to as finite-state-machines? Ants are bound to follow a finite number of rules given in the input files. Each line of the input specification corresponds to what the ant can do if it in that state. The first line corresponds to state 0, the second line to state 1, and so on. If the ant is in state x, then it applies the rule for state x and then goes to a new state (as specified by the rule). Thus, each instance of an ant can be summarized by its current state. Initially all ants are at state 0. When simulator has to take an action for an ant it knows where the ant is on the board and can test and set various things about the ants surroundings (as specified in the ant language). Thus, the action the ant takes will be based on the ant's state and the state of the board. This action will result in changes to the board and an updated state for the ant. Further detail is available in section 1.0 of specifications document.