Gridworld Internals

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Gridworld Internals

• Richard FennellDirector of Black Marble Ltd

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Agenda

• Where did Gridworld come from?
• How does it work?
• What do you need to run Gridworld?
• Futures for Gridworld

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Where did Gridworld come from?

• A need to have applications that allowed student
  to submit AI clients
• Virus
• Reversi/Go like board game
• Built from the ground up
• Microsoft Terrarium Academic Edition
• Combat/goal seeking game
• Based on the Microsoft Terrarium product.

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What were the problems

• Visual Studio 2003
• Security a player AI could crash the server
• Uploading - the FTP could deadlock
• Memory leaks
• Client and Server were separate
• Debugging complexity

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Aims for Gridworld

• A single game engine that could play a variety of
  games
• Unified client and server
• Improved security through AppDomains
• Seamless uploaded from the web
• More flexible results systems

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How does it work
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What do I need to run Gridworld?
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Futures for Gridworld

• More game types
• Complete move to .Net 2.0
• Greater use of AppDomains

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QA