The Computer Science of the University of Waterloo is organizing its second Google AI Challenge. The challenge is a competition between computer programs that control the artificial intelligence of the players in a video game. This time, the game is set in space, and features a symmetric configuration of planets, each containing a fleet of [...]

As another scientific Python course is approaching, I’ve been brushing up my PacMan skills. I decided to give a try to a strategy I had been thinking on, which relies upon having a good estimate of the enemy’s position. I should remind the reader that in the PacMan capture-the-flag game, one team does not know [...]

In games and other graphical applications one has to keep track multiple sprites and detect collisions between them. A naif approach would loop over all sprites and check for collision with *every other sprite*. This is, of course, terribly inefficient and can be very slow even for a small number of sprites. One way out [...]