The 2012 Competition Setting

For the competition, a client-server architecture was used. All game play was done on the server side, with one Angry Birds Chrome window for each agent, up to four agents at a time. The agents were running on individual client computers that interacted with the server using a predetermined protocol. Agents received only screenshots from the server and had to submit their action sequences (one or more shots plus taps) to the server which then executed the shots in the respective game windows. Each action consisted of the release coordinate of the bird and the time difference after which the tap is executed. After executing a shot, the server determined the game state (level solved, level failed, still playing, and the current game score). Agents could then instruct the server to which level to go to next. A new level was only accessible once the previous level had been solved. Agents had the opportunity to replay previous levels and to query the current standing of the competition, which is their personal high scores for each level, as well as the overall high score for each level.

In addition to the standard competition setting, called theĀ classic track, there was also also a special track where agents had access to a Chrome browser that ran the same Angry Birds levels as the server. The idea of this track was to give participants the opportunity to interact with the game directly and to possibly take advantage of this interaction, for example, by simulating shots before submitting them to the server. This was called theĀ unlimited track. Apart from having access to a Chrome browser, all interaction with the server followed the same protocol as the classic AI challenge, and all shots had to be submitted and executed by the server.

For the competition ten Angry Birds levels were used that were unknown to all the participants. Each participant had one hour time to solve the ten levels. For each team the high score they achieved for each level was recorded. The overall score was the sum of the high scores of all solved levels. The team with the highest overall score was the winner of the competition.