NEWS! (Updated August 2023)
- You can now participate in the COG 23 Competition !!!
- 500 USD prize for the best entry! Sponsored by the IEEE CIS Education Competition Subcommittee.
- Deadline EXTENDED for submissions:
July 31, 2023Aug 15, 2023 - FRAMEWORK UPDATED! Current version key improvements:
- Now you can code bots for any team (or both!): Radiant or Dire.
- Courier and fog of war implemented and available for both teams.
- Improved installation and how-to instructions (readme in the project and Github).
- In-game statistics now automatically gathered by the framework.
- API documentation.
What’s Dota 2?
Dota 2 is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Valve. Dota 2 is free-to-play, and it’s available to download here:
Two 5-member teams, Radiant and Dire, fight each other on a symmetric map. Each team member is called a hero. There are 115 heroes, available either for Radiant or Dire (check the hero roster). You normally play online with other 9 players. Each player picks and plays one single hero.
What’s the competition about? Goals and rules for COG 23
The Dota 2 5v5 framework lets you develop, deploy, and run your own python program that controls the 5 heroes in the Radiant and Dire teams.
The updated framework has a baseline bot at your disposal that works for both, Radiant and Dire. More info in the intro tutorial to the framework.
The Dota 2 5v5 AI Competition challenges participants to code a bot that beats the opponent team (destroys the opponent’s Ancient) in the shortest time possible!
- Prepare ONE single bot that can play as both: Radiant and Dire.
- You can freely choose 5 among all the available heroes for your team.
- When preparing your bot for both Radiant and Dire, keep in mind the strategic implications of it. I.e. lanes are inverted and some relevant map elements are located at different relative positions to your base.
- Your bot will face other participants bots in standard Dota 2 5v5 matches.
- The winner of a match will be the fastest bot at destroying the opponent’s Ancient. The framework saves the time elapsed from the match start to the Ancient’s destruction event, which will determine the competition winner.
- The competition will be arranged as a round robin tournament, where all bots will face each other. Half the matches will be played as Radiant, and the other half as Dire.
- If the number of submitted entries is too high, the organizers reserve the right to simplify the tournament to a split round robin or a single/double elimination.
Courier is now available for both teams! Get your stuff delivered right away into the brawl.
Submitting your entry to the competition
When you are ready, send an email to alberto.alvarez@mau.se with the following format:
- Include [Dota2Competition] in the subject, plus your bot’s name. E.g. [Dota2Competition] SuperSampleBot
- Attach:
- the source file (or files) implementing your bot.
- a PDF where you describe the designed strategy and its implementing algorithm. There’s no restricted format for this file.
- In the email body, include:
- The bot’s name.
- Full name(s), affiliation(s), and contact info of the author(s).
- If you submit more than one source file, clearly indicate which one is the main one. Notice that all files will be placed inside the “bots” folder. Do not create subfolders.
Important dates
EXTENDED Deadline July 31, 2023 August 15, 2023 (anywhere in the world)
Ok, where do I go from here?
Read the setup guide:
Go through our intro tutorial to the Dota 2 5v5 Framework:
Follow our tips to design a good strategy in Dota 2!
Relevant literature
Lindqvist, K., & Nilsson, D. (2020). Developing a 5v5 Framework for DotA 2 Bot Competition.
Github project: https://github.com/ellakk/5v5dota2ai-framework