Java

If you plan to develop your entry in Java you need to download and install the latest Java 8 Development Kit.

The sample bot also uses Maven for building and dependency management - detailed instructions for installing it are provided below.

Maven Installation

Installation is fairly simple:

• Maven is free software that can be downloaded here (local mirrors are available).
• Install as per the included README.txt:
  • Ensure the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the root of your JDK installation (eg. on Windows: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk8).
  • Extract the .zip / .tar.gz archive.
  • Add the bin folder from the extracted directory to your path.
  • Verify that the installation is working by starting a new command line and running mvn --version it should output something similar to:

Apache Maven 3.3.1 (cab6659f9874fa96462afef40fcf6bc033d58c1c; 2015-03-13T22:10:27+02:00)
Maven home: c:\DevTools\Java\maven-3.3.1
Java version: 1.8.0_40, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: c:\DevTools\Java\jdk8u40\jre
Default locale: en_GB, platform encoding: Cp1252
OS name: "windows 7", version: "6.1", arch: "amd64", family: "dos"

If you need to use any libraries in your bot simply include the dependencies in your project's pom.xml.

Get The Code

Download the zip file from Github or use Git to clone the repository:

• Start Git Bash
• Change to the directory where you want to checkout the sample bot
• Run: git clone https://github.com/EntelectChallenge/2015-SpaceInvaders-Bot-Java.git

Compile

The easiest way to compile is to open a Command Prompt, change to your bot folder and run compile.bat. This will use Maven to fetch your dependencies and build your bot.

Run

Once you have compiled you can do a basic test of the bot by simply launching a Command Prompt, changing to the bot directory and running run.bat output. This will use the example state and map files in the output folder.