On Writing a RTS Bot

I’ve started looking for a new challenge in 2014 and after three months of contemplation my deeper mind returned: Write a bot. And I accepted. A few decision had to be made, e.g. which language and which domain? The latter was easy, it should be a game, a 3D game. At that moment I realized I can’t code C nor C++. Will I find a game where JavaScript or Python does any good?

After a bit of searching 0 A. D. appeared on the radar and I got excited: It already has one bot written with JavaScript and it is an Open Source RTS Game with binaries for Windows, Mac and Linux. A perfect match. On top the art team seems to be very capable. Visual pleasure is a powerful motivation at least for me.

Then I’ve dug the forum, the bot’s sources, the TRAC repository, old and new tickets to get an idea about the volume of work I was willing to accept. Interestingly writing bots for RTS games includes solving a lot of real world problems with strong time constraints. Will JavaScript be up to that challenge?

To be continued…