AIFG with Mono

This short HOWTO is for students of the AI for Games course at the University of Bradford who wish to use Mono.

I'll assume you already know why you'd want to do this course, or use Mono, so I won't attempt to convince you on either point.

Notes

• This document is available at the following locations:
  • www.comp.brad.ac.uk
  • holizz.com
• Throughout this HOWTO I'll assume you're doing AIFG, have a computer at your disposal, can install software, and have a vague idea about what you're doing most of the time.
• AIFG uses .NET 2.0.
• Mono's WinForms implementation (at the time of writing) does not support the pretty GUI that Peter Cowling will give you. Do not despair, for you can use GameForFastTesting to run games for you. And if you're awfully smart you can write a player that queries a human for instructions.

Requirements

You will need:

• The libraries provided with each assignment
• gmcs (mcs doesn't support .NET 2.0)
• mono, if you intend to execute anything

In Debian (or derivatives, like Ubuntu): apt-get install mono-gmcs mono as root should do the trick.

Compilation

Let's start with a simple example from the Tanks game (2006/7, second assignment):

namespace GridWorld
{
    public class UpTank : BasePlayer {
        public UpTank() : base() {
            Name = "UpTank";
        }
        public override ICommand GetTurnCommands(IPlayerWorldState igrid) {
            return new Command(Command.Move.Up, false);
        }
    }
}

I named the file UpTank.cs because it's a tank that moves up.

If you stick the provided libraries in a directory called lib, the command to build our tank should look like this:

gmcs -r:lib/Tanks.dll,lib/GridWorldEngine.dll,lib/GameInterface.dll -target:library UpTank.cs

-r:lib/Tanks.dll,lib/GridWorldEngine.dll,lib/GameInterface.dll

The -r option tells gmcs where the extra libraries are. One or more of these will probably need changing for each assignment.

-target:library

This tells gmcs that we're making a library. Otherwise it would whine about an entry point.

After that you should have UpTank.dll sitting next to UpTank.cs. Try running it in the GUI thing in the lab, or upload it to the server.

Execution

Let's say you want to make a nice little executable to make use of GameForFastTesting, which is a class in the GridWorld namespace that plays games for you.

Game.cs is a little file containing a class called Game inside the GridWorld namespace. I won't give you it because it requires a lot of setting up, but here's a snippet:

namespace GridWorld {
    class Game {
	public static void Main() {
            ...
        }
    }
}

Compilation is pretty much the same process, except you end up with something that's executable:

gmcs -r:lib/Tanks.dll,lib/GridWorldEngine.dll,lib/GameInterface.dll,UpTank.dll -main:GridWorld.Game Game.cs

-r:lib/Tanks.dll,lib/GridWorldEngine.dll,lib/GameInterface.dll,UpTank.dll

Same as before, although you should also include any players you wish to use (like our protagonist, UpTank).

-main:GridWorld.Game

This tells gmcs where the entry point is - we want to enter our piece of software in the Main method of the Game class of the GridWorld namespace.

Now we should have Game.exe sitting next to Game.cs. Now let's execute it with one of the following commands:

• MONO_PATH=lib mono Game.exe
• MONO_PATH=lib ./Game.exe