AI Bots II Installation Manual

Before you install AI Bots II, you need to know a few things about the program.

This program is constructed so that it can compile both in Windows and Linux. You need to first of all decide which platform you are going to use to develop your bot. We suggest that you use the Linux platform as far as possible, since the program performs far better on Linux. We have also noted some timing problems in the Windows version. In any case, if you are using this program to participate in Shaastra 2003 to be held at IIT Madras, you should note that the final event will be run on the Linux platform.

There is a choice of three display clients for you. They are, in order of prettiness (and hence also in system requirements) -

GL display client
Allegro display client
Curses display client

Read on to find out how to install and use AI Bots II.

Installing AI Bots II

For Linux:

After downloading aibots-2.xxx.tar.gz, type tar -xvzf aibots-2.xxx.tar.gz
Go to aibots-2.xxx/ directory and type any one of the below:
./buildtext
./buildgl
./buildalleg
They build the text, GL and Allegro displays respectively.

For Windows:

aibots-2.xxx.tar.gz
1. Extract the contents of the gz file using winzip or any other decompression utility.
2. Go to aibots-2.xxx/ directory and execute any one of the below:
  buildgl.bat
  buildalleg.bat
  buildtext.bat
3. Click here to see a list of the various library files you will need to use the various executables.
aibots-2.xxx.win32.zip
1. Extract the contents of the zip file.
2. Depending on which version of display client you want to use, copy dispclient.exe, mapview.exe from aibots-2.xxx/GL-bin or aibots-2.xxx/alleg-bin or aibots-2.xxx/curses-bin directory into the aibots-2.xxx/ directory.
3. Click here to view the dependencies of the executables.

Displays and their library requirements

Platform	Display	Comments (plus points and minus points)	Libraries required
Linux (highly recommended)	Text	Requires practically no extra libraries to run. +++++ Highly convenient for developing AI codes. +++ Does not display the whole area of the map. --	nCurses
	GL graphics	It has good looks. ++++ Displays the whole area of the map. ++ Needs 3 additional libraries to compile and run. ----	Xfree Mesa Mesa-demos
	Allegro graphics	Has better looks than the text display. ++ Needs 1 additional library to compile and run. --	Allegro for Linux
Windows	Text	Needs only one additional library. + Poor keyboard response. ----- Shows only 18% of the whole map. ----	PDCurses for Windows
	GL graphics	Good looks. ++++ Needs 2 additional libraries. ---	glut
	Allegro graphics	Shows the whole map. +++ Needs 1 additional library. --	Allegro for windows

List of libraries for Linux

nCurses
- This library comes with most of the Linux distributions (It comes with all Red Hat distributions 8.0 onwards). If you don't have this library, try to get hold of a Red Hat CD or some other Linux distribution CD that has the nCurses rpm.
Xfree
- You can install the Xfree rpm from the Red Hat CDs (8.0 or Later).
Mesa
- Mesa is downloadable from The Mesa page. Download the latest distribution in tar.gz or tar.bz2 format and extract the contents.
- Go to the Mesa-x.xx folder and type the following in sequence:
  1. ./configure --prefix=/usr
  2. make
  3. make install
Mesa-demos
- Mesa demos is also downloadable from The Mesa page. Download the latest version and extract the contents into the same directory as Mesa. Then follow the same instructions as you would to install Mesa.
Allegro for Linux
- Download allegro-enduser-4.0.3.tar.gz from The Allegro page.
- Run
  
  ./configure --prefix=/usr
  make
  make install

List of libraries for windows

To use the distributed AiBots Windows binaries, do the following (This is much easier and faster than building from source).

PDCurses for windows

Download pdc25_vc_w32.zip from The PDCurses page. Follow the installation instructions present in the package.
You will need to copy the file curses.dll to your windows system directory (eg. c:\windows\system).

Allegro for Windows

Download all403_bin1.zip (binaries for windows) from The Allegro page
Extract the contents of the archive and then copy the file alleg40.dll to your windows system directory (eg. c:\windows\system)

Glut for Windows

Download glut-3.7.6-bin.zip (binary for windows) from www.pobox.com/~nate/glut.html
Extract the contents of the archive and then copy the file glut32.dll to your windows system directory (eg. c:\windows\system)
If you have Visual C++, copy the files glut32.lib and glut.h to the appropriate lib and include directories as given in the glut readme file.

To build the Aibots executables from the source you will need to do the following :

PDCurses for windows

Download pdcurs26.zip from The PDCurses page. Follow the installation instructions present in the package.
You will need to have the popular C compiler DJGPP installed for this.
Once this is done, you can build the AI Bots Curses version by executing buildtext.bat. See the documentation for details.

Allegro for Windows

Download allegro403.zip (binaries for windows) from The Allegro page
Now follow the installation instructions present in the archive.
You will need to have the popular C compiler DJGPP installed for this.
Once this is done, you can build the AI Bots Allegro version by executing buildalleg.bat. See the documentation for details.

Glut for Windows

Download glut-3.7.6-bin.zip (binary for windows) from www.pobox.com/~nate/glut.html
Extract the contents of the archive and then copy the file glut32.dll to your windows system directory (eg. c:\windows\system)
If you have Visual C++, copy the files glut32.lib and glut.h to the appropriate lib and include directories as given in the glut readme file.
Once this is done, you can build the AI Bots GL version by executing buildGL.bat. See the documentation for details.