Frequently Asked Questions

Registering for an account allows you to post to the forums and scrimmage other contestants. If you're a Boston-area college student, you are also eligible to compete in the tournament at the end of January, where top finishers receive cash prizes and eternal glory.

After you register, you will be able to create and join teams, and invite other contestants to join your team, from the "Team Options" page.

If you want to participate in 6.370, but don't yet have a team, you can register individually, and then post to the forums or use private messages to find other teammates. If you already know who you want on your team, you can have one person register, create the team, then invite the other teammates to join that team.

6.370 is an MIT class, so MIT students can register and receive credit as they would for any other class. Harvard and Wellesley students can cross-register for 6.370, as they can for any other MIT class. We are working on getting transfer credit for other Boston-area colleges. Note that even if you don't register for credit, you can still compete in the tournament and be eligible for prizes.

To get credit and EDPs, you must join a tournament team. This means you must register using a college email address. In addition, for MIT students, you must use your Athena username address, not a mailing list.

You are not required to attend the "first class" -- the unfortunate wording in the IAP guide is automatically generated. However, you are required to attend the final tournament on February 3^rd. If you are a finalist, you are also required to attend the finalists' celebration on February 2^nd. Attendance at the final tournament is absolutely mandatory, regardless of your team's performance.

In addition to the tournaments, we will be holding a few class sessions to teach you some tools and tricks for writing players. Check the calendar as IAP approaches for details about these sessions.

It is possible to compete in 6.370 even if you can only be on campus starting Feb. 2, because all announcements and information that are crucial to the competition will be available through the website. However, we expect that you will want to watch your player in action at preliminary tournament on February 1^st and the practice tournaments held in January, as well as see what the other teams have come up with. Finally, we encourage you to attend our "classroom sessions", where the devs can answer your questions and talk about the BattleCode game.

There will be three tournaments at the end of IAP. The Seeding Tournament will determine your seed for the Qualifying Tournament. The Qualifying Tournament will narrow the field down to eight teams. The Final Tournament, played among the top eight teams, will determine this year's BattleCode winners. The schedule for the tournaments is as follows:

Seeding Tournament: Wednesday Jan. 24, 2PM, in 10-250
Qualifying Tournament: Thursday Feb. 1, 2PM, in 10-250
Final Tournament: Saturday Feb. 3, 7PM, in Kresge auditorium

The submission deadline for the Seeding Tournament is Tuesday Jan. 23, 11:59PM. The submission deadline for the Qualifying and Final Tournaments is Wednesday Feb. 1, 11:59AM. Note that what you submit for the Qualifying Tournament is the same as for the Final Tournament -- you will not be able to change your code in between.

The number "6.370" was actually made up as a name for the competition (only at MIT...). Because the competition is also a class taken for credit, it is listed in the catalogue with an official course number, 6.187: Special Laboratory Subject.

You'll need the number 6.187 only when you register on WebSIS. For all other purposes, the competition will be known as "6.370".

We recommend that you register both on WebSIS and on the 6.370 web site. Registering on the 6.370 site is mandatory, but registering on WebSIS is only required if you are an MIT student and wish to receive credits or EDPs.

Yes. The 6.370 game changes enough from year to year that writing a successful player is always considered a new design challenge.

There are a couple requirements for getting credit in 6.370. First, attendance at the Final Tournament on Sat. Feb. 3 is mandatory in order to receive credit. Second, if your team is one of the top eight in the Final Tournament, you must attend the Finalists' Celebration on Friday, Feb. 2 to get credit.

With those requirements taken care of, there are a couple ways to earn credit (and EDPs) for 6.370. The main avenue is to beat the "reference player," a basic player written by the devs.

Specifically, soon after the Jan. 31st submission deadline, we will take your final submission and run it against the reference player on 3 different maps (we will announce which maps they are a few days before the submission deadline). If your player beats the reference player on 2 out of the 3 matches, your whole team gets credit and EDPs. Because you can run these matches yourself, you should know in advance whether your submission will beat the reference player.

If your submission does not beat the reference player, we will email you soon after the submission deadline. At this point, you can get credit an alternate way, by sending us a 2-page report on your player: its code design, how it works, an explanation of any AI paradigms you used, etc. We will look over your source code and your report, and if both show a significant amount of effort, thought, and good design techniques, we will give you 6 credits and 6 EDPs.

Most contestants find that the reference player is easily beaten. If you find that you have other time commitments or can't beat the reference player, IAP guidelines allow you to drop 6.370 without penalty up until very late in IAP.