Zooscape is the Entelect Challenge game for 2025.
Participants are required to code bots to simulate escaped zoo animals in a virtual world. These animals are chased by zookeepers trying to return them to their enclosures.
While avoiding the zookeepers, the animals aim to collect as many food pellets and power-ups (coming soon) as possible to achieve a high score.
For game rules please refer to Rules.md
For changelog, please refer to Releases
- .NET 8 SDK
- Docker
Follow these instructions to set up and run this project on your local machine.
Download the zip file and extract it to the folder you want to work.
In working folder run dotnet restore
Customize the provided logic or create your own to enhance one of the given starter bots, and then upload it to the player portal to see how it stacks up against the competition!
Sign up to the player portal here, and follow the steps to upload your bot and participate in tournaments!
The application can be run using docker via the following commands from the root of the project:
.\run.bat./run.shThese scripts will run the game on port 5000 and connect 3 reference bots
When your game engine is running, simply run the visualiser executable, and it will automatically connect and start visualising the game state.
Warning
On macOS Sequoia and later, you might need to allow the visualiser to run manually. Please read the following
If, when running the visualiser you see a prompt that looks like this
Click "Done", then navigate to System Settings > Privacy & Security, and near the bottom of the screen you should see something that looks like the following
Click "Open anyway" and the visualiser should open. If you move or rename the file, you might need to do this process again.
In this project you will find everything we use to build a starter pack that will assist you to run a bot on your local machine. which comprises of the following:
- Zooscape - The engine enforces the game's rules by applying the bot commands to the game state if they are valid.
- ReferenceBot - A bot that can be played against to test your own bot
- StarterBots - Starter bots with limited logic that can be used as a starting point for your bot.
- PlayableBot - A bot that can manually controlled by the player
This project can be used to get a better understanding of the rules and to help debug your bot.
Improvements and enhancements will be made to the game engine code over time.
The game engine is available to the community for peer review and bug fixes. If you find any bugs or have any concerns, please e-mail us or discuss it with us on the forum. Alternatively submit a pull request on Github, and we will review it.
An important note regarding Bot registration, is the use of the UUID Token variable which will link your bot to your player account.
Please ensure that your bot is using the Environment Variable "Token" as this is used alongside your nickname when registering your bot, allowing your points to be tracked during tournaments. Please see Starter and Reference Bots if there is any confusion.
We have automated submissions through GitHub! For more information, sign up for the player portal here, and follow the steps!