Bonk

Learn all about this year's game.

Bonk is a custom multiplayer game specifically designed for the 2024 edition of the CeneBotBattle. Its action-packed gameplay allows for a wide variety of strategies and will result in a thrilling livestream. We tried to keep it as simple and minimalistic as possible. Here's everything you need to know.

Objective

The objective of Bonk is to be the last player standing by strategically walking around on the game field and bonking into other players to eliminate your opponents. That's it.

Preview of the Arena
Gameplay Mechanics
  • Each player controls a character (those round colorful thingies with cute eyes) on a hexagonal field containing 127 tiles.
  • Players can move to any adjacent tile, as long as that tile is not occupied by a rock or another player.
  • Players can only move to the tile in front of them. In order to move to a tile to the side, one first has to turn left or right one or multiple times before moving forward.
    • Moving to a tile occupied by another player will result in a bonk. If the two players that bonk are facing each other, both will take damage. Otherwise, only that player that was bonked into will take damage.
    • Moving to a tile occupied by a healing powerup will result in the player picking up the powerup and regaining some health.
    • Moving to a tile occupied by a rock will result in the player not moving and taking damage.
Rules
  • The game starts with all 6 players placed in the corners on the arena.
  • Each player's bot code is executed simultaneously, not in turns.
  • Each player starts with 100 health points. When a player loses all of these health points, they are eliminated from the game and are removed from the arena.
  • Players can take damage by being bonked by another player, or by moving to a tile occupied by a rock.
  • Players can regain health by picking up healing powerups.
  • After 720 ticks, walls will fall on the edge. Make sure to avoid this, as it's quite deadly!
  • The game continues until only one player remains, who is declared the winner.
Technical Requirements
  • Participant must submit their bot as a single Bonk file with a maximum size of 1MB. You may upload as many bots as you like, though only one can be active at any time.
  • Bots may not crash. If the execution of your Bonk file exits, your bot will instantly die.
Example Gameplay

You can take a look at the livestream here or the replay videos of past games to get an idea of how the gameplay of Bonk looks.

You can also play around with your bots in de new web editor!

Detailed Description

Below, you'll find some more detailed information about various aspects of the game. You don't necessarily need to know these in order to start writing your bot, but they will be useful if you plan on optimizing your algorithm to get the most out of your bot.

Rock formations
A game will randomly generate between 6 and 18 rock formations. These rock formations are always located near the center of the field, the edges of the field will always be free of rock formations. Rock formations can be generated on top of eachother, this means that a game can have just 1 rock formation, if all other rock formations generated above it.
Damage and healing
The following table gives the exact amount of damage or healing you will gain from specific situations:
Situation Damage moving player Damage other player
Players bonking head to head 12 15
Player bonking head to side 0 34
Player bonking into wall 17 -
Player picking up powerup 27 -
Field generation
The field is generated by creating 127 empty tiles. After this, a random number between 6 and 18 is chosen. The game then tries to create n tiles, each time picking one of the center 91 tiles, and setting it to a rock formation. If a tile is already a rock formation, this is skipped and it will try to generate the next rock formation.
Powerup spawning
Every game tick, the game has a 2% chance to generate a powerup, when generating a powerup the game selects a random tile and tries to generate a powerup on there. Rock formations cannot contain powerups, hence if the game selects a rock formation, no powerup will spawn. With an average amount of 12 walls, this yields on average, a powerup will spawn every 55 ticks.
Wall spawning
After 7200 ticks, walls will fall on all the edge tiles. After this, every 2400 ticks, walls will again fall, reducing the playfield by 1 tile on each side. If a player is hit by a falling wall, the player dies instantly. The game ends after 16800 ticks. The following table shows the field size of the field:
Tick Field size
0-7199 6
7200-9599 5
9600-11999 4
12000-14399 3
14400-16799 2
16800 1