Environment_Rules.md

Environment Rules

Author: Jiaxin, Enhong

Date: 2022-08-24

Version: v1.0

Overview

In this environment, we introduced the blue circle system, the combat system, and the trading system, which made the environment challenging. This competition is a game like Player Unknown's Battlegrounds with NPCs. The game score of a player depends on how well the team of agents survives and how many agents they killed. Hence,

1. The agent must survive as long as possible within the 1024 game ticks, and upgrade the skill by killing the enemy or collecting materials to obtain a greater survival advantage. (A higher skill level means that agents can equip better equipment. As a result, agents can cause higher damage to the enemy, take less damage or restore more HP / Food&Water)
2. NPCs play a key role in this game because agents mainly get gold and items by killing NPCs. Roughly speaking, the higher-level NPCs you kill, you have a higher probability to get better items.
3. The agent needs to clean up unused items from the inventory by using the trading system. (Note that the capacity of the inventory is limited. When the inventory is full, the agent can no longer acquire new items from the environment.)
4. Due to the existence of the blue circle, the agent also needs to learn how to escape from it (finding the way and moving to the central area) or find a way to use consumables to survive in the poison circle.

Terrian

Index	Element	Use	Passable
0	Lava	Will die if touch Lava	False
1	Water	Harvest Water	False
2	Grass	Land	True
3	Scrub	Forest degrades to Scrub after being harvested	True
4	Forest	Harvest Forest for producing food	True
5	Stone	Barriers	False
6	Slag	Ore degrades to Slag after being harvested	True
7	Ore	Harvest ore to produce melee ammunition	True
8	Stump	Tree degrades to Stump after being harvestedafter being harvested	True
9	Tree	Harvest Tree to produce range ammunition	True
10	Fragment	Crystal degrades to Fragment after being harvested	True
11	Crystal	Harvest crystal, it can produce mage ammunition	True
12	Weeds	Herb degrades to weeds after being harvested	True
13	Herb	Harvest Herb to produce Ration	True
14	Ocean	Fish degrades to the ocean after being harvested	False
15	Fish	Harvest Fish to produce Poultice	False

Attack styles

The ranges of three attack styles, namely, mage, melee, and range are the same, i.e., 3 tiles. And it is measured by

L_\infin

distance.

The promoting and inhibiting relationship is in a rock-scissors-paper style: melee>range>mage>melee.

Professions

This environment encourages agents to specialize and cooperate. Eight professions and the corresponding skills are designed as follows. And a leveling system that enables agents to become better at things by doing them. Each agent is born with all the professions of Level 1 and they cannot use items higher than the level of the corresponding items.

Some good policies can be imagined as, Alchemy uses a high-level tool, Arcane Focus, to harvest high-level crystals to produce Shard and give it to its teammates who are good at mage to improve the attacking damage.

The professions are listed:

• 3 attack professions
  • Melee
  • Range
  • Mage
• 5 foraging professions
  • Fishing
  • Herbalism
  • Prospecting
  • Carving
  • Alchemy

Professions	Weapon/Tool	Ammunition/Consumable items	Produce
Focus on attacking
Melee	Sword	Scrap	Damage
Range	Bow	Shaving	Damage
Mage	Wand	Shard	Damage
Forage
Fishing	Rod	Fish	Ration
Herbalism	Gloves	Herb	Poultice
Prospecting	Pickaxe	Fragment	Scrap
Carving	Chisel	Tree	Shaving
Alchemy	Arcane Focus	Crystal	Shard

Items

Bag

• The maximum capacity of the agent’s bag is 12.
• Four items can be equipped at most, 3 armor and 1 weapon.
• One sheet to store ammunition. No maximum capacity for ammunition storage.

Note that

• An item in your bag should be used except gold (an action of each agent), and then it will be in the Hat/Top/Bottom/Weapon/Ammunition sheets.
• And if you want to take down it from the equipment sheets, you also need to ‘use’ it or directly ‘sell’ it.

Usages of Items

Name	Use	Types	How to obtain	Level	Profession Specific
Ammunition	To improve damage	Shaving/Scrap/Shard	1. Buy from the global market

2. Gather resources 3. Kill players and get it from their bags | 1-10 | True | | Gold | Buy items from the global market | | Kill NPCs and kill players | False | False | | Weapon | To improve damage | Sword/Bow/Wand | 1. Kill NPCs
3. Buy from the global market
4. Harvesting ammunition with a low probability (p=0.025)
5. Kill players | 1-10 | True | | Armor | To improve defense | Hat/Top/Bottom | 1. Kill NPCs
6. Buy from the global market 3. Kill players | 1-10 | False | | Tool | To improve the level of products after gathering resources | Rod/Gloves/Pickaxe/Chisel/Arcane Focus | 1. Kill NPCs
7. Buy from the global market 3. Kill players | 1-10 | True | | Consumable items | To return Food/Water/HP | Ration/Poultice | 1. Buy from the global market
8. Gather resources 3. Kill players | 1-10 | Use: False Produce: True |

Weapon

1. To improve 10 damage points per level if you use the corresponding attack style.

• Sword:

  

• Bow:

  

• Wand:

  

Armor

1. To improve 4 defense points per level per item (e.g., if you are equipped with Hat/Top/Bottom items of Level 2, they will increase 24 defense points for you).

• Hat

  

• Top

  

• Bottom

  

Tool:

1. To improve 4 defense points per level per item.
2. To use the tool by using it on the weapon sheet.
3. Each tool is used to produce the corresponding consumable items (Poultice/Ration) and ammunition (Scrap/Shaving/Shard), e.g., If you use a Rod of Level 3, you can produce Poultice of Level 3.

• Rod: produce Poultice

  

• Gloves: produce Ration

  

• Pickaxe: produce Scrap

  

• Chisel: produce Shaving

  

• Arcane Focus: produce Shard

  

Consumable items:

• Ration: Each Ration returns 50 Food and Water, and each higher level returns 5 more Food and Water (e.g., Ration of Level 1 returns 55 Food and Water, Ration of Level 2 returns 60 Food and Water).

  

• Poultice: Each Poultice returns 50 HP, and each higher level returns 5 more HP (e.g., Ration of Level 1 returns 55 HP, Ration of Level 2 returns 60 HP).

  

Ammunition:

1. To improve 10 damage points per level, if you use the corresponding attack style (e.g., Scrap of Level 2 increases 20 damage points, if you use Melee attack style).

• Scrap

  

• Shaving

  

• Shard

  

Rule of trading in the global market

Actions of trading

• Sell
• Buy
• Prize
• Use

Rules:

1. For each step, each agent can sell one item from its bag and give it a prize (1-100). At the same time, it can buy an item from the global market.
2. The trading behaviors proceed by the agent ID, i.e., Agent 1 sells and buys, then Agent 2 sells and buys, etc… So, as the IDs of teammates are close, it can be understood that teammates have the priority to buy items from the same team.

Note that

• If your bag is full and you kill an NPC, the dropped items can not be put in your bag. So you must sell some idle items.
• If your food and water are more than 50%, you can restore 10 HP for each game clock.
• If two agents kill one NPC together, the dropped items will be randomly assigned to one agent.
• Each agent is born with 1 gold and 8 professions are set to 1.
• Agents can attack without any armor or weapon. The base damage is 7 and the base defense is 0. The armor, weapon, and ammunition are used for increasing damage and defense.
• Agents can forage without tools. Tools can improve the level of the products of the harvested resources.
• Resources will be automatically harvested when the agents pass them.
• All the weapons can be obtained by harvesting resources with a low probability (p=0.025).
• The level of armor can be equipped ≤ the highest level of the agents’ 8 professions. In other words, although you obtain a Hat of Level 8, you can not use it if your highest level of 8 professions is lower than 8.
• The level of weapon/ammunition/tool can be used ≤ the corresponding level of the profession. In other words, although you have a Wand of Level 5, if your mage level is 4, you cannot equip it.
• Agents gain access to melee, range, and mage attacks. These obey a rock-paper-scissors dominance relationship: melee beats range beats mage beats melee. Dominance is calculated using the attacker’s chosen attack skill and the defender’s main combat skill. The dominant style causes damage of 1.5 times.

Circle

From Step 240, the circle starts to shrink. For every 16 steps, the circle shrinks one tile left and right. When the agent is in fog, the fog damage will increase with the distance from the edge of the fog.