FaaS Wars Season 2 - Step By Step Instructions

May 03, 2021 | Announcement

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FAAS Wars is a battle between robot fighters. You create a fighter by writing some code (as simple as a single function) and deploy the code as a serverless API using Nimbella.

Your function is the API. You do not worry about creating a server to run your fighter. With the Nimbella serverless cloud, you can focus on creating the best FAAS Fighter, and you won't be distracted by infrastructure concerns.

What can be better? Winning cash prizes!💰💰💰

Season 1 of FAAS Wars was a global success. We had 500 fighters from 7 countries compete and win $1,400 in prizes. You can read about the Season recap for more details.

We are back with Season 2 and new cash prizes. This time we partnered with HackerEarth and this season is all about team battles.

The details are available here.

Build your first #jediBot to win the battle

Starter Fighter - build your first #ServerlessJedi

Check this repo you will find a starter fighter project which gets you going in less than a minute.

This project contains a serverless API that implements some basic FAAS Fighters. You can deploy these fighters to your Nimbella account and start battling.

Next, take it up a level by improving your algorithm. The winning fighter strategy last season was surprisingly simple in retrospect: scan back and forth along a particular axis, shooting lasers when you spot an enemy fighter, and only moving to evade their lasers when hit.

The input and output requirements for the API are described later on.

1. Install the Nimbella CLI

You will need the Nimbella CLI to get started. Please download the CLI specific for your platform from the Nimbella website and install it by following the prompts on your screen.

2. Login using the CLI

Once you install the CLI, run the following command on your terminal.

 nim login

If you do not yet have an account, this will be your opportunity to sign up (it's free and no upfront information is needed except your e-mail or GitHub id). You do need a Nimbella account to keep going.

3. Clone and own your fighter

You will want to edit the implementations provided in the starter project. So clone the repo by running the following command.

 git clone https://github.com/nimbella/faas-fighter.git

There are several sample fighters included as a reference. Each of the fighters is self-contained in a single source file. We provide reference implementations in JavaScript, Python and Go.

You can edit one of these or create your own using another language that you prefer. Use your favorite IDE to do the coding.

When you're ready, deploy the fighters to make your APIs live. This is done with the Nimbella CLI.

 nim project deploy faas-fighter

The project deploy command assumes your project is called faas-fighter  and is in the working directory where you run the nim command from. You can specify the path to your project otherwise (e.g., nim project deploy /path/to/faas-fighter ).

The output from nim project deploy  is similar to the output below.

Deploying project '/path/to/faas-fighter'
  to namespace 'example-namespace'
  on host 'https://apigcp.nimbella.io'
Deployed actions ('nim action get <actionName> --url' for URL):
  - GoBot
  - JsBot
  - PyBot

Understanding the Fighter API

You are creating a serverless API to implement the logic for your fighter.

  • You may use JavaScript (Node.js or TypeScript), Python, Go, PHP, Java, Rust, Ruby, Deno, Swift, or .NET to implement your fighter.
  • The API receives an Event as input and returns Commands as output.
  • The fighter has an energy level that starts at a pre-determined level. The energy level decreases by one unit every time it is hit.
  • A fighter is eliminated and the match is over when the energy level reaches 0.
  • The match is also over (and your fighter is eliminated) if your API returns an error or throws an exception. Code carefully.

The Event

The fighter receive a message in the following format:

{
  "event": "idle",
  "energy": 5,
  "x": 110,
  "y": 240,
  "angle": 23
  "tank_angle": 232,
  "turret_angle": 150,
  "enemy_spot": {},
  "data": {}
}
  • The event  can be:
    • idle : the fighter has its order queue empty and and asks for new orders
    • enemy-spot : the fighter has spotted the enemy and can hit him firing
    • hit : the fighter was hit by an enemy bullet
    • wall-collide : the fighter collided with a wall
  • x  and y  are the position in the battlefield, tank_angle  and turret_angle  are the angles of the tank and of the turret in degrees. angle  is the sum of the angle of the turret and the tank, modulo 360 energy  is your energy level,

When the event is enemy_spot  there is also the field enemy_spot  in this format:

{
    "id": 1,
    "x": 291,
    "y": 180,
    "angle": 23,
    "distance": 202,
    "energy": 1
}

The fields x  and y  are the enemy location, angle  is the absolute angle to fire him, distance  is its distance and energy  the enemy energy level.

The data field is a field that you can set with your own values with the data  command, to save a state for further actions.

The Commands

Your algorithm must decide on a set of commands to issue for your fighter. The result of the API is an array of commands (you can issue multiple orders). For example:

[{
  "move_forwards": 50,
  "shoot": true
 },
 {
  "move_backwards": 50,
  "turn_turret_right": 180,
  "shoot": true
}]

Each command consists of a single sequential action and one or more parallel actions. The sequential actions move your fighter, the parallel actions aim the fighter's turret or perform other actions.

The sequential actions are:

  • move_forwads: <number> : move forward of the given number of pixels
  • move_backwards: <number> : move backwards of the given number of pixels
  • move_opposide: <number> : move in the opposite direction of where you were moving - useful when you hit a wall
  • turn_left: <number> : turn the tanks to the left of the given angle in degrees
  • turn_right: <number> : turn the tanks to the right of the given angle in degrees

The parallel actions are:

  • turn_turret_left: <number> : turn the turret to the left of the given angle in degrees
  • turn_turret_right: <number> : turn the turret to the right of the given angle in degrees
  • shot: true : fires a bullet; note you can fire up to 5 bullets at the same time
  • yell: <string> : yell a message that will be displayed in the battle field

Each command should contain no more than one sequential action. If you specify more than one sequential action, only one will be executed (which one is executed is out of your control at that point).

You can read more about how to build a fighter following this tutorial.

Support and Feature Requests

We welcome your feedback and contributions.

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