The Dota 2 Bot Competition

TL;DR

This paper details the Dota 2 Bot competition, an AI benchmarking event that connects external AI controllers to real Dota 2 matches, fostering research in AI techniques for real-time MOBA games.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive framework for AI in Dota 2, enabling external AI controllers to participate in real matches, bridging MOBA gaming and AI research competitions.

Findings

Established a platform for AI benchmarking in Dota 2

Enabled AI controllers to play real matches using game modding

Fostered research on AI techniques for real-time MOBA games

Abstract

Multiplayer Online Battle Area (MOBA) games are a recent huge success both in the video game industry and the international eSports scene. These games encourage team coordination and cooperation, short and long-term planning, within a real-time combined action and strategy gameplay. Artificial Intelligence and Computational Intelligence in Games research competitions offer a wide variety of challenges regarding the study and application of AI techniques to different game genres. These events are widely accepted by the AI/CI community as a sort of AI benchmarking that strongly influences many other research areas in the field. This paper presents and describes in detail the Dota 2 Bot competition and the Dota 2 AI framework that supports it. This challenge aims to join both, MOBAs and AI/CI game competitions, inviting participants to submit AI controllers for the successful MOBA \textit{Defense of the Ancients 2} (Dota 2) to play in 1v1 matches, which aims for fostering research on AI techniques for real-time games. The Dota 2 AI framework makes use of the actual Dota 2 game modding capabilities to enable to connect external AI controllers to actual Dota 2 game matches using the original Free-to-Play game.se of the actual Dota 2 game modding capabilities to enable to connect external AI controllers to actual Dota 2 game matches using the original Free-to-Play game.