Getting started

To get started with BetaBirds you can do some first steps to get a dummy version (native agent) of the game working, with the following two steps:

1. Make sure you get the offline AngryBird version to run
2. Get a test agent to run to play AngryBirds for you

Details

1.2) Chromium and use local cached copies and we now have to place a local copy of the game in the local cache. It is not provided by rovio anymore but has been made available by rovio to the teams. If you are part of the betabird team, we will provide with an username and can access the offline cached copy as a compressed file here

• Download the file Application_cache and decompress it
• Set the file system so that it shows all hidden files.
• Go to the directory
  • For Windows:
    C:\Users\$your_user_profile$\AppData\Local\Chromium\User Data\Default
  • For Linux:
    /home/$your_user_profile$/.config/Chromium/Profile 1/
  • For Mac:
    /Users/$your_user_profile$/Library/Application Support/Chromium/Default
• You will see a folder named “Application Cache”
  • if you see it, rename it as to serve as a backup copy
  • if not, you don’t have any yet and don’t have to worry about
• copy the one you just downloaded into the directory and unzip it so that it now is your new “Application Cache”

1.3) You can now go to the public URL chrome.angrybirds.com, But your chromium browser will use the local cached copy, that you just put in to you local cache.
start chromium

• enter the adress chrome.angrybirds.com
• you shoud see a screen that is loading the game. Be aware that, if you use any other bowser you will come to the latest public site at chrome.angrybirds.com and it will obviously look very different.
• The levels we will play initially are “pouched eggs” and we will do that in lower resolutiuon (SD)
• select SD
• select “play”, select “pouched eggs”,
• play yourself to see that it works, try to unlock all levels, because the agent will only be able to play unlocked levels (if you try to play a particular level)

2.1) Download the files and documentation to get the sample agent started at aibirds.org. The included instructions contain some obsolete instructions and you can follow this steps described here instead.

• Please remeber to cite the software as: XiaoYu Ge, Stephen Gould, Jochen Renz, Sahan Abeyasinghe, Jim Keys, Andrew Wang, Peng Zhang, Angry Birds Game Playing Software Version 1.32, aibirds.org, 2014.
• Unzip the software package. You will have the following files/folders:
  • The external folder contains all necessary libraries.
  • The src folder contains all source files
  • The plugin folder: extension for interfacing with Chrome.

2.2) We will use Java for these agents, make sure you have an updated version of java.

• To check your java version, you can enter java -version in your command window. It should be 7 or higher.
• if necessary download the latest java from here

2.3) Install a extention to Chromium to prepare it to accept commands for playing the game. The plugin interacts with the chrome browser. It offers functionalities such as capturing game window, executing actions (e.g. move the mouse, click, and wheel to zoom).

• Start Chromium
• Go to: chrome://extensions/
• Click the ‘Developer mode’ check box
• Click the ‘Load unpacked extension…’ button
• Browse for the ‘plugin’ folder (contains the ‘manifest.json’ file) (for troubleshooting, check the pdf manual provided – ABDoc.pdf)

2.4) Run the provided Native agent to see that connectivity to the extension in chromium works:

• Load the game in Chromium as you did in 1.3.
• Open the command window.
• Go to the software directory.
• Execute the command java -jar ABSoftware.jar -na [1-21] to invoke the naive agent, the naive agent will start from the level you specified. The initial level is 1 by default.
• java -jar ABSoftware.jar -na 2 will start the naive agent in the level 2. Note: the agent cannot access a level before unlocking it.

As a next step get the server started