Update 2023: things fall off the face of the internet after a while; removed dead links
It seems that being so much into other programming things I missed the Google AI Contest announcement. It’s supercool that they sponsor such challenges but also it’s really uncool [so like warm ?] that apparently I won’t have time to participate.
About the challenge itself - it involves working with GalconFusion-like game. Easy to learn, difficult to master type. As they provide starter packs with a sample bot it’s easy to start. However, getting some decent place would involve some really long time of good old hard work.
As a side note on .NET being spread around the unix world, there’s a C# starter pack. Good. After few secs I realised that the code will be run under antique Mono 1.2.6, therefore none of my young C# friends would be there. No type inference, no linq, no other fancy stuff. Not good.