The winning entry is now part of the competition tool kit. Here is a video of Bill's program scoring 110,960 points.
The objective is to write a program that can play the best game of Big Five Software's “Defense Command”.
Official competition page with deadline and prize info: https://trs-80.org.uk/page5.html
To get started, download the comp2024.zip tool kit which describes how to interact with the modified version of Defense Command and has a few example programs in BASIC. Both you and your program can play the game.
You may do just as well to play and learn about the game yourself. There is a pretty good overview here: http://www.trs-80.org/defense-command/. A Google search brings up a number of gameplay videos.
The game is slightly unusual as not only must you survive but so must at least one of the fuel cans at the bottom of the screen. The enemy are trying to steal those fuel cans and will kill you if you get in the way. While you can earn bonus ships every 10,000 points you will never be granted a bonus fuel cans.
Having only used it myself, the wrapper that sends game information may have problems or limitations that get in the way of writing a good entry. Please get in touch with me at "george -at- 48k.ca" if you find such an issue.
I'm thinking about having a "binary" version of the protcol that would be easier for assembly language programs to consume. And use the RS-232 so there would be only one TCP/IP connection and avoid problems with keyboard input in the AI.