AW Reactive AI Competition Idea

tldr - Creating reactive AIs for competing in-game (probably Dual Strike since that has the most variety of the three titles I'm familiar with) and winning maps against other reactive AIs. It's a tournament, but only bots can participate.

I don't know if this is possible or feasible right now, but it's one of those "if I were watching Back to the Future in 1985 and seeing these ideas for the first time" kind of things.

--- Advance Wars: Reactive AI Competition ---

I don't know the technical terms, so bear with me.

The idea is this: people can create bots that can play video games, usually fast or entertaining. Those are called Tool-Assisted Speedruns or Tool-Assisted Playthroughs. Then there are bots that are built to react with whatever is on-screen or whatever is in the code. I don't know the term, so I call this a reactive AI. They're not as efficient as TAS bots, but they are able to adapt more readily afaik.

This is essentially a programming competition, but with the rules of video games as the base. In this case, I use Advance Wars: Dual Strike as my example. The program would select their CO. Each program could react to different maps or be written specifically for a single map. Two entrants for the programs they submit would compete against each other. Whoever wins, wins.

Lots of exploration with this idea, but for encouragement, a tournament format with a cash prize would probably be ideal, maybe with some sponsorship from bigger tech companies like Adobe and Microsoft. The sponsorship could generate some interest in these individuals who are participating and maybe some pretty good opportunities for future work. Very similar to other programming competitions.

The tournament itself could be showcased on Twitch or YouTube because video games are fun.

...That's all I had in mind. I have no idea if this has been done before or not, but I'm hopeful either way to see something like this in the future.