CLient-side engine improvements

Right now the client-side engine works only in text mode. There is another 
issue about giving it a GUI. This issue is about improving the quality of 
the engine itself, not the GUI.
  * The command-line syntax of the client-side engine sucks. It should be 
made nicer and more intuitive. Something like java -jar Engine --
first_program ./my_bot --second_program example_bots/random_bot --map 
maps/map1.txt
  * The engine doesn't really give any helpful error messages when shit 
goes wrong. Whenever something goes wrong, the engine should print a 
message on stderr. Perhaps on a fatal error, a textbox with a helpful error 
message should show up to explain what went wrong, and what can be done to 
fix it.
  * The engine needs to do asynchronous I/O instead of blocking while it 
waits to read output from the individual programs.
  * Enforce a time limit. Currently the engine enforces no time limit. This 
is so confusing for the users, because their program will work on their own 
machine, but get disqualified for timing out when they submit it to the 
website. The correct time limit should be used by default, and they should 
be able to specify different time limits on the command line, by saying --
max_turn_time 3000 for 3 seconds, for example.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by cameron.jp@gmail.com on 22 May 2010 at 10:35

gcode-mirror / ai-contest

CLient-side engine improvements #8