All the infrastructure runs through my personal LLC. GitHub Sponsors donations come in, infrastructure bills go out, and I cover the difference out of pocket. All of my time is volunteer.

Monthly Costs​

Here's what March 2026 looked like — the most recent full month:

All costs are in USD.

April's Google Cloud bill just came in at $485.86, so the current run rate is somewhere around $620–660 USD/month.

Sponsorship​

Battlesnake currently has 18 GitHub Sponsors, bringing in roughly $120/month. That leaves about $500/month coming out of pocket.

I'm happy to cover it — I took this on because I care about the community and want to keep it going. But I also think you should know the real numbers.

We're actively rewriting the platform in Rust with cost efficiency as a major goal, so these numbers should come down over time. I talked more about the rewrite and how I ended up running Battlesnake on my podcast.

If you want to help keep things running:

Sponsor Battlesnake on GitHub

This is Corey, you may know me as coreyja from Battlesnake, Youtube, or Github.

I've been playing Battlesnake since 2021 and been on the Core Team since 2023 when Battlesnake was given back to the community.

Today I'm happy to share that I'm stepping in to run the Battlesnake infrastructure going forward. The play.battlesnake.com experience isn't changing in the immediate future, but I am planning to bring back things like Single Player mode and Custom Tournaments!

What's Coming for Players​

Custom Tournaments​

This has been the most requested feature we've gotten over the last couple of years, and I think it's important for Battlesnake's continued growth to bring it back. It was unfortunately expensive to run in the current infrastructure and tooling, but I think it's worth investing in so that communities can run their own Battlesnake tournaments, all hosted and provided by the Battlesnake site.

In the last week someone also mentioned Custom Leaderboards, where we could run a private leaderboard for some snakes, and have them compete over a longer period of time. Adding more leaderboards would be a big increase in game volume, but it's something I'd love to support if we can.

Game Archive​

One thing from my personal wishlist for a while has been a game archive. I personally want an archive of games to verify other battlesnake tools against, but we often get requests for this for training ML snakes. Games are also only available for viewing for a limited time, and it would be great to have a longer term archive of games that can be replayed in the browser.

I'm working on archiving the games to Object Storage for longer term storage. The first use case will be to provide replay longer than 30 days, but I want to think about bulk downloads of archives as well.

The RFC (Request for Comment) Process​

I'm introducing an RFC process for player-facing and core infrastructure changes. This gives the community input on changes before they happen, and gives us a way to publish intended changes and gather feedback.

I've got some core infra changes planned for the coming months, so this is a good time to get the process rolling!

Here is the RFC repo if you want to subscribe for updates there, or submit an RFC of your own! https://github.com/BattlesnakeOfficial/rfcs

How It Will Work​

RFCs will live in a Git repo as markdown files, alongside the resulting "Specification Documents". To open an RFC, someone will create a PR with a draft spec and open it up for community feedback. Depending on the size of the change, we'll have a shorter or longer discussion period before finalizing.

RFCs will cover things like new game modes, rule changes, and major feature additions. The first one will be for Flashlight Tag mode - I wrote up a draft RFC (and someone implemented it in the meantime) but I think it will make a great first RFC and spec document.

If you've got ideas for what you'd like to see go through this process, come chat in the Discord or send me an email at coreyja@battlesnake.com.

How You Can Help​

GitHub Sponsors​

GitHub Sponsors is how Battlesnake stays funded. And to be blunt, it only covers about 50% of our costs, and that's with all the core team volunteering our time. And if we are going to build out some new features this year, we need your help now more than ever!

I'm also thinking that some features, like potentially game archive downloads, might be gated by some form of sponsorship to help encourage contributions from the community. But definitely want to balance this with open-ness, so expect anything like this to come through an RFC first.

I'm excited for Battlesnake in 2026 and hope you are too! Battlesnake is nothing without the community, and I can't wait to see what we build together.

If you want a more technical behind the scenes look at some of this development, keep an eye on my personal blog at coreyja.com for an upcoming deep dive.

A lot has happened in 2023, and I wanted to take a moment to discuss some important changes for next year.

Earlier this year our team joined DevCycle, and as a result, we stopped working on Battlesnake full-time. This significantly impacted our ability to produce seasonal leagues and other fun content. It was a good thing, in that we've had to focus on what makes Battlesnake most exciting, but also stressful since we weren't sure how the community would react (spoiler: y’all stuck with us 💃).

Since then, Chris, Kerri, myself, and a few core community members (thanks Rob, Andrew, Corey, Joe, Aileen, and Xtagon!) have kept Battlesnake operational while DevCycle paid our bills. It’s been convenient, but also not ideal, and a few months ago I decided to make a big change.

In 2024 we’re doing things differently.​

For the first time ever, Battlesnake will operate entirely independently. No investors or corporate partners, just myself and a small team of core volunteers that want to make Battlesnake better on our own terms, with no outside demands or influence.

This is a big, scary change, but I believe it is the right one for this community that I've grown to love so much.

As part of this plan, Battlesnake is now solely responsible for our own expenses, including the hosting costs required to keep the game engines and servers running, the services required to operate, our annual accounting and legal fees, etc. This is where we need your help 🙂

How you can support Battlesnake.​

I'm humbly asking the community to help by considering sponsoring Battlesnake directly - either as an individual or an organization. I can’t offer much in return, apart from a promise that Battlesnake will continue to exist, and that I will continue to build it in a way that I believe in.

As part of this ask, I've enabled our GitHub sponsorship page with some suggested amounts. If you’re having fun playing, or have enjoyed Battlesnake in the past, even a $5 or $10 subscription goes a long way. My immediate goal is $1,000/month to comfortably cover our operating costs. My ultimate goal is to get back to a place where I can work on Battlesnake full-time.

If you’re a supportive organization or tech company that would like to help, I’d be deeply grateful. I'm open to new ideas and we have a few unique rewards we can offer, such as custom designed Battlesnake heads and tails. To be clear though, we are not selling advertising slots or recruiting opportunities at this time.

Oganizations can support us through GitHub sponsorship or by contacting me directly on Discord or Twitter.

To everyone that’s helped Battlesnake get to this point, I’m so very grateful. It’s because of you all that I remain driven to build and grow this community - I believe that collectively, Battlesnake makes the world a better place 💜 🐍

Update: Gifts for sponsors!​

Xtagon has been working hard and has very kindly offered to create some 3D printed gifts for anyone that sponsors Battlesnake before January 27th, 2024! These look just awesome, and I can't wait to receive mine in the coming weeks 😍

Everyone who sponsors with a monthly subscription of $5 or more is eligible to receive a 3D printed Battlesnake!

Further, the first 10 sponsors will also receive a bonus gift — your very own first ever limited holiday edition (and possibly the only edition) "Battleflake"! (naming is hard, don't hate me.)

Important Details: Gifts are only available to US and Canadian residents, although this may change in the future. To claim yours, sponsor BattlesnakeOfficial on GitHub with a monthly subscription of $5 or more before January 27th, 2024, and we'll be in touch at the end of January to collect shipping information. Supplies are not infinite, and if needed we'll be offering them to folks on a first-come-first-serve basis.

We really like this idea as a way to say thank you to the community for your support, and, if it goes well, we'll improve on it for next year 👍

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to Xtagon or myself on Discord!

Thanks!
Brad

How we got here​

Battlesnake was originally created to connect professional developers with prospective employers. We were tired of employers making hiring decisions based on homework assignments and coding puzzles, and we wanted to create a way for developers to showcase their expertise on their own terms, and on their own schedule.

Since launch, Battlesnake has changed dramatically. Rather than being recruitment focused, it began filling a huge need for an overlooked audience—experienced developers wanting to learn and try something new. Modern programming education tends to be built for novices, not experts, and experienced programmers were coming to Battlesnake specifically to fill this need.

In many ways, Battlesnake has evolved to become the “ultimate side project” for experienced developers. And we love that.

As a team, we decided we didn’t want Battlesnake to be another recruiting or personal data aggregation platform – and neither did our players. So instead, we adopted a new mission: to help every developer become a better developer. No recruiters, no data sharing or opt-ins, just awesome programmers building awesome things.

Joining DevCycle allows us to continue supporting this vision for Battlesnake as a safe place for experienced developers to learn, share, collaborate, and have fun programming.

What does this mean for Battlesnake players?​

• The community will continue to be supported. We’re excited to share that DevCycle will be supporting Battlesnake as part of the acquisition. Developers will still be able to play and compete just as always.

• Battlesnake will continue to reflect our core values. Our mission is to help every developer, become a better developer. We believe in supporting developers worldwide and building meaningful communities around programming. Our mission, values, and privacy policy will not change with this acquisition.

• As we transition, there will be some changes. In the upcoming months, some planned events and feature updates will be paused as we work through the transition. We can’t promise you it won’t be a bumpy ride, but we can promise to give Battlesnake the care it deserves.

Thank you, for helping us get here.​

From day one, our community has been working with us to help shape Battlesnake into what it is today. Many of you have been with us for a long time. You’ve left us over 40,000 messages on Discord, watched our streams on YouTube and Twitch more than 50,000 times, and created over 1,000 public Battlesnake repositories on GitHub. Impressively, you show no signs of slowing down!

The impact your support has had on our team cannot be understated. And while the competition is often fierce, you make sure it always remains friendly and welcoming for everyone. Thank you for attending our events, cheering along with our streams, creating amazing tools, and being genuinely awesome to one another.

The Battlesnake Team
Brad, Chris, Aurora, Darcy, Rob, Sherri, Andrew, and Taraneh 💜🐍

All New Look.​

“New year, new me,” as they say! But instead of getting a new haircut and some highlights (or frosted tips), we revamped the website’s visuals and streamlined its navigation. Give it a spin. Let us know what you think!

Goodbye Leagues & Battlegrounds,​

Hello Leaderboards.

Today we’re launching a new way to play Battlesnake—Leaderboards. With that we’ll be sun-setting Battlesnake Leagues and Battlegrounds—we'll cover what this all means below.

What's happening with Leagues?​

With the launch of Leaderboards, we're sadly saying goodbye to seasonal Leagues (for now).

Leagues were loads of fun and we know they’re a big hit with our more competitive community. We love producing them, and at the same time, they require a lot of effort to operate (stream production, partner relations, prizes, etc.). Seasonal Leagues also create timing barriers for developers that discover Battlesnake mid-league, which is no fun.

We very much hope to re-introduce live competitive play, analysis, tournaments, prizes, etc. into Leaderboard play in the future.

What are Leaderboards?​

Battlesnake Leaderboards are fully automated competitive ladders. They are replacing Battlegrounds, and operate in much the same way with a few notable differences. If you're familiar with Battlegrounds, you'll feel right at home in the new Leaderboards!

How do Leaderboards work?​

Leaderboards run a set number of games at a given time each day. Games are scored automatically and player ratings are updated daily. Players are then ranked according to their rating, and those ranks are displayed publicly. Rating: The value your Battlesnake earns by winning Leaderboard games.‌ ‌Ranking: Refers to your standing in the Leaderboard compared to other developers, sorted by rating.

Each Leaderboard has its own unique game settings (map, board size, timeout, etc.). At the end of each month, developers will be awarded Battlesnake points based on their Leaderboard ranking. The exact distribution of points is still to be determined and will be something we experiment with over the next few months—so stay tuned. As of today, there are four Leaderboards available: Standard, Duels, Royale, and Constrictor. You can enter one Battlesnake into each Leaderboard. We'll do our best to stagger matchmaking times to minimize your Battlesnakes being summoned into concurrent play.

How do ratings work?​

Leaderboards use an unmodified TrueSkill algorithm to track and update player ratings. We've experimented with TrueSkill in the past, and we're excited to re-introduce it as our primary rating system.

Why not ELO?​

ELO was designed for 1v1 play, and Battlesnake is not a 1v1 game. TrueSkill was developed by Microsoft as an alternative to ELO specifically with 'free-for-all' and team play in mind, meaning it's a better fit for us. Both systems have strong R&D behind them and many years of use in large-scale gaming applications.

Will Leaderboards reset regularly like Battlegrounds?​

No. Leaderboards will remain active indefinitely, although points and achievements will be granted at the end of each month. With the new Trueskill system, there's no disadvantage to joining a Leaderboard already in progress, so we feel there's no need to reset them!

Will new maps and game modes be supported?​

Yes! We're launching four Leaderboards to start, using some of the more popular and hardened maps. We'll introduce additional Leaderboards throughout the year that will use newer and more complex Battlesnake maps.

What’s on the horizon for Battlesnake?​

Over the coming months, you'll see a re-introduction of challenges, tournaments, and new game maps into the platform. We've stripped this functionality, for now, to make space to make larger changes to how they operate, but our plan is to bring them back bigger and better.

Battlesnake continues to be, above all, an incredible developer community that strives to be collaborative, inclusive, and a whole lot of fun for everyone. We're excited about these changes, and eager to get moving into 2023 and beyond.

📢

Join Brad and Chris this Thursday, Jan 19 on Twitch @ 11am PT / 2pm ET for a Q&A about all things Battlesnake! If you can't make it but have a question for us, post it on Discord or leave it here.

Hello Battlesnake Developers,

With the end of the year fast approaching, we wanted to take a moment to thank each and every one of you for being a part of our community this year.

Here are a few highlights made possible thanks to your support in 2022:

• 10,000,000+ Games Played
• 12,000+ Livestream Views
• 1,000+ Discord Members

And, of course, we were thrilled this past weekend to induct the first seven legendary Battlesnake Developers into the Hall of Fame.

We are so grateful to have such a dedicated global community of developers who play Battlesnake, and we hope that you all have a safe and happy holiday season.

See you in 2023! Andrew, Taraneh, Darcy, Sherri, Rob, Aurora, Chris, and Brad

🎁

P.S. There's still time to complete our Annual Developer Survey and get your hands on the limited-edition goldfish head customization (Survey closes Dec 31st at 11:59PM so don't miss the chance!) 🐟

As Fall League finished up, the team was heads down working on infrastructure, with the biggest changes coming in the form of the new Rules 2.0 release!

Rules 2.0​

We did a big cleanup of the Rules project in November with the goal of making a 2.0 release. The goal of this cleanup was to remove a lot of legacy code and rework how the rulesets and maps work to make things a bit more intuitive. Although there are quite a few changes to the package's API, we ended up releasing this version as rules 1.2.0instead, because of some awkward requirements around Go packaging.

Updated Interface​

The previous interface was a bit of a mess handling legacy support for the dedicated Ruleset types along with the newer pipeline approach. Rob went in and removed all the legacy interfaces and settings arguments and built out a simpler, unified ruleset interface along with a variety of easy to use helpers. These new helpers make it much easier to create new rulesets and GameMaps.

TTLs!​

We have added new internal fields for storing Time To Live values for food and hazards, along with generic storage data for maps. This provides a variety of new ways to power interesting Game Map functionality.

New Pre-Update Hook​

We worked with experienced Battlesnake Developers, JonathanArns and coreyja, to add a new hook to the GameMap system to allow for board evaluation before the update step of the workflow runs. The new hook allows for new ways to manipulate state within a GameMap for more advanced map implementations.

CLI Bug Fixes​

We fixed a bug where the body of the last request (i.e. the /end request) wasn't being logged in the output file by the CLI.

You can check out all the code changes in the Release Notes.

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

With the dust still settling from the penultimate competition of the 2022 Battlesnake Competitive season, we are thrilled to share the final standings from the Fall League Platinum and Elite Tournaments.

Platinum Championship Tournament​

An incredible 32 Battlesnake's qualified for the 2022 Fall League Platinum Tournament which took place over two days at the Twilio Signal Conference onNovember2nd and 3rd****. You can catch it here.

Click to replay the final battle of the 2022 Fall League Platinum Tournament.

📺 Watch the Fall League Platinum Tournament Stream:​

Elite Championship Tournament​

The competition intensified on Saturday, November 12th when the top Battlesnakes of the Fall League gathered for the Elite championship.

Click to replay the final battle of the 2022 Fall League Elite Tournament.

📺 Watch the Fall League Elite Tournament Stream:​

Peoples Choice Award​

After a tight race between some big fan favorites this fall, it came down to only 4 cheers to crown the 2022 Fall League Peoples Choice Winner.

📚 Learn more about Hovering Hobbs & developer coreyja:​

Big Thanks to our Partners​

Our wonderful partners are what makes Battlesnake possible. A big thanks goes out to DigitalOcean, Twilio, New Relic, and RBC for their continued support!

Ready for more live Battlesnake action? You won't have to wait long! The Winter Championship streams on December 17th at 9am PT / 12pm ET 🐍

If you've ever wanted to host a Battlesnake hackathon at your North American college or university, there has never been a better time!

The Battlesnake Campus Tour is a hackathon sponsorship with a twist. Recipients will receive up to $2000 USD in funding, prizes, tools, mentors, and more.

Campus Tour sponsorship includes a ton of great benefits including mentors from Battlesnake

We want to support your awesome event​

The Campus Tour is open to anyone looking to run a hackathon for students at the college and university level in North America and includes:

• A sponsorship of up to $2000 USD for food, venue, prizes, etc.
• Promo materials crafted by our Design Team (cards, posters, etc.)
• Battlesnake Team mentors to assist you on-site the day of your hackathon.
• Access to the Battlesnake Tournaments tool—makes managing participants and tournament results a breeze!

CHECK OUT THE CAMPUS TOUR​

Don't Qualify? Host Your Own Tournament Instead!​

If you don't fall into the perfect candidate for the Campus Tour, you can still request access to the Tournaments Tool. It handles registration, scoring, brackets, and allows you to run matches with just a few clicks! Request access.

The team spent most of October running Fall League and working on some major new updates for the 2023 Competitive season that will be announced in December and January. Despite that we managed to get a few new improvements out for the platform.

Account Dashboard​

The new Account Dashboard is very close to an alpha release, which will likely go live in November. This new interface will serve to guide you along your Battlesnake journey, informing you of ongoing events, recent stats, and suggestions for what to try next.

The team will be iterating on the dashboard regularly over the coming months, adding components to give developers quick insight into how their Battlesnakes are performing. You can check it out for yourself by going to https://play.battlesnake.com/account/dashboard

Sneak Peak: Dark Mode!​

We are actively replacing a lot of old infrastructure with a whole new UI/UX system on the Battlesnake platform. This will help us make the experience more consistent through our feature set and support things like dark mode!

Weekly Ladder Notifications​

In October we introduced new email notifications that summarize how your Battlesnake did over the last week in a league qualification ladder. This is the first in a set of new features we are implementing to give Battlesnake Developers more insight into how their Battlesnakes are performing on the platform. We hope to add more stats as well as some on-demand data that users can interact with in the future.

In addition, we are building out notifications around tournaments to keep everyone up to date on how league tournaments progress, from qualifications to results. The first of these emails will be sent out when the Fall League Platinum tournament completes on November 3rd!

League UI/UX Updates​

The League Dashboards have got some upgrades! The elite and platinum qualification banners are now back on the leaderboard to help you quickly determine which Battlesnakes are opposing your entry to the tournament!

Speaking of tournaments we have made a long requested update to the tournament brackets. You can now click on the trophy icons on the brackets to review the game associated with that win. This lets developers easily review games in the context of the tournament!

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

With the Fall League leaderboard officially closed, let’s take a look at the top-tier Battlesnakes who qualified for the live tournaments streaming on Twitch on November 2nd, 3rd and 12th 🏆

Tournament Format​

We're doing something different this year, the Platinum Tournament will be streamed live at Twilio Signal 2022 Developer Conference across two days! Our talented team of shoutcasters will deliver exciting play-by-plays of the action.

Tournament Schedule​

Platinum Quarterfinals: Wednesday, Nov 2 at 2:00pm PT / 5:00pm ET

Platinum Finals: Thursday, Nov 3  at 2:00pm PT / 5:00pm ET

• Streaming on twitch.tv/twilio

Elite Finals: Saturday, Nov 12 at 9:00am PT / 12:00pm ET

• Streaming on Twitch.TV/BattlesnakeOfficial

In these tournaments, 2 wins are required to move onto the next stage right up until the finals, where it will be a race to 3 wins to determine who will be crowned as the Tournament Champion.

Platinum Tournament​

Wednesday November 2 & Thursday November 3 at 2:00pm PT / 5:00pm ET​

An incredible 16 Battlesnake's qualified in the Platinum tier of the 2022 Fall League Tournament which will take place on November 2nd and 3rd streaming live during the Twilio Signal 2022 Developer Conference! 🐍

Check out the Fall League Platinum Tournament Brackets​

The Fall League Platinum Tournament streams live on twitch.tv/twilio as part of the Twilio Signal Conference.

Elite Tournament​

Saturday, November 12th at 9am PT / 12pm ET​

With fierce competition throughout, 16 of this season's best Battlesnakes qualified for the 2022 Fall League Elite Tournament which will stream live on the Battlesnake Official Twitch Channel on November 12th. 🐍

Check out the Fall League Elite Tournament Brackets​

The Fall League Elite Tournament will stream on twitch.tv/BattlesnakeOfficial

Thanks & See You Soon!​

Before we close, we want to thank all of the Fall League competitors, both those who qualified and those who didn't make it to the tournament 🙏

We'd also like to send a big shoutout to our amazing community and our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who help to make these spectacular competitions possible ❤️‌‌

See you at Twilio Signal and on the Battlesnake Official Twitch Channel this November 👋

September was a big planning month for Battlesnake. We got the entire remote team together for an onsite to discuss roadmap and brainstorm plans for the 2023 Competitive Season. There are a lot of exciting things coming in the next 6 months!

Around all that planning,  we managed to get a few new features into the platform!

Community Challenge: Solo Maze​

Ever since coreyja created the Solo Maze Game Map we wanted to utilize it on the site and given that it was designed for a single Battlesnake, it made a lot of sense to make it our first Community Challenge.

You can now test your Battlesnake against 10 randomized mazes of increasing size and complexity. Your Battlesnake has 100 turns to find the food in the maze and then advance to the next level. Pass through all 10 levels of the Solo Maze to complete the challenge!

We hope to add more community challenges in the future. If you are interested in contributing your own challenge, you can pitch your concept on the Battlesnake Feedback Discussions.

Battlesnake Accomplishments​

We are experimenting with displaying a Battlesnake's performance in competitions  as a way to show a story of how a Battlesnake competes over time. To that end, you can now see your Battlesnake's accomplishments listed on the Battlesnake profile page.

The page now shows a breakdown of how your Battlesnake has done in each League, Tournament and Battlegrounds. In addition, we are showing streaks that your snake may have achieved in the Battlegrounds Standards and Duels ladders!

The feature is in a very alpha state at the moment and we are open to feedback!

Battlesnake Tournaments​

As more developers gain early access to the Battlesnake Tournaments feature, we are regularly adding quality of life improvements to make the process of creating and running tournaments that much easier.

My Tournaments​

We have made the tournaments you create easier to find by adding a new option to the navigation bar to provide quick access.

Also, the Competitions page was restructured to show your tournaments at the top, along side the leagues. It will also list the tournament that you are participating in that are being run by other organizers!

Tournament Testing​

There are a variety of ways to configure your tournament and sometimes organizers want to experiment with the settings before they commit to a plan for their custom competition. Unfortunately, testing is difficult without tournament participants so we added a new tool that will let you import a set of special test  Battlesnakes into your tournament. Now you can do some trial runs before inviting competitors to join!

If you are interested in running Battlesnake Tournaments for friends or colleagues  you can apply for early access.

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

Don't miss your chance to join the final public league of the 2022 competitive season! Find out what's new and what's staying the same for Fall League so you'll be ready for battle when the competition begins on September 30th.

Register for the 2022 Fall League Competition!​

Fall League Game Modes​

Something Old and Something New​

While we are introducing some fun new features this fall, a couple things will mirror Summer League. Deadly walls, wrapped mode, and the $1000 prize pool will remain unchanged.

Deadly Hazard Walls​

Once again, one wrong move could spell game over for your Battlesnake. Collisions with a hazard wall are fatal—dealing 100 damage to your Battlesnake.

Wrapped Mode​

Battlesnakes can pass through the outer boundaries of the board by using gaps in the hazard walls to appear on the opposite side. Should another Battlesnake be on the other side of the board at the same time, standard collision rules apply.

Prize Pool​

We're giving away a prize pool of over $1000 worth of Battlensnake goodies including gift cards, trophies, medals and of course eternal bragging rights.

Game Board - All New Islands & Bridges Hazard Map​

This new maps features four quadrants separated by deadly hazard rivers that are not only impassible by Battlesnakes, but a one-hit kill! Games on this map will be played on an 11x11 game board.

Fall League Schedule​

Here's a rundown of what's happening this Fall and when to watch the tournaments live on Twitch.  

• Registration Opens: NOW!
• Ladder Opens: September 30th at 10:00pm PDT / October 1st 1:00pm EDT
• Snake Pit Live!: October 15th at 9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT
• Ladder Freeze: October 29th at 8:00am PDT / 11:00am EDT
• Platinum Tournament: Early November
• Elite Tournament: Mid-November

Big Thanks to our Partners​

Our wonderful partners are what makes Battlesnake possible. A big thanks goes out to DigitalOcean, Twilio, New Relic, and RBC for their continued support!

Don't miss all the exciting Battlesnake Streams on Twitch.

Register for the 2022 Fall League Competition!​

Have something you want to share with us? Reach out to us on Discord, Twitter @playbattlesnake, or at hello@battlesnake.com.

A lot of things came together in August for the Battlesnake team, including improvements to almost every corner of the platform.

New Docs​

We rebuilt and relaunched docs.battlesnake.com using the Docusaurus platform. This gave us a lot of power to improve the usability of the docs and provide a solid platform for community members to contribute to the documentation that supports Battlesnake.

Big thanks to Bultz, Corey, Naomi and the other community members that both assisted in the port and contributed new content to the site!

Revised Starter Projects​

Brad spent a lot of August reviewing and updating the official Battlesnake Starter Projects to be much more approachable. A major part of this was removing a lot of the infrastructure support like Heroku and Replit from the projects on GitHub to make them to make them as simple and portable as possible.

The docs site has a handy listing of all the Battlesnake Starter Projects.

We still do love Replit as a quick way of getting started with Battlesnake and to that end we have created all new Replit templates for each of the starter projects. These templates are designed to rapidly setup Battlesnakes inside of the Replit ecosystem.

You can find all of the Replit starter templates here: https://replit.com/@Battlesnake

Battlesnake Tournaments​

The new tournaments feature we announced earlier this year is now live! This system allows developers to run their own ad hoc tournaments for up to 16 other Battlesnake users. The system supports 7 different game mode and map combinations as well as standard and duels tournament formats!

You can access the Battlesnake Tournament feature by clicking on the Create Game button and then the Tournament button.

For now we are running a trial of the system with a few dozen users, and expand access over the coming weeks. To request access to the Battlesnake Tournaments feature, just fill in the application form.

Custom Game Changes​

We have made it easier to test your Battlesnake in custom games! We have added four new "bots" to the Custom Game interface which provide you with opponents that show consistent behavior in games, for when you are first starting out or trying out a new type of algorithm.

We have also added several new game maps to the form, to give you different ways to challenge your Battlesnake in custom games.

Lastly there is a new game rule available, Wrapped + Constrictor, combining both mechanics into one game board, for interesting results. The September Battlegrounds includes the Constrictor Maze ladder, that combines the new game rule with the Arcade Maze map from Summer League!

Retry Specific Challenges​

We have noticed that some players like to reset their challenges to retry the challenges with different Battlesnakes and to validate new algorithm changes. We have made this workflow much simpler now as any completed challenge can be retried individually using any Battlesnake on your account. Just click on the Retry Challenge link below the card and select the Battlesnake you want to use. The challenge game will be generated immediately!

Feature Preview: Developer Dashboard​

We’ve been busy working on projects related to your previous feedback, one of which is the new Account Dashboard. This new interface will serve to guide you along your Battlesnake journey, informing you of ongoing events, recent stats, and suggestions for what to try next.

It's still in the early prototype stage but we are planning to release an initial version in September!

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

With the dust only just settling from an exciting summer of Battlesnake, we're thrilled to share the final standings from the 2022 Summer League Competition.

Platinum Championship Tournament​

An incredible 16 Battlesnake's qualified for the 2022 Summer League Platinum Championship which took place on **Saturday, July 23rd**.

🐍 Check out Tiam's final battle of the Summer League Platinum Tournament: Click to replay the final battle of the 2022 Summer League Platinum Tournament

📺 Watch the Summer League Platinum Tournament stream:​

Elite Championship Tournament​

The competition intensified on Saturday, July 30th when the top Battlesnakes of the summer gathered for the Summer League Elite championship.

🐍 Check out Shapeshifter's final battle of the Summer League Elite Tournament: Click to replay the final battle of the 2022 Summer League Elite Tournament.

📺 Watch the Summer League Elite Tournament Stream:​

Peoples Choice Award​

After a tight race between some big fan favorites this summer, it came down to only 2 cheers to crown the 2022 Summer League Peoples Choice Winner.

📚 Learn more about Ziggy Snakedust and its developer jlafayette:​

Big Thanks to our Partners​

Our wonderful partners are what makes Battlesnake possible. A big thanks goes out to DigitalOcean, Twilio, New Relic, and RBC for their continued support!

Ready to join the next competition? You won't have to wait long! Fall League Registration opens September 16th, 2022 on play.battlesnake.com 🐍

As Summer League 2022 wrapped up and moved into the tournament phase, the development team  focused some new features for Battlesnake!

New Customizations and Battlesnake Points!​

In August, we are introducing a new rewards system called Battlesnake Points. As you explore the Battlesnake platform and complete goals, you will automatically earn points. You can then use those points to unlock new head and tail customizations on the Customizations page.

As part of this new feature, we have released some previous exclusive customizations and added a few brand new ones!

More Game Maps​

Now that the Game Maps system in Rules is fully operational and battle tested we are now experimenting with all kinds of new ways to create maps for Battlesnake games.

Sinkholes!​

Starting as an idea for Battlegrounds during a Battlesnake Codes stream, Rob and I have built out a new kind of game map that introduces stacked hazards as a new problem to solve!

The sinkhole map spans a growing area of hazard with new layers of hazards appearing over the previous, much like a heat map. Battlesnakes moving into the depths of the sinkhole will take damage from each hazard stacked on a square.

Try it out yourself with the Rules CLI or enter a Battlesnake into the Sinkhole! ladder for the August Battlegrounds.

Solo Maze​

Solo Maze is the first approved map developed by the community! Experienced Battlesnake developer, coreya, has created an ingenious solo experience where your Battlesnake must solve a series of increasingly more complicated mazes in order to find food.

Is your Battlesnake smart enough to solve every maze? Try it out using the Rules CLI and prepare for a potential new Challenge coming this fall.

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

Introducing Battlesnake Points! Which can be used unlock new head and tail customizations for your Battlesnake. There are over 100 customizations to collect and new heads and tails being released regularly.

In this post, we'll cover what Battlesnake Points are, how to earn them, and where to spend them.

The New "Customizations" Page​

This new page shows all of the customizations you've collected during your adventures with Battlesnake. Anything you unlocked via a reward code, received from an achievement or earned as a prize is visible there. It's also where you'll have access to new customizations.

Unlocking New Customizations with Battlesnake Points​

We are introducing Battlesnake Points, which you can use to unlock new head and tail customizations for your Battlesnake! There are over 100 customizations to collect, with new heads and tails being released regularly.

To unlock a customization, find one that is not in your collection and click on the unlock button. If you have enough points, the head or tail will be added to your account and is ready to use on your Battlesnake!

Just click on the unlock button to use your points to unlock a new customization!

How Do I Get Battlesnake Points?​

Battlesnake Points are gained by participating in various Battlesnake activities. As you explore the Battlesnake platform and complete goals, you will automatically earn points.

There are many ways to earn Battlesnake Points:

• Create a Battlesnake
• Complete challenges
• Participate in Battlegrounds
• Join a league
• Compete in a tournament
• Be active in the community

Bonus!​

To get everyone started we have analyzed every existing user account and rewarded them points for all activities they have completed since December 2021!

5 New Customizations Now Available​

To celebrate this new mechanism we are releasing5 new, never-before seen, head and tail customizations as part of the 2022 Collection!

We will continue to iterate on this new system and introduce new customizations. We will be actively listening to feedback on the Battlesnake Discord server and the Battlesnake Discussions forum as we explore what is and isn't working! You're also welcome to email us at hello@battlesnake.com

With the Summer League leaderboard official closed, let’s take a look at the top tier Battlesnakes who qualified for the live tournaments on Saturday, July 23rd and Saturday, July 30th on Twitch.TV/BattlesnakeOfficial 🏆

Tournament Format​

The 2022 Summer League Tournament's will kick off on Saturday, July 23rd beginning at 9am PT / 12pm ET on Twitch.TV/BattlesnakeOfficial with the Platinum Qualified competitors.

Then we'll return for the exciting finale to the Summer League on Saturday, July 30th beginning at 9am PT / 12pm ET on Twitch.TV/BattlesnakeOfficial where we will crown both the Elite Champion and the Peoples Choice Winner.

Platinum Tournament​

Saturday, July 23rd at 9am PT / 12pm ET​

An incredible 16 Battlesnake's qualified in the Platinum tier of the 2022 Summer League Tournament which will take place Saturday, July 23rd on Twitch.

Check out the Brackets for the Summer League Platinum Tournament​

Elite Tournament​

Saturday, July 30th at 9am PT / 12pm ET​

With fierce competition throughout the competition, 16 of this seasons best Battlesnakes qualified for the 2022 Summer League Elite Tournament.

Check out the Brackets for the Summer League Elite Tournament​

Peoples Choice Contenders​

While Battlesnake is about code, it is also about community, and that is one of the reasons why the Peoples Choice award was created back in 2020.

Take a peek at the current top three contenders for the Peoples Choice award below, but remember there is still plenty of time to vote, so go ahead and cheer on your favorite Battlesnake today!

Learn more about Ziggy Snakedust​

Learn more about Hovering Hobbs​

Learn more about Combat Reptile​

Thanks & See You Soon!​

Before we close, we want to thank all of the Summer League competitors, both those who qualified and those who didn't make it to the tournament 🙏

We'd also like to send a big shoutout to our amazing community and our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who help to make these spectacular competitions possible ❤️‌

See you at the Live Tournaments on July 23rd and 30th 👋

June was a busy month for the team with getting Summer League off the ground and making some big improvements to the platform!

Summer League Launched​

Summer League is live and we are halfway through the competition. In addition to wrapped mode, Summer League has introduced a completely new aspect to league competition: the massive Arcade Maze game map.

Arcade Maze Map​

The Arcade Maze map is a 19 x 21 board filled with pathways that Battlesnakes must strategically navigate. Unlike previous hazard maps, these hazards are deadly, causing 100 damage when a Battlesnake enters the space. This has created a whole new set of challenges to navigate for Summer League!

We have also added some new Arcade Maze Challenges to help developers figure out how to update their Battlesnake to understand this hazard map.

Update League UI​

Sherri and Lorne have been working hard to polish the new League Dashboard interface as we continue to level up the Battlesnake user experience. The new leaderboard shows an animated match timer and recent round stats which provides you with easy access to your Battlesnakes recent game history!

We have plans to do a lot more updates to the Battlesnake UI/UX over the summer!

Game Maps​

Rob has spent June refining the new Game Map system in Rules to better support new features including snake placement and food placement. In addition, we have added a variety of new maps in the system to try out such as Rivers and Bridges and Rings.

Implementation of all game maps, including the Summer League Arcade Maze map, are open source and can be viewed in the Rules repo!

Build your own Battlesnake Maps​

We've made it easier to build your own maps in code, and register them to be used with the local CLI.

Battlesnake CLI Improvements​

With all the updates to Rules in May and June we have implemented several improvements to the Battlesnake CLI to help developers test their Battlesnakes in different situations.

New Browser Feature​

If you are tired of trying to debug your snake using the ASCII board, the CLI can now render games in a browser using our game board renderer!

Just add the --browser flag to your CLI command and it will load up the game in a web browser in real time.

Game Maps​

Using the --map <name> flag on the CLI command you can create a game with any of the game maps build into the Rules repository. This can be combined with the --browser flag to get a fully rendered game using any map!

Solo Mode​

The CLI now supports running single Battlesnake games (aka solo games) using all of the game modes provided in the Rules.

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

If you've already registered your Battlesnake for Summer League 2022, you might be familiar with the new "Arcade Maze" map. But did you know you can build your own custom Battlesnake maps?

We recently open-sourced the code behind custom hazard maps, snake placement, and food spawning used in past game modes in the BattlesnakeOfficial/rules repo. We've also made it easier to build your own maps in code, and register them to be used with the local CLI.

Maps are an all in one deal - each map is responsible for placing all snakes on the board, setting up the initial food and hazards on turn zero, and dynamically adding, removing, or moving food, hazards, and event snakes every turn. But if you just want to build a map that creates some hazards, don't worry - you can call out to the standard map to set up spawn points or randomized food.

Right now maps are in beta mode, and we're looking for community members to try building them. If you open a Pull Request at BattlesnakeOfficial/rules, we'll review and try to get it merged so that others can play-test it through the CLI. If a map plays well, we'll move it into a new challenge or the Battlegrounds on play.battlesnake.com!

A new game map has already been contributed by the amazing coreyja from the Battlesnake community: the solo_maze map! This map not only builds a random maze for your Battlesnake to solve, but will continue to build larger mazes once food has been picked up. The map will be available for anyone to test out locally in the latest release of the rules CLI, and we plan to make it available in a series of challenges on the main site soon!

See the README for more details on how to implement your own Battlesnake game map!

Preview games with the Board​

You might be wondering if there's a way to check if your map will look good on the real Battlesnake game board. Now there is!

You can view a game played through the CLI with the new --browser option. When you pass this, a temporary local websocket server will fire up, a game board URL will automatically open in your default browser, and the game will be played back using the real game board. This feature is pretty new, so please let us know if you run into any bugs when viewing games this way. Heads up - the page can't be refreshed when viewed this way. If you need to keep a record of the game, make sure to also pass --output <filename> to keep a log of the results in JSONL format.

It's time to register your Battlesnake! We're here to cover all the exciting game changes in store for Summer League so you'll be ready for battle when the ladders start on June 17.

Register for Summer League!​

What's New in Summer League 2022?​

Introducing the Arcade Maze Map​

"With great new maps, comes great new strategies."‌ ‌- 🐍

This Summer League, we're using a new map that features winding paths of deadly hazard walls that are not only impassible by Battlesnakes, but a one-hit kill! This map is a bit of a chonker too with a 19x21 game board.

Deadly Hazard Walls​

One wrong move could spell game over for your Battlesnake. Collisions with a hazard wall are fatal—dealing 100 damage to your Battlesnake. This is a big change from previous game modes where hazard damage was limited to 14 per turn.

Wrapped Mode​

Don't mind that gap. Battlesnakes can pass through the outer boundaries of the board by using gaps in the hazard walls to appear on the opposite side. Should another Battlesnake be on the other side of the board at the same time, standard collision rules apply.

Summer League Schedule​

Here's a brief overview of all the important dates for Summer League including when to watch the tournaments live on Twitch.  You can add them to your google calendar here.

• Registration Opens: NOW!
• Ladder Opens: June 17 at 10:00pm PDT / June 18 1:00am EDT
• Ladder Closes: July 16 at 8:00am PDT / 11:00am EDT
• Platinum Tournament: July 23 at 9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT
• Elite Tournament: July 30 at 9:00am PDT / 12:00pm EDT

Don't miss all the exciting Battlesnake Streams on Twitch.. See the air dates here.

Prizes​

This time around we're giving away a prize pool of over $1000 worth of Battlensnake goodies, gift cards, and bragging rights.

Ladders - The New Schedule is here to stay!​

The people have spoken! The new ladder mechanics adopted in Spring League 2022 will stay for Summer League 2022. Ladders will run up to 100 matches during a predetermined 8-hour time window each day. Thanks for sharing your Spring League feedback with us.

Big Thanks to our Partners​

Our wonderful partners are what makes Battlesnake possible. A big thanks goes out to DigitalOcean, Twilio, New Relic, and RBC for their continued support!

Register for Summer League!

Have something you want to share with us? Reach out to us on Discord, Twitter @playbattlesnake, or at hello@battlesnake.com.

I am pleased to open the May Developer update with an introduction to Lorne, our newest Battlesnake employee! Lorne has joined us on the development team, specializing in front-end work. We find him to be an inquisitive and dedicated life-long learner, who totally understands the opportunities for experimenting, creativity, and growing your skills while also playing Battlesnake - and that is why we just had to have him join the team. Welcome Lorne!

Battlegrounds​

After hinting for a while that something was coming soon, we are proud to announce the launch of Battlegrounds, the details of which are fully captured in a blog post from earlier this month. Chris has worked very hard on this for many weeks, and we're really happy with the results!

Battlegrounds is the next step in providing competitive play between Leagues, replacing the Global Arena system. The old Global Arenas will be shutting down on May 31st, so be sure to move your Battlesnakes over to the Battlegrounds!

Running your own Competition​

Last November we ran a Beta-Test for folks to be able to run their own Battlesnake Competition, and had some fabulous community members take this new feature out for a spin for us.

Interested in hosting your own tournament? This feature is still in limited access but if you are interested in giving the beta a whirl, apply here! We've created a minor version release of assorted improvements, from bug fixes to workflow adjustments. Keep an eye on Discord for opportunities to play in these community-run tournaments. And thanks to everyone who has already run or participated in one of these events - your feedback has been very helpful!

Sneaky peek of the UI for creating your own competition!

Rules Changes​

Rob has been busy hacking away in the Rules repository, and recently released version 1.1.4, which includes the following changes:

• Support for maps via the --map flag
• Existing named rulesets (standard, royale, etc) now have food spawn handled by the maps
• All int32 types have been changed to int
• Squad mode support has been removed

Some of these changes may be breaking for folks, so please let Rob know in the #rules-updates channel on Discord if you encounter any issues while upgrading.

Instrumenting your Battlesnake with New Relic​

One of the most fun parts of my job is getting the chance to jump on a livestream or put together a video to share the joy of learning with all your fine Battlesnake friends. A very cool project this May was being able to work with certified awesome dude Alec from New Relic, creating some tutorial videos on how to add New Relic to your Battlesnake, specifically with some custom-made (and freely available!) Battlesnake Dashboards.

If you have never used New Relic to monitor a web system before, we have you covered with this quick start video:

Once you've mastered that, we have a second video about how to go further, tweaking your collected data and demonstrating how New Relic can be used to help you find bugs and solve mysteries in your Battlesnake code.

If you prefer learning by reading, there is also a companion blog post that walks through the quick start process. However you like to consume knowledge, please check it out and let us know what you think! Don't forget to add the New Relic tag to your Battlesnake once you've integrated.

Community Updates​

This month, shoutout to community member Nick for catching and updating some missing types on the official Battlesnake Typescript Starter project. Thanks for your sharp eyes and quick fingers in getting this patch done!

Summer League is almost here!​

Setup scripts have been written. Prizes have been selected. A new and ambitious game mode has been built. Art has been rated. Summer League 2022 launches June 3rd, and we look forward to enjoying another great League event with you all.

If you loved the expressive hills from Spring League, you'll be delighted by the Summer mountains.

If you have not yet participated in a League, then there is no time like today! Check out the League Guide to get an idea of what to expect, make sure your Battlesnake can complete the Training Program Challenges, and then start working on handling hazards (like in Royale) and Wrapped mode. Everyone should keep an eye out for opportunities to practice the new Summer League map when creating custom games, which is coming soon.

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

A new way to play Battlesnake called Battlegrounds is officially open! Battlegrounds will replace Global Arenas, which will shut down on May 31st.

Battlegrounds is a recurring month-long competition where developers can enter their Battlesnakes in ladders to earn achievements and accolades. Each month, we will open up a new set of competitive ladders, each with a unique environment that will put your coding skills to the test!

Some ladders will offer consistent game modes month-to-month, allowing players to track improvement and progress.  Other ladders will act as testing grounds for new experimental combinations of game mechanics in a competitive environment.

At the end of each month, the ladders will be scored and achievements awarded based on your placement on the leaderboards (such as 1st, Top 10 or Top 50).

Battlegrounds ladders will operate similarly to seasonal league ladders, which begin at a set time once per day and run up to 100 matches. This gives players the ability to view ladder progression for all of their Battlesnakes after each round of matches.

New Ladder Progress Card

Getting Started​

Battlegrounds are easy to join! If you have a Battlesnake ready, you can enter it into any of the active ladders on the Battlegrounds page. You can participate in any of the ladders you'd like, and you're able to choose different Battlesnakes for each ladder.

Training Program Challenges

June Battlegrounds​

Our inaugural Battlegrounds competition will run from May 15 to June 30th and will consist of 4 different ladders.

Standard​

The classic version of competitive Battlesnake: 11 x 11 game board and 4 Battlesnakes.  Standard ladder matches run daily at 12 pm GMT.

Duels​

The most purely competitive game mode, where two Battlesnakes compete head-to-head on an 11x11 board. Duels ladder matches run daily at 6 pm GMT.

Wrapped​

The star game mechanic of the 2022 Competitive Season, the Wrapped ladder will provide a place to compete in-between our scheduled league play.  Wrapped ladder matches run daily at 6 am GMT.

Constrictor​

The constrictor game mechanic has a special place in our hearts and has not yet shown a Battlesnake with a dominant strategy. Will yours be the first? Constrictor ladder matches run daily at 12 am GMT.

Replacing Global Arenas​

The launch of the new Battlegrounds means we are going to sunset the existing Global Arenas on May 31st. Match generation on these ladders will stop and the final results archived. You will still be able to go to these ladder pages going forward but they will not be linked prominently on the play.battlesnake.com site.

The Battlegrounds feature is in beta so expect improvements and changes to occur as we refine the feature. We will be actively listening to feedback on the Battlesnake Discord server and the Battlesnake Discussions forum as we explore what is and isn't working! You're also welcome to email us at hello@battlesnake.com

See you at the Battlegrounds!

Don't just be ready for battle, look ready for battle too with our new competitive season merch line. Now available in our store today!

Limited Edition 2022 Competitive League T-Shirt​

With its sporty new design and right arm band decal, the star of this show is the 2o22 Competitive League T-Shirt. Quantities are limited, so grab one before they're gone!

Introducing 3 New Packs​

You asked for it! Brought to you by popular demand, all four seasonal mountains can now be yours thanks to the new Mountainous 4-Pack!

Also making their sticker debut, are 6 new Battle Block Stickers (that you've definitely never seen before outside of a Battlesnake game).

If you're having trouble deciding, we've got you covered. You can collect them all and more by picking up the Super Sticker Battle Bundle (25-Pack).

A Little Something for the Whole Family​

You'll get not one, but TWO 27" bandanas in this "duel" pack. One for you and your friend! Suitable for humans and pets.

Snakey Shoelaces Available for Preorder​

The 48" Snakey Shoelaces are available for preorder! We expect them to ship out at the beginning of June. They'll fit nicely into your old pair of chucks.

Got a merch idea? We're all ears!​

Do you ever lie awake at night thinking about all the cool stuff that could be made cooler if only it had Battlesnakes on it? You are not alone.

Tell us about the merch of your dreams by tweeting us@playbattlesnake, reaching out on Discord, or at hello@battlesnake.com.

We can't promise we'll be able to bring your creation to life, but we'd certainly love to hear about it.

That's all for now! We hope you liked what you saw. See you in Summer League!

Applications are now open to join the Summer 2022 cohort of the RBC & Battlesnake Developer Fellowship, a collaborative initiative that supports women and non-binary developers from across Canada in taking the next step in their journey as a professional developer through Battlesnake.

Eligibility Criteria:​

• **Woman or non-binary developer **(includes but not limited to: non-binary, gender non-conforming, transgender, genderfluid, intersex, genderqueer, and agender).
• Currently living, working or studying **in Canada.**

An existing Battlesnake account is ****not required** to apply.*

Fellowship recipients gain access to resources including:​

• One-on-one mentorship and career development support from experienced industry professionals at Tech @ RBC.
• A community of like-minded women and non-binary developers working to improve their skills.
• Bi-weekly networking and learning meetups to explore new technologies and build competitive Battlesnakes.
• A ton of Battlesnake and RBC swag!

Learn more about the Developer Fellowship, its benefits, and how you can become a member of the Summer 2022 cohort.

Happy end of April everyone! For your reading pleasure, please allow me to present to you a review of what the Battlesnake team has cooked up this month.

No More 1st Turn Corner Food​

One should always have a healthy suspicion of a random number generator, and while we do appreciate the unpredictability and opportunities for delight and tragedy that can happen when a food spawns in just the right (or wrong!) place during an intense game, that doesn't mean we should let the old RNG make absolutely every decision.

On the first turn of a Battlesnake game, where food is positioned such that there is one near the head of each Battlesnake and one located in the center of the board, the corners of the board are no longer valid locations for those initial foods to spawn. This is to remove a slight starting state disadvantage for any Battlesnake whose "first food" was positioned this way.

A now invalid first turn board configuration, as starting food may not be placed in the corners

New Progression Data on Leaderboards​

As a part of Spring League 2022, and in a few Beta Global Arenas, we introduced the concept of 'Matchmaking Windows', which uses a scheduler to run a fixed number of games on a Ladder during a pre-determined time window. Now that a regular schedule is in place, this has given us an opportunity to compare changes for individual Battlesnakes participating in a Ladder between these windows, and display some juicy new stats to help in your monitoring and when checking the impact of code changes. There are now details about the "Latest Round" that highlight the rank, point changes, win rate, and more for the last run window of games.

If you click on any Battlesnake listed in a Ladder, you can see the new information that has been added. Please let us know what you think and if you find this information to be helpful!

New data for Battlesnake progression on any Ladder

API Updates​

In response to a comment from community member mawif in the Discord server, new values have been added to the Game.source field on the Battlesnake API. We're now providing more descriptive values, such that when a game originates from a League Ladder, vs a Global Arena Ladder, you can now tell the difference and prioritize or handle your game as you see fit (perhaps you want to make sure those League games get all your CPU cycles!). You can see the full list of possible values for Game.source in the documentation for the Game object.

We also fixed a small bug in the API code. When a Battlesnake responds to the /move API endpoint, the documentation clearly states that it must return an HTTP 200 Response Code, however, the truth was that it did accept other values. Our mistake! We don't think anyone noticed, or that any active Battlesnakes were returning non-200 values, but that isn't an excuse for an untidy API! A fix is in place, and the code and documentation now correctly agree.

Community Contributions​

The Battlesnake community continues to be delightfully active and engaged, and I'm starting to think I will always need to reserve space to report on the 'Community Contributions' made each month!

For April, a warm thank you to jlafayette who authored a pull request to improve the project documentation for the Rules CLI, as well as to fwc who caught and fixed a typo in the Battlesnake API Docs. Also a shout out to Jonathan in Discord who caught some incorrect data labeling on the 'Winter Classic 2020 Participant' Achievement and gave us a chance to fix it.

Thanks everyone for your contributions and assistance! You are the champions of our hearts.

A Battlesnake trophy, for you, the community

Announcing Community Council​

Speaking of community contributions, we've launched the new 'Community Council', inviting members who expressed interest on last year's Annual Survey in providing additional feedback to Battlesnake this year.

The Community Council will get a sneak peek at upcoming and in-progress features so that they can provide early input and feedback, and help us make Battlesnake more accessible and fun for everyone.

We were absolutely blown away by the number of people who were willing to give us some of their time and help us out in this manner, so thank you to everyone involved!

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

In November 2021, Rob was able to announce an incredible new Battlesnake feature he had been working very hard on: Engine Regions.

Today, we are pleased to share that he has emerged again from behind his monitors to let us know that we have expanded global coverage with new Engine Regions hosted on DigitalOcean.

How Engine Regions Work​

Battlesnake Engine Regions allow players to host their Battlesnake wherever suits them best, without being penalized by additional latency between their Battlesnake and the Game Engine.

The Engine Region feature allows you to select an Engine Region server closer to where your Battlesnake is hosted, and then measures the response time between your Battlesnake and the Engine Region server you choose. All Engine Regions are compatible, and Battlesnake games continue to be played globally.

For a full list of all supported Engine Regions, and instructions on how to set your Battlesnake's region, check out our documentation.

New Engine Region Locations​

We have added three new servers located in Singapore, Frankfurt Germany, and Toronto Canada.

All three of these new regions are hosted on DigitalOcean. If you host your Battlesnake on DigitalOcean already, you can switch your Battlesnake to use a matching region and should be able to squeeze every last millisecond out for processing your /move requests.

These locations should better support our Battlesnake friends in Central Europe, Eastern Canada/USA, and the fine folks in Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and Australia, who have suffered for some time with rather high latencies.

Go to your profile at http://play.battlesnake.com/me, choose a Battlesnake and click "Edit", and you'll see the dropdown to change your "Engine Region".

GCP Beta Test Concluded​

We are also officially taking the previously released Google Cloud Platform Regions and ending their Beta period - they are here to stay! Thanks to everyone who tested them out and provided feedback on them, we really appreciate it. These Engine Regions will continue to be available for any Battlesnake player to use.

GCP Regions have been promoted out of Beta

Feedback!​

If you are using the new Engine Regions and notice any issues, or just want to brag about how much faster your Battlesnake is, please let us know in the Feedback Repo, or on Discord. If you send us a game ID, we can take a look in our logs.

With just over a week since the end of an exciting Battlesnake competition, we're thrilled to share the final standings from the 2022 Spring League Platinum and Elite tournaments.

Platinum Championship​

Congratulations to all Platinum tournament competitors!​

While all 32 of the Battlesnakes who qualified in the Platinum tier brought their A-game to the tournament on March 19th, in the end only one could claim the first Platinum championship title of the 2022 competitive season!

Check out Avoiding Deaths's exciting final match from the 2022 Spring League Platinum tournament finals.

Learn more about Avoiding Deathand its developer brandosha.

And don't forget, you can re-live all the exciting Spring League Platinum tournament action anytime you like at twitch.tv/battlesnakeofficial!

Elite Championship​

Congratulations to all Elite tournament competitors!​

Looking at the 16 Battlesnakes who qualified for the Elite tournament on March 26th, we knew that we were in for a pretty good show, and it is safe to say these competitors did not disappoint!

Check out Shapeshifter's exciting final match from the Spring League Elite tournament.

Learn more about Shapeshifterand its developer JonathanArns:

And don't forget, you can re-live all the exciting Spring League Elite tournament action anytime you like at twitch.tv/battlesnakeofficial!

People's Choice Award​

Three cheers for all of the 2022 Spring League competitors!​

While Avoiding Death and Shapeshifter brought some next level competition to the 2022 Spring League, they weren't the only winners this March.

Learn more about Hovering Hobbsand its developer coreyja.

Competitor Experience Survey​

Help us make Summer League even better!​

At Battlesnake, we're committed to supporting our community and continually improving Battlesnake for everyone!

Thanks for Competing!​

Before we close, we want to thank you for reading, and of course to thank all of the amazing developers who competed in the 2022 Spring League!

We also want to send a final shout out to our spectacular community, and to our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who make these competitions possible ❤️‌

And just like that, March is over! Spring League 2022 has come to an end and the Battlesnake Dev team is now planning out what we can release before the next League kicks off in June. But first, let's review what happened in March!

New Double-Win Tournament Play​

Those of you who watched the Spring League 2022 final Tournaments may have noticed that there was a new win-state for tournament play. Historically, in the early rounds of a tournament we would play two games - the first winner would advance to the next round, and then a 2nd game would be played (minus the winning Battlesnake) and identify a 2nd winner to also advance to the next round.

The classic tournament format

For the Platinum and Elite tournament this Spring we had a change. In the early rounds, the first two Battlesnakes to each achieve two victories were advanced to the next round (and as soon as a single Battlesnake won two games, it was removed from the group). The net result was more games, more chances to win, and more fun.

Building this out has required some code changes and adjustments on the backend, and we're pretty happy to see the code shaping up in a way that we can explore and expose other tournament formats in future.

You can watch the new format in action on Twitch.

Updating the Battlesnake API Map Properties​

This spring saw the release of several new hazard maps and uses of hazards beyond what Royale mode gives us.

To make sure this information is correctly and consistently communicated, the API has been updated and changes finalized so that developers can see both the hazardMap and hazardMapAuthor. Check out the RulesetSetting object in the Battlesnake API documentation for details!

Favorite Even More Battlesnake Games!​

Community member BoldBigFlank discovered the secret maximum number of Battlesnake games a single person can favorite... and found that number to be lacking. So we've cranked up the value to 250 games, but leave the consequences of managing that many favorite games in your hands.

When watching a Battlesnake game, click the 'Add to Favorites' button to save it in your profile Admittedly, the 'Favorites' feature is pretty primitive at the moment. This is absolutely something we'd like to revisit in the future, but for now if you want to save any Battlesnake games for later reference, this will get the job done!

Community Contribution - Reporting Draws​

We love it when folks take advantage of the open source portions of the Battlesnake codebase, and want to thank community member demin-dmitriy for noticing and creating a pull request  to address some invalidly reported data in the Rules repository when a Battlesnake game ended in a draw.

All together we are a much more mighty team, so we appreciate all the folks who contribute in this way!

Continuing Projects​

When we write code, we make sure we have a hardhat and hammer at the ready, just in case.

March has had the Battlesnake Devs heads down as we have been focusing on several longer running active projects that are not quite ready to release. We continue to tackle a major overhaul in how the user interface is built, designed, and rendered, we're expanding our Engine Regions to provide better global coverage, and we are hoping to launch a new 'Teams' beta before Summer League starts.

Keep your eyes peeled for future blogposts that will outline all the details of these features when they launch!

That's all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server.

With the leaderboard officially closed, let’s take a look at the Top Tier Bhumbas that qualified for the 2022 Spring League Tournament—Don’t miss it this Saturday, March 19th at 9am PT / 12pm ET/  5pm CET.

Platinum Tier​

An incredible 32 Battlesnake's qualified in the Platinum tier of the 2022 Spring League Tournament which will take place on March 19th.

Learn more about the Platinum Tier Tournament Brackets

Elite Tier​

With some fierce competition throughout the competition, 16 of this seasons best Battlesnakes qualified for the 2022 Spring League Elite Tournament.

Learn More about the Elite Tier Tournament Brackets

Tournament Format​

Spring League Platinum Tournament (March 19th)​

Part one of the 2022 Spring League tournament will take place on Saturday, March 19th at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5PM CET on the Battlesnake Twitch Channel with the 32 Platinum Qualified Battlesnakes.

In this phase, to advance in the first round, a Battlesnake must get 2 wins instead of 1. Once they earn 2 wins and advance, additional games are played (without them) until a second snake accrues 2 wins and also advances.

Each group in the initial stage will play 4-6 games to determine the two winners that move onto the next stage of the tournament.

In the next two stages of competition (i.e the Quarterfinals and Semifinals), 2 wins are again required in each round to advance to the finals. Once there, the remaining 4 snakes face their final battle (a race to 3 wins). And the victor will crowned the Platinum Spring League Champion.

Spring League Elite Tournament (March 26th)​

In the second day of competition, streaming live on Saturday, March 26th at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5PM CET, we are back again with 2 wins required in each round leading up to the finals, but this time with the qualified Battlesnakes competing for the title of 2022 Spring League Elite Champion.

Fan Favorite Finalists​

While both Pea Eater and Hovering Hobbs qualified for the Elite Tournament, they garnered a total of 21 cheers during the stream —making them top contenders for the “Spring League Fan Favorite”.

Take a peek at the stats of the two popular competitors below. It’s still anyone's competition (so go and cheer on your favorite Battlesnake)!

Learn more about Pea Eater​

Country: 🇺🇸 | Standing: 5th| Games**: 2,484 | **Win Rate****: 31.56%

Learn more about Hovering Hobbs​

Country: 🇺🇸 | Standing: 14th | Games**: 2,608 | **Win Rate****: 28.6%

Caster Cup Update​

Although this weekend marks the first of the Spring League touranments, last Saturday we celebrated our first event of the Battlesnake Competitive Season at the 2022 Spring Caster Cup Tournament.

With the weight of their continent resting on their shoulders, 32 Battlesnakes entered the area (equally representing North America and Europe) but only one could survive to claim the first title of the season...

Check out Shapeshifter's final battle of the 2022 Spring Caster Cup below.

Thanks for Competing & See You Saturday!​

Before we close, we want to thank you for reading and thank all of the amazing Spring League competitors!

A big shoutout to our amazing community and our amazing Community, and to our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who make these competitions possible ❤️‌

With three weeks of competition down the leaderboard continues to be dominated by a trio of top tier bhumbas, and the battle is on for the hearts of the Battlesnake Community in the 2022 Spring League competition.

Who are the Top Tier Bhumba's of the Week?​

A quick glance at the leaderboard this week shows little has changed in the top 3 positions, with Jaguar Meets Snake, Combat Reptile and Shapeshifter continuing to fight for Spring League supremacy, putting even more distance between themselves and the remaining Elite Tier Battlesnakes.

A recent game featuring Jaguar Meets Snake, Combat Reptile and Shapeshifter

Despite that distance, however, there is little doubt that the leaderboard is full of some highly competitive Battlesnakes. And so, we thought this week would be a good opportunity to take a look at a few of the talented (yet less well-known) developers and their newly minted Spring League snakes.

Meet pettso​

Developer of Kakemonsteret (17th place overall in Spring League):

Preferred Technologies:

• AWS
• Go
• Self-Hosted

Additional Battlesnakes:

• Banana
• dev-a
• dev-b
• Kakemonsteret-DEV
• lokal
• Snakes on a plane

Fast Fact:

• Spring League marks the first time pettso has placed in the Platinum Tier, with their previous personal best being Silver in the 2021 Fall League 🥈.

Meet freethrill​

Developer of CoolerSnake! (21st place overall in Spring League):

Preferred Technologies:

• GCP
• Python

Additional Battlesnakes:

• CoolSnake!

Fast Fact:

• Spring League marks the first time freethrill has placed in the Platinum Tier, with their previous personal best being Bronze in the 2021 Fall League 🥉.

Meet ClarityCoders​

Developer of ClarityIce (23rd place overall in Spring League):

Preferred Technologies:

• Python

Current Battlesnakes

• AwesomeTest
• ClarityBeefy
• ClarityEyes-GOLD
• Controlled Chaos

Fast Fact:

• ClarityCoders runs a software development focused YouTube Channel, and has even featured Battlesnake in a tutorial which you can checkout below 👇

Who are the current Spring League Fan Favorites?​

After a bit of back-and-forth over the past few weeks between Hovering Hobbs and BwukMaxi, a new competitor entered the mix this week, with Pea Eater making it a three way race for fan favorite and setting 17 as the number of Cheers to beat.

Will BwukMaxi be able to regain their lead, or will they and Hovering Hobbs be forced to concede to this newcomer in the Fan Favorite race?

What are some of the best Battlesnake names?​

While we may never know what sets the current fan favorites apart, there is little doubt about what brings fame, fortune and popularity to many Battlesnakes during the competitive season: an amazing name!

Below are a few of our favorite names so far this season, and we can't wait to see what fun and fabulously punny names are store for the rest of 2022.

A special shoutout goes to Tiger_The_Cat, creator of Wheat Bread and four other culinarily-themed Battlesnakes who you may have seen around the competitive circuit over the past year.

"All of my battlesnakes are named after ingredients. If you put all of these ingredients together, you would get a very good sandwich."

What's happening this week in Battlesnake​

While you can always stay up to date by checking out (or subscribing to) the Battlesnake Community Calendar, we wanted to be sure to give you a quick update on what is happening this week on Battlesnake.TV.

Deep Learning - Thurs, Mar 10th at 1pm PT / 4pm ET****

Join Aurora for the first ever Battlesnake 'Book Club' as she explores the book 'Thinking in Systems' by Donella H. Meadows live on Battlesnake.TV.

Casters Cup Tournament - Sat, Mar 12 at 9am PT / 12pm ET****

Its North America versus Europe this Saturday on Battlesnake.TV as the Snake Pit Live! team brings you the exciting conclusion to the 2022 Spring Caster Cup.

Check out the Tournament brackets for yourself over at play.battlesnake.com

Good Luck and Happy Battlesnaking!​

As always, before we close off this update we want to thank you for reading and to wish good luck to all the Spring League competitors!

We'd also like to send a huge thank you to our amazing Community, and to our wonderful 2022 partners at RBC, New Relic, DigitalOcean and Twilio who make these competitions possible ❤️‌

Check out this blog post to discover who claimed the Winter Classic Champion Prize Pack in each of the Rookie, Veteran & Elite Divisions. 2020 Battlesnake Winter Classic Opening Screen

Rookie Division​

The tournament began incredibly strong, with the Rookie Division showcasing some exceptional Battlesnake Developers, and all 24 snakes in the division entering the arena ready to fight for their place in the competition.

After some great games across all four rookie brackets, the top eight competitors that emerged represented a stellar group of Snakes and Developers, with both well-known names and new faces amongst the pack. Top 8 Snakes from the 2020 Winter Classic Rookie Division Despite the many stellar snakes who entered the finals, in the end, only one could claim the Rookie Division crown & the Champion Prize Pack with Milky Wayby dachenalt defeating Black Mambaby md-hexdrive and Pumpkin Piehttps://play.battlesnake.com/s/snk_y4k9Qr7xR7T76HfyMCvKgrXR/by DAChenScratch in Game Four of the “Battle of the Gourds” Rookie Division finals.

Veteran Division​

With such a strong showing from the Rookie Division, expectations were high for Veteran competitors, and they certainly did not disappoint, with all 16 snakes entering the arena ready to show what it takes to compete in a Battlesnake tournament at this level.

The top developers in the Veteran Division certainly helped to deliver that message to fans and fellow competitors alike, with the eight snakes competing in the semi-finals showcasing the type of competition and gameplay we have all come to expect from Battlesnake tournaments. Top 8 Snakes from the 2020 Winter Classic Veteran Division While it only took three games for Severus Snakeby kudu to overtake mabel by smallsco and One Has No Nameby jinlibao in the Veteran Division finals, they were certainly an incredible three games to watch, setting the stage for an even more awesome ending to the day with the Elite Division competitors.

Elite Division​

Despite being the smallest of the three divisions, with only eight snakes qualifying for the 2020 Winter Classic, competition was incredibly tough, with each and every game demonstrating the strategy and talent it takes to become an Elite Battlesnake Developer. Qualifying Snakes from the 2020 Winter Classic Elite Division Nowhere was this strategy and talent more evident than in the Elite Division finals between Tofuby tofu, Prüzze v2by pruzze and All I Need is 60msby Cory, where everyone from fans at home to the Casting Crew were on the edge of their seats as Tofuby tofu, claimed the Elite Division crown and Champion Prize Pack after 261 moves in Game Six.

Thank You — and See You Next Year!​

This was certainly an exceptional tournament to end a difficult year, and we are so thankful for the equally exceptional Battlesnake Community which helps to make these competitions, and Battlesnake as a whole, possible.

With that in mind, we want to send a huge thank you out to all of the Battlesnake Developers, Competitors, and Fans who helped to make the 2020 Winter Classic a success.

Stay tuned to all of the Battlesnake social media channels for updates on what is coming in 2021, and in the meantime, stay safe and battle on!

New Global Arenas​

To hold everyone over until the 2021 Competitive Season starts we have added two new Global Arenas for everyone to test their Battlesnake development skills in.

Global Duels​

We really liked the high level competition that came out of the Battlesnake Duels challenge arena during the Fall League and this arena is an evolution of that. 1v1 competition between Battlesnakes provides some of the most interesting games with regards to strategy and tactics.

Global Royale​

By far the most fun and chaotic game mode we introduced in 2020 was Battlesnake Royale during the Summer League. The added challenge of the expanding hazard area created all new problem spaces to explore around maneuvering and risk-reward calculations.

Both arenas are open right now and support a single Battlesnake per user, so choose wisely!

Twitch Plays Battlesnake​

Thanks to veteran Battlesnake user Xtagon, we have a way for our audience to collaboratively play Battlesnake together via Twitch Chat. This game mode runs slow enough that users can enter their votes for moves directly in twitch chat. The most popular move each turn will define how the Battlesnake moves. So far the longest that chat has kept a snake alive is 154 turns! Twitch Plays Battlesnake from the Winter Classic 2020 Tournament — Dec 19, 2020 We will be periodically putting Twitch Plays Battlesnake live on our Twitch channel so make sure to follow the channel for notification on when it goes live.

Achievements​

We have released an alpha version of our new Achievements system. Currently, we are using achievements to showcase which competitions users have participated in and how they have placed in recent tournaments. This feature will grow over the next few months and provide all users with some new goals and ways to unlock new Battlesnake head and tail customizations. Example competition achievements You can find the achievements you have earned on your Battlesnake Profile page.

API v0 now Deprecated​

All platform support for API v0 snakes was removed on December 31st, 2020. If you need help updating your Battlesnake to the API v1, check out our Migration Guide.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server or our Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Game Board Improvements​

The game board has undergone a series of improvements to both add more information and make it more readable. A major change is that we now display the author (user or team) along with the Battlesnake name to give everyone some more visibility. We also tweaked the layout to make it more legible at a glance. Game Board Changes In addition, we fixed several critical problems with the GIF exporter, so it should now generate a lot fewer 500 errors when generating animated gifs for games.

Arena Upgrades​

We have made several changes to the Arena system to improve the performance of both page loads and matching. In some cases everyone should be seeing a 5X improvement in load times for the leaderboards. Also the arena leaderboards are also now displaying negative scores. The TrueSkill system can generate negative ranking values, which are completely valid, but we initially decided to set the minimum score to 0 to make the leaderboards look better. Since then we noticed that this has only caused confusion as it reduces score granularity and obscures how Battlesnakes sort at the bottom of the leaderboard. We are looking to address ranking and scoring further before the next competition season begins in 2021.

Custom Snake Versions​

Developers can now provide a version number for their Battlesnake in the JSON data from the / endpoint. This data value will be shown as a tag on your snake and supports any short string. It can be a great way to track iterations of your snake or just let everyone know why your Battlesnake comes out of beta.

{
  "apiversion": "1",
  "color": "#d4770d",
  "head": "bfl-jackolantern",
  "tail": "hook",
  "version": "1.0.0"
}

Example Version Tag

New Snake Customizations​

Two new heads and a new tail customization were revealed with the Fall League Challenge Arenas: Jack O’Lantern, Pumpkin Head and Maple Leaf. Unlike previous customizations, these new options are locked and must be earned by participating in the Fall League competition. Going forward we will be releasing even more customizations, some open for all and others unlocked by earning achievements on the site.

Discord Widget​

We love the community we are building on Discord and are experimenting with how to integrate that community better into the Battlesnake platform. To that end we have embedded Discord directly into the website. Using the floating button on the bottom right of the screen you can launch a chat window and chat on Discord directly.

Deprecating API v0​

We have continued with the deprecation of Battlesnake API Version 0. As of November 30th, API v0 Battlesnakes can no longer be entered into the Global Arena and existing Battlesnakes still using the old version were removed.

You can find the details on the plan and timeline in Ending Support for Battlesnake API Version 0 announcement.

All platform support for API v0 snakes will be removed on December 31st, 2020. If you need help updating your Battlesnake to the API v1, check out our Migration Guide.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server or our Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Then be sure to check out this recap of the latest Snake Pit Live! which streamed on twitch.tv/battlesnakeofficial last Friday, November 20, 2020.

This Episode featured:

• Geoffrey Peart, Senior Director of Omni Technology from RBC
• Fall League Speed Snake Arena Winners
• Fall League Speed Snake Mini-Tournament Winners
• Fall League Snake-a-tron Challenge Launch
• Winter Classic 2020 Qualifiers
• Aileens’ Prize Corner Winners

Alongside Casters Curtis and Aileen, Geoffrey Peart, Senior Director of Omni Technology from RBC kicked off the show, with an overview of working on the technology stack behind the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).

Winner of Fall League Speed Snake Arena​

The show then continued into announcements of the winners for the second challenge of the 2020 Fall League, the Speed Snake Arena:

The time for thinking is over! Build a Battlesnake with fast reflexes and good instincts to compete in this Challenge Arena. Six Battlesnakes must not only contend with each other but a blistering 150 millisecond limit on response times for moves.

Running November 7th to 20th, competition in this arena continued to be tough, with Tofuby tofurevealed as the top snake in the arena, winning another Champion Prize Pack and holding onto the Fall League crown. In addition to Tofuby tofu, other Top 5 members of the Leaderboard included:

2. All I Need is 60msby Cory

3. Nebulaby Hegberg

4. Untimely Neglected Wearable by altersaddle

5. Prüzzeby pruzze

Winner of Fall League Speed Snake Mini Tournament​

With Tofuby tofu moving into the Mini Tournament as the top seated snake, all eyes were on Tofu to continued its domination on Snake Pit Live!

Despite a valiant effort; however, it was All I Need is 60msby Cory who took the crown in Game 4 of the Speed Snake Mini Tournament finals against Prüzze and Tofu, winning a Fall league Champion Prize Pack, and bragging rights moving into the final two-weeks of the 2020 Fall League.

New Fall League Snack-a-tron Challenge​

With two challenges complete, and the 2020 Fall League in the home-stretch, one of the most anticipated events of the stream was the launch of the final Fall League challenge running November 20th–December 5th, Snack-a-tron:

The time for thinking is over! Build a Battlesnake with fast reflexes and good instincts to compete in this Challenge Arena. Six Battlesnakes must not only contend with each other but a blistering 150 millisecond limit on response times for moves.

As usual, participants who compete in 100+ games are able to unlock custom, limited-edition skins, in the case of the Snake-a-tron Challenge, unlocking the ‘Maple Leaf’ Battlesnake Tail.

Winter Classic Tournament Qualifiers​

Alongside the Fall League Arenas in the weeks leading up to this Snake Pit Live! a series of Qualifiers have continued for the upcoming 2020 Winter Classic.

Taking place on December 19th, competition for a place in the 2020 Tournament has continued to be tight, with another 10 fierce snakes qualifying of this episode of SPL, including:

In the Rookie Division:​

• Pumpkin Pie By DAChenScratch
• Sleepy-the-Snake By hailzzee
• Rusty_Snake By Aiden2207
• Nadir By pcunning

In the Veteran Division:​

• mabel By smallsco
• Exploradora By unapersona
• 🍎🍎🍎 By Ztagon
• Mithrandir By Kyle

In the Elite Division:​

• All I Need is 60 ms By Cory
• Nieder Snake By Niedersachsische Kreuzotter

Aileen’s Prize Corner Winners​

Finally, no Snake Pit Live! would be complete without the Prize Corner with Aileen and some awesome Battlesnake Prize Pack Giveaways!

Twitch Chat Contest​

A nod to the upcoming Battlesnake Fall League Snack-a-tron Challenge, and inspired by Kevin Flynn, the computer programming star of 1980s movie Tron, whitishmeteor was the winner of this episodes Twitch Chat contest, taking home a Viewer Prize Pack full of awesome Battlesnake merch including a Notebook, Mask, and (of course) Stickers!

Twitter Contest​

This episode also saw the return of the “Home Viewing Setup” Social Media Challenge, this time on Twitter, with Battlesnake Developer and Snake Pit Live! fan nettogrof, taking home a Viewer Prize Pack and sharing with the world how they enjoy Snake Pit Live! from the comfort of their own home!

Thanks — and See You Next Time!​

Last but not least, thanks to all the viewers, Battlesnake Developers and Supporters who have made Fall League and Winter Classic 2020 possible.

Stay tuned to all of the Battlesnake social media channels for updates on all things Fall League and Winter Classic, and in the meantime, stay safe and battle on!

Fall League 2020 is in full swing here at Battlesnake, and nowhere was that more obvious than the latest Snake Pit Live! which streamed on twitch.tv/battlesnakeofficial last Saturday, November 7, 2020. Check out this blog post to find out more about what was featured on the stream including:

• Fall League Format
• Fall League Duel Arena Winners
• Fall League Duel Mini-Tournament Winners
• Winter Classic Qualifiers
• Social Media Giveaway Winners

Fall League 2020 Format​

Battlesnake’s Fall League 2020, runs October 23 to December 5, involving a series of challenges released each two-week period. Challenge arenas require you to write a new snake to compete under different rules, and let you unlock new, limited-edition challenge skins (if you play 100+ games) and even win some awesome prize packs!

Winner of Fall League Duels Arena​

The first challenge of the 2020 Fall League was the Duels Arena:

Two Battlesnake’s on a small board and nowhere to hide. Time to focus on those end game algorithms to out maneuver your opponent.

Running from October 23 to November 7, competition in this inaugural arena was intense, with BattlesnakeTofu ultimately winning the first Fall League Champion Prize Pack.

Winner of Fall League Duels Mini Tournament​

While Tofu reigned supreme over the Duels arena during the first two weeks of the Fall League, Snake Pit Live! gave competing Battlesnake Developers another chance to fight for the crown in the Duels Mini-Tournament which took place live on the stream. Despite a valiant effort by other Snakes, Tofu managed to hold on to the title, winning another Prize Pack and becoming the reigning Fall League Champion with his impressive Game 2 win in the 2020 Battlesnake Fall League Duels Challenge Championship Finals.

New Fall League Speed Snake Challenge​

While the Duels Challenge was certainly a highlight of this Snake Pit Live! the stream also featured the launch of our newest Fall League challenge running November 7–20th, Speed Snake:

The time for thinking is over! Build a Battlesnake with fast reflexes and good instincts to compete in this Challenge Arena. Six Battlesnakes must not only contend with each other but a blistering 150 millisecond limit on response times for moves.

As usual, participants who compete in 100+ games are able to unlock custom, limited-edition skins, in the case of the Speed Snake Challenge, unlocking the ‘Pumpkin Head’ Battlesnake Head. While the announcement of the challenge by Caster Joe was definitely highly anticipated by those watching the stream, nowhere was the excitement more evident than through Caster Aileen hinting at what the challenge name would be throughout the stream, specifically her hints showcasing an appreciation of Point Break era Keanu Reeves, the star of the 1995 movie Speed.

Winter Classic Tournament Qualifiers​

Running alongside the Fall League has been a series of Qualifiers for the upcoming Winter Classic Tournament taking place on December 19th.

Dozens of Battlesnake competitors competed for these coveted tournament spots, with 10 snakes ultimately qualifying in the first round, including:

In the Rookie Division:​

• Sir Pent*by KenWright*
• Black Mamba*by md-hexdrive*
• Polar Unicorn*by Jimmy*
• fbithp *by Owen C*

In the Veteran Division:​

• One Has No Name *By jinlibao*
• Harry *By gregleaver*
• Rufio the Tenacious*By Jared Tyler*
• Untimely Neglected Wearable*By altersaddle*

In the Elite Division:​

• Tofu *By whitehalmos*
• Pruzze *By pruzze*

Social Media Giveaways​

No Snake Pit Live! would be complete without some Prize Pack Giveaways and this SPL was no exception, with winners announced for both the Twitch Draw and the Instagram Contest.

Twitch Contest​

Inspired by Keanu Reeves, and of course the upcoming Battlesnake Fall League Speed Snake Challenge, Keanu was the word of the day for the Twitch Chat Draw with @nessegrev winning the Viewer Prize Pack of a Notebook, Mask, Stickers, but Caster Aileen ultimately winning the contest through her unmatched love for Point Break era Keanu.

Instagram Contest​

Caster were also winner’s of sorts in the Instagram Contest, with @Xtagon taking home the Viewer Prize Pack, but the Casters taking home some awesome images of how Snake Pit Live! viewers enjoy these awesome Battlesnake streams at home. Last but not least, thank you to all the viewers, and the Battlesnake supporters who have made Fall League and Winter Classic 2020 possible.

Stay tuned to all of the Battlesnake social media channels for updates on all things Fall League and Winter Classic, and in the meantime, stay safe and battle on!

New Arena Mode​

There is a new way for Battlesnake Developer to interact with arenas. In this mode there are no automated arena games, instead users can choose to initiated “Ranked” or “Practice” games. When these games are started, the arena will find appropriate matches for your Battlesnake and initiate a game. Battlesnakes only lose or gain rating for games that they initiate. While on the leaderboard, your Battlesnake will still participate in games started by other developers.

We are hoping this feature gives users more control over how and when they are playing competition games, giving them real time feedback on how their strategies are working.

This is a new experimental way to play Battlesnake and we are open to feedback!

New Community Starter Projects: Scala and Julia​

Thanks to the efforts of Nettogrof and horrox, there are two new Community Starter Projects available to help developers build new Battlesnakes.

Julia Starter Snake by Nettogrof

Scala Starter Snake with Heroku by horrox

Battlesnakes and Teams in Competitions​

Developers are no longer required to create a Team in order to register for divisions on competions and can instead enter a Battlesnake directly. The Battlesnakes registered can belong to either a user or a team, but the game history and participation in the competition will be linked directly to the Battlesnake. While competing the Battlesnake name will be displayed prominently on leaderboards and tournament brackets.

This should reduce confusion when participating in competitions and make the Battlesnakes themselves more visible and memorable during livestreams.

Deprecating API v0​

On October 12th, we began deprecating Version 0 of the Battlesnake API. You can find the details on the plan and timeline in Ending Support for Battlesnake API Version 0 announcement.

As of October 30th, API v0 Battlesnakes no longer support personalized appearances and are prevented from entering competitions and challenges.

All platform support for API v0 snakes will be removed on December 31st, 2020. If you need help updating your Battlesnake to the API v1, check out our Migration Guide.

Discord Community Server​

We have upgraded the Battlesnake Discord Server to a community server to get access to some new features that will better serve the Battlesnake developer community. There is now a welcome screen to guide new members and new channels such as #rules outlining our code of conduct.

Over the next few weeks, we will be looking for a few experienced community members to help with moderation, if you are interested feel free to reach out.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server or our Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Snake Pit Live! Friday October 23, Twitch.tv

Battlesnake Fall League 2020​

Battlesnake Fall League builds on the fun and success of our Summer League with new Challenge Arena modes, live Twitch shows, and Battlesnake Prize Packs. And for the first time ever, developers can earn exclusive Battlesnake customizations just by participating — starting with the spooooooooky Jack O’Lantern head! Battlesnake Fall League begins now and runs until December 5th. Register for the competition here and make sure to watch us live on Twitch for your chance to win Fall League Prize Packs.

The 2020 Winter Classic Tournament​

Last year we held the first ever Battlesnake Winter Classic and this year we’re back with the second annual snow-filled showdown. Will Ravioli and Niedersächsische Kreuzotter (a.k.a. Niedersnake) defend their titles? This year’s Winter Classic Tournament will be broadcast live on December 19th, and will feature tournaments across three divisions: Rookie, Veteran, and the new Elite Division for top-tier Battlesnakes. New this year! Participants must pre-qualify for the tournament by competing in the Qualifier Arenas between now and Dec 18th. Every two weeks, the top Battlesnakes in each division will qualify for the tournament, meaning that everyone has up to four chances to qualify.

Qualifying developers will be announced live on Twitch during our biweekly Snake Pit Live broadcast, so tune in for updates!

As always, a huge thank you to our wonderful partners at RBC, GitHub, and Repl.it who make these competitions possible ❤️

Remember to follow us on Twitch to be notified when we broadcast live!

Cheers, and happy Battlesnaking!

API Update: Ruleset​

With the new game modes like Battlesnake Royale, Squads and the new challenges, it became important to send information to the Battlesnakes notifying them what kind of game they are participating in. That way developers can alter their AIs to be situational.

The Game object in the data payloads from the engine now look like this:

"game": {
  "id": "",
  "ruleset" : {
   "name": "royale",
   "version": "v1.2.3",
  },
  "timeout": 500
}

Battlesnake Tags​

We have added new tags to the system to allow developers to further customize and categorize their Battlesnakes. Beyond expanding the list of languages and platforms, we have added tags for game modes, core strategies and personality types! So many tags!

Notifications​

Notifications are a new communication channel added to the site to provide a way to better relate timely information to your developer accounts. It will be used by the system to notify you of important changes to your Battlesnake, results of tournaments and any other offline state changes that affect your account. Notifications button in the navigation bar

Awesome List​

User xtagon has created an Awesome List resource for all Battlesnake developers. He has compiled a variety of guides, documentation and tools that will help both new and experienced Battlesnake developers.

Battlesnake Developer Survey​

A new survey was released and will be open until October 31st, 2020. We are collecting information on how to make Battlesnake a more fun, engaging and inclusive experience for everyone.

By participating in the survey you can help us improve Battlesnake as well as enter to win a $50 Amazon gift card.

Deprecating API v0​

With the completion of Battlesnake Summer League it is time to start moving forward with reducing support for API v0 snakes. A deprecation plan will be published in October on docs.battlesnake.com. The expectation is that API v0 snakes will no longer by supported by the system as of December 31st, 2020.

If you need help updating your Battlesnake to the API v1, check out our Migration Guide.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server or our Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Battlesnake Challenges​

Over the last couple of months, we have iterated on a new Battlesnake Challenges system, which has finally reached a point where it can come out of beta. Challenges provide a set of original scenarios that you can attempt to solve. Each challenge comes with a built-in leaderboard and trophy system, rewarding those who solve the problem the most effectively. Challenges are now tied directly to your account, which means you can build different kinds of Battlesnakes to solve each challenge and aggregate all of the accolades Head to the Challenges page to see the leaderboards and try your hand at one of the challenges

Squad Mode​

With the reveal of the final Challenge Arena for the Battlesnake Summer League, we have announced a whole new way to compete with your Battlesnakes: Squad Mode.

In this mode, Battlesnakes will compete in cooperative squads against one another. Squad members share core attributes like length and health, growing whenever either snake eats food. Squad members even have the ability to pass over each other’s bodies, allowing for some tricky maneuvers. Example Squad Mode Game Squad Mode will require developers to come up with whole new strategies for their Battlesnakes to succeed. To try it out, head to the Create Squad Game page. Create Squad Mode Game Page

Custom Royale Games​

There was a lot of positive feedback on the Battlesnake Royale challenge arena for the Summer League, we decided to make this game mode available for everyone to continue experimenting with. There is a new Create Royale Game page that will let you setup a game using the Battlesnake Royale ruleset. Create Royale Game Page

Live Game Graphs​

There is a new panel now displayed below every game board that will show stats related to the game on a turn by turn basis. This can be a fun way to find trends in snake behaviours and identify interesting events during a game. Game Statistics — Health Graph

Deprecating API v0​

Over the next few months, we will be deprecating support for Battlesnakes that still use Version 0 of the Battlesnake API. There is no cutoff date for support at this time, but new features on the site may not work for these older Battlesnake implementations going forward.

If you need help updating your Battlesnake to the API v1, check out our Migration Guide.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions, reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server or our Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Battlesnake Royale​

With the Summer League August Challenge Arena, we introduced a new game mode called Battlesnake Royale. In this mode, hazard zones will begin growing randomly from the sizes of the board at regular intervals. Battlesnakes whose heads start their turn on a hazardous area will take damage. Algorithms will need to be adjusted to determine when it is worth moving into the hazard zone in order to grab food or out maneuver another a foe.

Check out the Battlesnake API docs to see how to update your Battlesnake to react to the new hazard data provided in /move requests. Sample Battlesnake Royale Game

Battlesnake Challenges are now in open Beta​

We’ve been working on a new way to develop and improve your Battlesnake, before you go try out one of our competitions. These new Challenges offer some interesting scenarios and milestones for you to test your Battlesnake’s code and decision making early on. A Battlesnake with some challenges completed Head to your Battlesnake’s profile page and you will see the list of available challenges that the Battlesnake can attempt! This feature is still in beta and will be refined over the coming weeks.

Cheers​

Are you a fan of a Battlesnake with a really cool name or innovative algorithm? You can now show support for these Battlesnakes by cheering for them in the arenas. Just find the interesting Battlesnake on the arena leaderboard and then click on the heart icon to cheer for them. Prüzze with some cheers

Social Profile Links​

Battlesnake developers can now update their profile page to include links to their Twitch.tv, LinkedIn, Twitter and Github profiles. You can also link to your personal website which could contain your resume or showcase some side projects. Active social links on a Battlesnake profile Many prospective employers, especially Battlesnake competition sponsors, are looking at Battlesnake developers as candidates for jobs. Updating your profile to add these profile links may open up some doors!

Arena Snapshots​

We have started experimenting with displaying snapshots of our arena leaderboards instead of always showing live data. Given the volatility of Battlesnake leaderboards, snapshots are better at showing trends and can be used to display how Battlesnakes are moving around on the leaderboard. An example of these snapshots can be seen on the mini-leaderboards, on the Summer League event page. Leaderboard snapshot from the Summer League Rookie Division Arena Going forward we will be expanding this out and converting our Global Arena to show snapshots by default and we will be building some new UI around this system

That’s all for now. If you have any questions reach out to us on the Battlesnake Discord server or our Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Email Authentication​

In order to make it easier for people to participate in Battlesnake we have added email authentication as an alternative to GitHub for our user accounts. Even if you have already authenticated with your GitHub credentials, you can now set a password on your account and use email authentication as an alternative way to login to play.battlesnake.com

Arena Cheers!​

Are you a fan of a Battlesnake on the Global Arena and want to show your support? You can now cheer on all those Battlesnakes with great names and even greater algorithms.

Just find the Battlesnake you like and click on the heart icon to cheer for them. Updated Arena UI with Cheers

New Division: Elite​

The Elite Division is a new top-level division that we are adding to many of our Battlesnake competitions going forward. We know that some developers have been on the platform for years and spent a long time perfecting their algorithms. This new division will provide a place for those high performing Battlesnakes to complete. This change will subsequently open up the Veteran division making it more competitive and allow many developers to graduate out of the Rookie tier.

Battlesnake on Twitch​

We love doing live streams and we are working hard to bring new ideas to our channel on Twitch. This includes new features for our competition broadcasts such as an arena game livestream as well as enhanced visuals for our tournaments. Subscribe to the BattlesnakeOfficial channel on Twitch.tv to get notified on all the content we are putting out over the next few months.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions reach out to us on the Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Fresh Docs​

Docs.battlesnake.com is now rebuilt and hosted on GitBooks, a great platform that has really improved the quality and consistency of our documentation. As part of the migration we have done another pass on the docs, revising many of the pages and removing several deprecated documents. This new system is still using GitHub as a backend which allows our community members to continue contributing to our documentation via pull requests.

Battlesnake API 1.0​

The Battlesnake API has gone through a major revision and we have versioned it 1.0. Legacy snakes will be marked as API version 0 and will continue to work as normal on the platform.

This new version of the API makes several important changes.

New Index Command​

The old POST /ping endpoint is no longer used and now we require Battlesnakes to implement a new GET / endpoint that will return metadata about the Battlesnake. This is now how snakes can be customized and where they will will identify their supported API version. A bonus feature of this change, is the site can now display snakes customizations on the Global Arena and in tournaments. Check out the docs for how to implement this new command: https://docs.battlesnake.com/references/api#undefined Snake customization in the Global Arena

New Coordinate System​

Battlesnakes that utilize the new API will now receive the board data with a coordinate system origin (0,0) located in the bottom left corner of the board. We found this layout more intuitive for new Battlesnake developers and better matches how people expect the board to work.

For more details check out the docs: https://docs.battlesnake.com/references/api#board Updated Coordinate System

Battlesnake Data Shortcuts​

The snake data now provides root properties for the head location and snake length. Both of these concepts are very important for building a snake and users no longer have to infer the value from the body array.

{
 “id”: “totally-unique-snake-id”,
 “name”: “Sneky McSnek Face”,
 “health”: 54,
 “body”: [
   {“x”: 0, “y”: 0}, 
   {“x”: 1, “y”: 0}, 
   {“x”: 2, “y”: 0}
 ],
 “head”: {“x”: 0, “y”: 0},
 “length”: 3,
 “shout”: “why are we shouting??”
}

Timeouts​

The Battlesnake Engine will now provide a timeout value to your server with every request, defining how long the snake has to send a response back. The default continues to be 500 ms, but big processing snakes should start inspecting this value and be responsive to games where it is not set to 500 ms.

For more details check out the docs: https://docs.battlesnake.com/references/api#game

Updated Starter Projects​

The official Battlesnake starter projects have all been upgraded to use Battlesnake API 1.0 and in some cases refined to be easier to understand and build from.

Python Starter Project

Node Starter Project

Go Starter Project

We are looking for assistance to do similar upgrades to the Ruby Starter Project and the Java Starter Project. If you are interested in helping, check out the associated issues on GitHub for requirements.

Public Source Snakes​

If you have a Battlesnake you are especially proud of, you can now link your Battlesnake to your public source code and share it with everyone. Just edit your Battlesnake and add a Project URL linking to your open source repo. A new public source tag will appear on your snake that other developers can click on and check out what you made. New Public Source tag

Developer Advisory Group​

We have established a group of Battlesnake developer volunteers to help us review new features and updates that we have planned for the Battlesnake ecosystem. They have been a great resource to help us refine the Battlesnake API changes as well as some interesting new game modes that are coming soon!

That’s all for now. If you have any questions reach out to us on the Battlesnake Slack workspace or on Battlesnake Discord.

Virtual Events​

There is now a new interface for virtual events on the site that allows users to register for these events, view content schedules and enter into online tournaments. We will continue to enhance this interface so that it becomes the primary hub to interacting with each event we have planned.

Tournament Arenas​

With the Stay Home and Code event we have introduced a new type of qualifier arena that lets registered users trial their Battlesnakes well before tournament day. We then use the results of these arenas to setup the brackets on tournament day.

New Tutorials​

As part of Stay Home and Code we created a collection of new tutorial content to help those new to Battlesnake get started building their own snake. There are tutorials focused on Python, Go, JavaScript as well as some on more advanced topics like early strategies and setting up unit testing for your snake.

You can find them all on the BattlesnakeOfficial Twitch Channel.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions reach out to us on the Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Congratulations to all the teams who participated, especially Team Pixel, Redbrick, chkgang, and huntail for taking the top prize in their divisions. Team Pixel defeating Dragon in a Library in the Parent & Kids Finals We’d like to thank our partners at RBC and AWS for making this event possible, as well as Communitech and Prospect for supporting our community. We’d also like to thank everyone who volunteered their time to run workshops, tutorials, fireside chats, and more throughout the event.

In no particular order, thank you Curtis Smith, Aileen O’Brien, Chris Cook, Brandon Brown, Aurora Walker, Joe Nash, Colin Walker, Daniel Steuernol, John Oram, Marianne Bulger, Kathryn Christie, Xavier Raffin, Gage Pacifera,**Dr. Andrew Maxwell, Anthony Vacca, Jeremy Lim, Sandra Jennings, and Riyan Mody. Battlesnake Casting Crew doing analysis on the highly competitive Sponsor Division Our goal was simple: engage our community and rally to support organizations operating on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis, and we’re proud and thankful to have such an opportunity.

Thank you, and stay safe!

The Battlesnake Team

The COVID-19 crisis in Canada has forced everyone into new realities and routines. For Battlesnake, this has meant postponing all in-person events until it is possible to hold them safely. It also means doing what we can to support all Canadians during these difficult times.

Today we’re launching Battlesnake: Stay Home & Code, an online programming league raising money for Food Banks Canada.

Event Details​

Starting today developers of all skill levels canjoin the league, enter their favourite Battlesnake into a ranked arena, and compete online with developers around the world — all for a great cause.

On April 25th, we’ll take the top teams and hold a large Battlesnake Tournament, live broadcast on the Battlesnake Twitch Channel. It’ll be filled with prizes and programming as we come together with our community to raise money for those in need.

Battlesnake: Stay Home & Code also features our first ever “Parents and Kids” Division, specifically for teams comprised of parents programming with their children. There is also a Sponsor Division, for tech companies that would like to donate money and participate as a team. If you are a tech company wishing to participate, please see links at the bottom of this post. Stay Home & Code introduces a new “Parents and Kids” Division for parents programming with their children.

We Couldn’t Do This Alone​

We’ve partnered with RBCand Amazon Web Services to bring this event to life and we are deeply grateful for their support. We’re also working closely with Communitech and Prospect to ensure all developers across Canada can get involved. These organizations are some of the best advocates for the Canadian tech community and we’re proud to be working alongside them.

Why Are We Doing This?​

Far beyond the challenges of remote work and stay-at-home fatigue, there are many Canadians whose basic needs are not being met during this crisis. A staggering 4.4M Canadians do not have access to the food required for essential dietary needs, and organizations tasked with combating food insecurity in Canada are already strained.

Our goal is simple. We want to rally our community to support organizations that are operating on the frontlines. We are proud to partner with Food Banks Canada in this effort, and thankful for the opportunity to help.

We also want to connect tech community members who have recently lost their roles with potential employers across all of Canada. We firmly believe that it’s important for us to do everything we can to keep everyone afloat and this is one way we can help.

To learn more about Battlesnake: Stay Home & Code and our live stream schedule, visit the official event page here.

If you’re interested in participating as a family, an individual, or a team, visit the registration page here.

If you represent a company that would like to get involved or join the Sponsor Division, please contact us at events@battlesnake.com.

And finally, if you’d like to donate to Food Banks Canada and support events like these, please do so here. Your kindness will go a long way in helping all Canadians get through this crisis together.

Thanks, and stay safe. The Battlesnake Team

Global Arena​

The new Battlesnake Global Arena went live at the start of March. Since then we’ve added numerous enhancements to the match and scoring algorithms to improve both the quality and fairness of the games. We are still working on improving the layout to be easier to use for everyone. New Arena Layout

New Feature: Team Snakes​

As an extension to the Team system we introduced in February, we have now made it possible for Teams to register and manage their own Battlesnakes. A big part of Battlesnake is developers working together in groups and building a snake collaboratively. This feature will allow teams to compete in events and on the arenas using the team Battlesnake instead of a team member’s individual Battlesnake. Team Snakes

Revised Starter Snakes​

All of the official Starter Snakes have received some major attention. We have standardized the READMEs for each snake to be consistent and act as a guide for getting started. We have also updated the code to be more consistent across the implementations. Our goal is to help users get a snake running quickly on play.battlesnake.com so that users can get their snake competing in events and on the global arena.

Check out the official starter snakes here:

• Go Starter Snake
• Java Starter Snake
• JavaScript (Node) Starter Snake
• Python Starter Snake
• Ruby Starter Snake

We have many Community Starter Snakes in github.com/BattlesnakeOfficial and are looking for open source contributors to update them as well. If you are interested in contributing, make sure to use the Python Starter Snake as a template and review our contribution guidelines.

Documentation Updates​

We are working through the documentation on docs.battlesnake.com and cleaning up the content. You will notice a reorganization of pages and menus. We have also removed out-dated content in order to make the site the best possible resource for developing your Battlesnake. The very old getting started guides are now gone. Instead, we are focusing on the Starter Snakes to teach new users how to create a Battlesnake.

Game Creation Enhancements​

The game creation form has been reworked to make it both more user friendly and more useful for testing. The form now provides easy access to all of the Battlesnakes that you own, as well as the snakes that are registered with any of your teams. Updated Game Creation Form

Rematch Button​

After viewing a game, there is now a Rematch button that will appear for games that can be run again. This is very useful for retesting your snake. The button will only appear if the game was created using snakes that you manage or are publicly accessible on the site.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions reach out to us on the Battlesnake Slack workspace.

This decision was not made lightly and we are disappointed. Ultimately, as event organizers and producers, we have a social responsibility to ensure the safety of our attendees and do our part to slow down the spread of COVID-19.

Over the coming weeks we will continue to monitor the situation. Our plan is to reschedule the event once it becomes safe to do so, and we’ll have more information available at that time.

If you purchased a Limited Edition Victoria 2020 T-Shirt, you will receive a full refund through Eventbrite in the next few days.

Battlesnake is first and foremost a global online community, and our team is already working hard on some new virtual Battlesnake events in the coming months — stay tuned.

As always, we appreciate the enthusiasm, passion, and understanding of the Battlesnake Developer Community. If you have any questions or concerns, we’d be happy to address them — please contact events@battlesnake.com.

Thanks,  The Battlesnake Team

New Feature: Teams​

The site now supports creating teams of multiple users that can participate together in events and tournaments. Each team consists of a team leader and up to 10 team members that can collaborate together as a single entity. The team leader will be able to update the team details and invite new members.

Creating a Team

Go to your profile page, by clicking on your portrait and clicking on the View Profile link. Once on the page you can create a new team by defining a name, a description and a team profile picture URL. Ensure that you review the rules for creating teams before clicking the submit button. You will be allowed to manage up to 3 teams.

Inviting Users

The team leader can to send invites to other users on the Battlesnake site. From your team’s profile page you can click on the Invite User button to search for the user you want to add. Users must accept the invite before they are added to your team.

More functionality will be coming in the next few months including registering your team for online tournaments and arena matches.

API Update: Shouts!​

The Battlesnake API has received its first update in over a year with the introduction of Shouts. This is a new mechanic where as part of the /move response you can send a short message along with your move. This message is then received by all snakes on the next game turn. Shout messages are purely internal to the game and will not be shown on the game board. The game engine itself is also able to shout…for reasons. Check out the API documentation for how to add shouts to your snake.

Arena Changes​

The Battlesnake Arena has been rebuilt from the ground up to address some major performance and infrastructure issues. Ranking is still done using the Microsoft Trueskill algorithm, but we now are running matches every 5 minutes and are pitting 4 snakes against each other instead of 8. We hope this change will reduce some of the match chaos that occurs in large games and better test the snakes against each other. The new arena system will completely replace the old leaderboard in early March.

Event Listings​

We have completely reworked the event listing page to be more visually appealing and functional. Events now have different categories such as workshops and community events. Keep an eye on the page as we will be adding several new Battlesnake events over the coming months. If you are interested in organizing your own official Battlesnake Community Event, contact us to get started.

Moving to AWS​

In a partnership with Amazon, we have migrated all of the Battlesnake infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) from Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Our systems now reside in the AWS us-west-2 region, which is in the Oregon and is the same general physical location as our previous hosting location on GCP us-west1.

Github Repository Migration​

This migration is now complete and we have archived all remaining repositories on the old battlesnakeio organization. From now on all open source code for Battlesnake will live on BattlesnakeOfficial.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions reach out to us on the Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Engine Refactor​

As part of our infrastructure changes, a portion of the engine was split out into a new project call Rules. We wanted to differentiate between the code involved in game orchestration from the core game logic. This should allow us to do some interesting things in the future by running different kinds of rule sets dynamically in the same environment.

New Food Algorithm​

After soliciting some feedback in December, we have reworked the food spawn algorithm to be simpler and less deterministic. The previous iteration was much more predictable than we desired, so the new version adds more randomness. In simple terms, if there is no food on the board, food will spawn. If there is food on the board, then there is a 15% chance another piece of food will be spawned. Food spawn locations are randomized.

We will continue to review stats and feedback on the change, so expect to see further tuning over the next few weeks. You can review the changes in the Rules project on Github.

Github Repository Migration​

As announced in last month’s developer update, we migrated all of our public repositories on GitHub to a new organization called BattlesnakeOfficial. Over February we will be deprecating the old battlesnakeio organization. Be sure to update the origins of any local copies to ensure you keep getting the latest changes.

Coming Soon: Teams!​

We are introducing a new entity to the Battlesnake system called Teams. Teams represent a group of one or more developers who are engaging with our events and tournaments. In the past teams were ephemeral, lasting only for the duration of an event, but now teams can persist and build up a history of participation! Teams created for the Battlesnake Winter Classic will be migrated over to this system and associated with the appropriate users. Initial functionality will roll out early February, with additional features in the following weeks, in preparation for Battlesnake 2020 in Victoria.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions reach out to us on the Battlesnake Slack workspace.

Here are some of the things we did in December 2019:

News Feed​

The site now has a news feed where we will post updates like this as well as other notices about what’s going on with Battlesnake. The blog will continue to exist but will be used for longer form content. The news feed is also available through RSS!

New User Profiles​

Everyone can now update their usernames! In addition, we have provided a few more data points that will let you tell us and other users more about yourself including a bio, your experience programming and where you are from. We hope to roll out updated public profiles for our users in the coming months.

Go to the Account Settings page to make the changes.

Board Improvements​

Snake lengths are now being displayed on the game boards. This should make it easier to know why some snakes die in head on collisions instead of needing to count tiles.

We have also added response times to the game boards. The small number next to the snake length is the time, in milliseconds, it took that snake to respond to the last move request. The number should make debugging strange snake behaviour a little easier. Keep in mind, when you see a 0 ms result it means the snake failed to respond to the request inside of the 500 ms time cap or the request failed with a network error.

New Heads and Tails​

With the completion of the Battlesnake Winter Classic we have released a new set of winter themed snake heads and tails for everyone to use. Go to the Snake Customization page to check out how to use the new options.

Github Repository Migration​

We are currently in the process of migrating all of our public repositories on GitHub to a new organization called BattlesnakeOfficial. The board and engine repos are already moved over and we expect to have the rest of them moved by the end of January, 2020. Be sure to update the origins of any local copies to ensure you keep getting the latest changes.

Request for Comment: Food Spawning​

We are researching some new ways to handle initial food spawning for tournament and arena games. Ideally, a new solution is needed that is more fair for all teams; no matter what the size of the board or distribution of snakes. We are looking for feedback on this problem and some potential solutions. If you are interested in contributing, check out the discussion here.

That’s all for now. Thanks to everyone who supported Battlesnake in 2019 and we can’t wait to show you everything we have planned for 2020!

This past weekend we held the 5th Annual Battlesnake Tournament in Victoria BC Canada. It was easily the best event we’ve ever organized, with over 200 teams registering to compete and nearly 1,000 participants, spectators, and sponsors attending throughout the day.

If you weren’t able to attend and are curious about the event, the entire tournament is available to watch on Twitch. A quick note though: nothing beats attending a Battlesnake event in person.

This year’s event has us thinking hard about the future of Battlesnake, both what it has become and where it could go. We’re pretty excited about both and would like to share our thoughts with the Battlesnake community.

The Story So Far…​

Battlesnake started in 2013 when Matt Harris and I got together with some programmer friends (23, to be exact) and we challenged everyone to write programs to beat each other at the game snake. We affectionately called it “Hackwithus”, after our company Sendwithus. Original Battlesnake Logo, 2013 In 2015 we held the first actual “Battlesnake” at the University of Victoria. The turnout was huge, and Matt and I knew then we had stumbled onto something very unique and incredibly fun.

Since then, Battlesnake has had over 3,000 developers participate and more than 1,250 friends, families, and spectators have come out to watch and cheer. We’ve outgrown two venues and three iterations of the game engine. We’ve also given away more than $50,000 in cash prizes.

This is all very, very cool, and entirely unexpected given our humble beginnings. But much more importantly, Battlesnake has also begun to have a broad, long-lasting impact on the community around it.

Battlesnake is helping programmers learn new skills every year.​

Almost all participants use Battlesnake as a reason to learn something new. Sometimes it’s a new programming language, a new cloud platform, or more recently, learning Machine Learning technologies. What’s extra interesting about this is that they aren’t learning alone. There’s always another team or another developer who’s learning at the same time, or has already built a snake using that particular technology. And because Battlesnake is immensely collaborative, everyone helps each other succeed in their learning. Some of the technologies Battlesnake participants learn every year.

Battlesnake is helping developers get hired.​

Every year we see more resumes that list Battlesnake experience, win or lose. And it’s not just us; other founders and employers we talk to are seeing the same thing, and it’s working! We know of at least a dozen programmers who were hired into their current roles after competing in Battlesnake, and these are full-time roles, not just co-op or intern positions. This is very exciting and further indicative that we’re doing something right for the community.

Battlesnake is inspiring new programmers to start coding.​

We hear this all the time and this year was no exception. Friends and family members who attend Battlesnake get intrigued by the idea and return following years to participate. This happens for a couple reasons, but mostly because the game snake is a) universally recognizable, b) mechanically simple, and c) strategically complex. Anyone can watch a game and immediately understand who’s winning, why, and the strategies being used, and that inspires them think about how they’d play the game and to want to try it themselves.

Battlesnake is growing.​

It’s growing entirely organically, and frankly faster than we can handle. In fact Battlesnake is out-pacing other well-known global tech events, simply because it attracts such a wide audience. Battlesnake Victoria Growth Since 2013

Battlesnake is growing globally.​

Not only is the Victoria event growing every year, but more and more programming groups around the world have asked us to help them run their own Battlesnake events. We get emails almost weekly about this sort of thing and we do everything we can to support them (including tech, branding, and sponsorship whenever we can). Battlesnake events run in 2018 This is all incredibly inspiring for the entire Battlesnake team. We’d never imagined the impact we could have with what started as a silly, friend-only programming event.

If you were to ask us right now what Battlesnake is and why it exists, our answer would be simple: “Battlesnake is making programming fun and accessible”. And that’s what motivates us to keep growing it.

This Year and Beyond​

The question we’re faced with now is “what comes next?” We’ve thought about this long and hard, and there are many ideas for growth and new directions. The one that excites us the most though is both the simplest and probably the largest:

“What if Battlesnake made programming fun and accessible for *everyone*?”

That’s a big, lofty goal and that’s exactly what we’re going to work towards. To that end, here are our plans for the coming year.

Launch Our New Platform​

First, we’re going to launch a new platform where anyone in the world can discover Battlesnake, quickly build a snake, and create games with friends. In fact we’ve already started! It’s available now at play.battlesnake.io, and anyone can sign up and participate. play.battlesnake.io This is the same platform that ran the 2019 Battlesnake Victoria event so it’s already been tested by the best snake developers out there. We have really big plans and ambitions for what this platform could become and we’re excited to get started.

Create an Open Source Community​

From this point forward, all Battlesnake platform and engine development will happen publicly on GitHub. This means anyone can see what we’re working on, what changes are coming up, and get involved by submitting pull requests. You can check it all out at github.com/battlesnakeio. We’ll also start running regular community meetups (more to come on that) and posting here about changes we make as things grow.

Support Even More Global Events​

Lastly, we want to support even more events run by companies, students, and developer groups around the world. We’re amazed at how many people have started their own Battlesnake communities and we want to do everything we can to help them grow.

This will take many forms over the coming year and we’re looking forward to working closely with event organizers and global sponsors to help these events have as much impact as possible. And so that’s the future of Battlesnake. We want to make programming fun and accessible for everyone, and we’re going to work hard to make that happen. You can learn more about this in our Mission Statement.

Do you have ideas, or want to be involved? Awesome, we need your help and we’d love to hear from you. You can connect with us directly on Slack, Twitter, or GitHub.

Thanks! ~ Brad