RoboCup Soccer Server Simulator

The RoboCup Soccer Simulator Server (rcssserver) is a research and educational tool for multi-agent systems and artificial intelligence. It allows 11 simulated autonomous robotic players to play soccer (football).

Quick Start

Make sure you have the required dependencies installed on your system:

• g++
• make
• boost
• bison
• flex

Download the latest rcssserver release in the releases section. Extract it and from the rcssserver directory execute:

./configure
make

This will build the necessary binaries to get you up and running.

rcssserver/src/rcssserver is the binary for the simulator server. The simulator server manages the actual simulation and comunicates with client programs that control the simulated robots. To be able to run, the binary needs to find shared libraries which are created when you build rcssserver. This means you must either install the server (make install) or run it from rcssserver/src.

A sample client can be found at rcssserver/src/rcssclient.

To see what is actually happening in the simulator, you will need to start a simulator monitor, which needs to be installed separately (rcssmonitor, rcssmonitor_classic, soccerwindow2 or any other third party monitor).

To playback games that that you have recorded or downloaded, you will need to start the log player such as rcsslogplayer, which must also be downloaded separately.

Configuring

Before you can build The RoboCup Soccer Simulator Server you will need to run the configure script located in the root of the distribution directory.

The default configuration will set up to install the server components in the following location:

/usr/local/bin for the executables

You may need administrator privileges to install the server into the default location. This locations can be modified by using configure's --prefix=DIR and related options. See configure --help for more details.

The server has several features that can be enabled or disabled at configure time by using the --enable-FEATURE[=ARG] or --disable-FEATURE parameters to configure. --disable-FEATURE is equivalent to --enable-FEATURE=no and --enable-FEATURE is equivalent to --enable-FEATURE=yes. The only valid values for ARG are yes and no.

--enable-fast_scanner=yes will enable a fast building but (very) large scanner for the coach language. You will need to have lex or flex installed and you will need to manually remove the coach_lang_tok.cc file in the rcssserver/src directory. This is disabled by default. I found the actual speed of the parser show only minimal improvement when using this option on my system, but this may not be true on your system. All I can suggest is to test it on your system and decide for yourself if the speed increase justifies the increase in size of the executable.

--enable-rcssclient=yes will enable the building of rcssclient, a sample client program. This is enabled by default.

--enable-debug=yes will enable the building of the modules with debugging information. This is disabled by default.

Building

Once you have successfully configured the server, simply run make to build the sources.

Installing

When you have completed building the server, its components can be installed into their default locations or the locations specified during configuring by running make install. Depending on where you are installing the server, you may need special permissions.

Uninstalling

The server can also be easily removed by entering the distribution directory and running make uninstall. This will remove all the files that where installed, but not any directories that were created during the installation process.

Using the Server

To start only the server either type ./rcssserver from the directory containing the executable or rcssserver if you installed the executables in your PATH. rcssserver will look in your home directory for the configuration files:

~/.rcssserver/server.conf
~/.rcssserver/player.conf
~/.rcssserver-landmark.xml # (optional)

If these files do not exist they will be created and populated with default values.

To start the sample client, type ./rcssclient or rcssclient as above. Then type (init sample). This will connect the sample client to the server. You can then type in client command to move the client around the field. You will also need a monitor to be able to see whats happening on the field.

If you installed the server and the monitor successfully, you can use the rcsoccersim script. To start the simulator (server and monitor) either type:

rcsoccersim

Contributing

For bug reports, feature requests and latest updates, please open an issue or a pull request.

The RoboCup Soccer Server Maintainance Group