September Member Update
Season 1 of ProBots just wrapped, and while Zozo took the crown, what really stood out were the sparks of creativity the community brought along the way. The experiments, the debugging breakthroughs—it all added up to something bigger than just the matches.
Now that the dust has settled, here’s a quick look back at what happened, and a peek at what’s coming next.
Community highlights this month
Shout out to @chad aka Dogtato on the progress we’ve been making on Botato. Working together in weekly co-working and PostBot, he added a Terran 1-1-1 build and upped its ability to hold back rushes. Haven’t pushed the changes to the ladder yet, but it’s looking promising.
We also had three PostBot sessions packed with takeaways:
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Build order tweaks & swarm intelligence (watch here) — dialing in frame-by-frame build orders, improving wall-offs, and testing squad-based vs. swarm approaches.
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Cheese defense & smarter counters (watch here) — why clean builds matter most, spotting rushes early, and using weighted counters (including negatives) to adapt naturally.
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Cancel build-in-progress logic (watch here) — fixing cancel-on-damage, clarifying build orders with PiG’s Bronze-to-GM, and laying groundwork for stronger proxy defense.
Each session surfaced practical fixes and strategies you can apply right away to make your own bots sturdier, sharper, and more adaptable.
We also upgraded the Probe Challenge to make it easier to access. No more GitHub Classroom hurdles. Plus, there’s now a second stage where you’ll help the probe dodge marine fire, along with a gym version for training. You can dive into it here: Pathfinding Showdown: printf’s sneaky probe.
Coming up
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Weekly co-working (event link) — set your goal, carve out focused time, and build momentum with others working alongside you. These sessions are less about talking, more about leaving with real progress made.
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PostBots on the 19th (event link) — bring your replays, stuck logic, or half-broken bots. You’ll walk away with clearer next steps, new strategies from peers, and usually a bug or two squashed live. It’s the fastest way to get unstuck and level up your bot-making.
Podcast pilot
I recently recorded a pilot episode for a possible podcast series, where I talked with a FrostGiant engineer about working on AI. I LOVED the conversation. It opened my eyes to how much there is to learn from hearing their challenges firsthand. It left me fired up to do more of these and to give you a chance to get involved by sending in questions ahead of time or even joining live.
Here are a few Game AI engineers I’m thinking about inviting:
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Ubisoft’s For Honor
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Facebook’s Cicero
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Smash Bros. PhilipV2 bot creator
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2KXO Training Bot
If any of these strike a chord with you, let me know.
Thanks again for being part of this community. Your energy is what makes these updates worth sharing. Reply here to share what you’re working on or what you’d like to see more of. I’ll see you at the next update.