Battlecode

[gh]

Not really related to SO, but I thought to get the word out anyways. Battlecode is the computer science counterpart to MIT's more famous 6.270 robotics competition. Teams write autonomous players (in Java) that play an RTS game made by the developers of the competition. The players then face off against each other in two tournaments: one open only to MIT students and another to everyone. Both tournaments have cash prizes, though the open tournament prizes are only open to those enrolled at an university.

You should be able to write a working player if you're currently taking an AP Computer Science course, though you'll likely go through a few false starts unless you have experience working in a team, designing and coding medium-sized projects from scratch, and reading structured documentation for other people's APIs. If you don't have such experience, this is a good opportunity to get some.

I started a team last year (team #5, Stuyvesant). We basically didn't do a whole lot of work on it because the NY high school class schedule and our own obligations (i.e., SO for me) don't really overlap with winter break for unis and IAP for MIT. Still, the tournament results were surprisingly encouraging, so I'm working with practically the same team (we are all in uni now) this year. I am in team Battlolcode (#17).

The rules and software for this year's competition are not up yet, but you can register a team at: http://battlecode.mit.edu/

If you're feeling adventurous, try downloading last year's software here: http://battlecode.mit.edu/2009/contestants/downloads
You can get a coding environment set up and write some simple players with the 2009 software to get a feel for it (and to get practice if you want to do it this year).