Installation

botbowl is a pip-installable python package. We recommend installing with Anaconda but it is not a requirement.

Python version

botbowl currently works with python 3.6 - 3.10 Verify your python version with

python --version

If you just installed Anaconda, create and activate a new environment.

conda create --name botbowl python=3.8
conda activate botbowl

Installation with pip

pip install git+https://github.com/njustesen/botbowl

Or, use pip3 if your pip points to a python 2 installation.

Installation with git

Alternatively, if you want to run our examples or develop on botbowl, you can clone the repository and install it locally.

git clone https://github.com/njustesen/botbowl
cd botbowl
python setup.py build
pip install -e .

To test the installation, run the following:

python -c "import botbowl"

This should not produce an import error.

If you cloned the repository and installed locally, you can start the web server:

python examples/server_example.py

and then go the http://127.0.0.1:1234/ to play a game.

If you ran into issues, please seek help at our Discord server.

Compiling with Cython

“Cython is a language that makes writing C extensions for Python as easy as Python itself.”

Some of the botbowl modules are prepared for compilation with Cython. Compiling them will make the framework run faster.

Installation through pip will automatically build with Cython if possible. You can test if botbowl was compiled successfully by running import botbowl.core.pathfinding.cython_pathfinding in a python prompt. If it doesn’t raise an error, you’re good to go.

If you cloned the repository with git, you need to manually call the build script by standing in the root of the repo and running:

python setup.py build

If you get the following message You've built botbowl without cython compilation, error message=<error message here>, something went wrong (you can still use botbowl, just not with the speedup). Possible error messages and solutions:

“No compiler found” - the distutils module did not find a compiler. See the section below about how to install one.
“Cython could not be imported” - python could not import the cython module, in should be installed when you run pip install -e .. If that’s not working try manually installing it via pip, double check requirements.txt for the version botbowl uses.
“No compatible windows compiler” - the installation script is built to use the MS Visual Studio C++ compiler. Other compiler (e.g. Clang) could raise this error. Try installing Visual Studio with the instructions below.

If you’re still stuck, come ask in the Discord server, we’re happy to help!

Installing a compiler

Windows

Install Build Tools for Visual Studio 2022 (you find it on the bottom of the page under Tools for Visual Studio 2022).

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian)

apt install g++

MacOS

xcode-select –install

Bot Bowl