The one thing i would suggest to keep it nice and simple is to have the game developed in stages and prizes go to the winner of each stage.

It sounds like you want to possibly have a gui involved here, and it would be easier if a gui was predefined so that you don't have a lot of different implementations of just one feature going on. But to allow for maximum creativity you could start with a contest on building that gui (which would have to have standard interfaces that the agent could call) and then move to the contest involving the agents. You could have a different gui designed for each contest, and the gui would be downloadable so that all participants designing an agent (or whatever) could use and test the gui (*no* changes!).

Recently i had to design an agent and a gui for AI class and it is a hassle doing both at the same time (in my experience). Other than that it sounds fantastically fun and amusing (perl instead of java!!), i'd definitely have to turn something in...

jynx