RL-Glue, and therefore the RL-Competition software has official support for three programming languages: C/C++, Java, and Python.  This tutorial will explain how to create a new agent in each of these languages, based on the random sample agents that we have provided.  One you are comfortable with the software, you may want to copy one of the domain-specific agents as your starting point.  For now, we'll keep it simple.

This tutorial was written for Unix/Linux/Mac.  Your Windows mileage may vary.

Note that this is not a tutorial on RL-Glue or how to write agents in RL-Glue.  For general information on the RL-Glue interface specification, what all these functions mean, etc, you may want to check out the RL-Glue quick start guide:

http://rlai.cs.ualberta.ca/RLBB/QuickStart.html

Or the more general RL-Glue documentation:

http://rlai.cs.ualberta.ca/RLBB/top.html 

Also note that this tutorial uses the random agent, which works for Tetris, Mountain Car, and Helicopter Hovering.  Agents for Keep away and real time strategy domains are a slightly different story.