Learning Python through competitive "bots" design

Another quickie:
Looking at making Python more fun for our students, I am now looking at these two options:

pyBotWar
http://code.google.com/p/pybotwar/
A remake in Python of the well known Robocode, a "robot arena" for (teaching/learning) Java.
It seems to be pretty complete, at least for using it in a classroom.

Update 18 Nov 2013: Installing this on latest Ubuntu is proving a challenge. Box2D 2.0.2b2 is not easy to find or install. While I think I can get it to work, it will be hard to get students to do it.
There is some hope for an updated version, but not yet available:
https://code.google.com/p/pybotwar/issues/detail?id=8

AI Challenge
http://aichallenge.org
This is a similar concept, but you write code that controls ants as they battle other ant hives. The code can be written in many different programming languages, though the toolkit itself is done in Python.
Originally you could submit your code to their server where it would fight other submissions. They had 8000 contestants!
Now you can get the tools and run it yourself, so that's where I'm thinking of going.

Update 18 Nov 2013: A new (to me) option:
Python RoboCode
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pythonrobocode/
This seems like another solid option.

Does anyone have any other interesting pointers? I am also planning to research more multimedia creation resources, maybe creating sound or image from Python code, so those tips are also welcome!

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