Robocode Rumble - Java-Battle-Bot League

jsse writes: "Robocode is a game that teaches you Java while you build killer Java-Battle-Bots that fight each other to the death in an arena. The newest Robocode league in town, Robocode Rumble has just been launched. It's a joint effort by alphaWorks and developerWorks. If you're just getting started with Robocode, don't miss "Rock 'em, sock 'em Robocode!" An excellent hands-on starter. In addition "Secrets from the Robocode masters" a collection of tips from the experts, presents more advanced techniques and strategies to help destroy all and be the Java-Battle-Bot King. Previous slashdot story on Robocode can be found here."

Best part

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to cry when picking up the broken shards of code and putting them into a ragged cardboard box to take home and superglue back together.

Cheaper than real robots too (ignoring the start-up costs, of course).

Unbeatable

[gnovos]

I remember making a few of these in the past. I made one that was virtually unbeatable. what was the secret? It's motion was almost totally random (forward, backward, cha cha cha, left right left, cha cha cha) until there was only one other tank left... then it started hunting for real. Attrition is a great way to win!

I remember

[sinserve]

I played with this thing a year or so ago.

Here is what I found out; always inherit from a class slightly higher from the
standard base class.

IIRC, there were standard robot types you could extend. But the real *limitations* were
in the standard type. I remeber inheriting from the parent of the standard class, and
adding capabilities to it.

I eventually got bored with it when I couldn't figure java's type system (I am coming
from C++) I remember trying to "stalk" one other robot, and keeping his coords in static
member list, then tried to predict his next position and fire at him (taking distance into
account.)
but somehow, I could make the static members "persist" as they were supposed, and had them
get corrupted rather easily.

--

Very Clever...

[PHPee]

I'm still a Java newbie, and I think this is an incredibly clever way to learn the language. After spending a few minutes reading through the documentation, it already looks quite easy to get started. The Robocode API looks very well-designed and should really help out with developing Java skills.

And, being a huge nerd, this incorporates my two favourite things: coding and robots.

Sounds like CoreWar to me

[boltar]

Which was invented by A K Dewdney of Sci American fame back in 1984. It used a special assembly code
language called Redcode. Should be easy to find some links to it in Google and theres even a
newsgroup rec.games.corewar (IIRR).
Nothing quite like re-inventing the wheel but pretending its new and flash cos its written in
a flavour of the month language.

Re:Sounds like CoreWar to me

[zero_offset]

CoreWar variants and TONS of other programming games can be found here:

http://tpga.virtualave.net/game-links.htm [virtualave.net]

If you're a Microsoft type, MS is running a .NET "artificial life" sort of thing here:

http://www.gotdotnet.com/terrarium/ [gotdotnet.com]

Re:Sounds like CoreWar to me

[NorthDude]

The whole google programming game directory [google.com]

By the way, I took a try at CoreWar recently and what I can say is that while Robocode and CoreWar are 2 programming games, they aren't targetted at the same audience. Robocode is used by some people to teach/learn Java. The base API is simple enough to grasp rapidly but also let one evolve. In fact your robot extent a base class and when you run it in the arena, it runs in its own thread. It's all writen in java and the robot is "part of" the application. CoreWar is a custom language and you fight, trying to stop all of your opponent process (running on a virtual computer). While I found it was a lot of fun and very "geeky", it can't really be compared to Robocode. In Robocode, the main part of the fun is to actually look at your little tank blast(or being blast by) others. You actually "see" what's going on. In corewar, you don't have any such fancy interface. But hey, diversity and choice are good, and god would I like more of those "programming games", maybe a 3D one with A.I and all... Maybe like A.I. War [tacticalneuronics.com] but not with bugs(no pun intended, seriously)...

realtimebattle

[RisingSon]

We play Real Time Battle [lysator.liu.se] at work sometimes.

Its pretty much exactly the same thing, except it used stdin/stdout so you can write your robot in your favorite language - C++, Java, perl, bash, whatever. I think development on RTB is pretty much dead, though. But its still fun.

Try Intergalactics robots.

[Axiom]

Another great Java "robot" platform is Intergalactics [intergalactics.net]. Here, you right computer players for a risk-based strategy game. The best thing about this is that humans and robots all compete on the same playing field. And, the game is such that robots and humans compete fairly equally. It's pretty fun, and it's an easy API to learn and use.

www.botbattle.com

[stylinsty]

Botbattle.com lets you program bots online and watch them fight online.
With around 4000 bot owners since mid Feburary the site is doing well in advancing AI algorithms for bots.
An intersting aspect of Botbattle is that everytime someone visits the page and lets battles finish thier computer is participating in paralell evolution of the fittest bots.
Thousands of battles take place everyday simply from people viewing the site.
See how your AI programming skills match up to the hundreds of bot source codes available at the site.