Robocode

[Insectoid]

Someone mentioned Robocode on IRC, and I had no idea what it was, so I googled it, and it turns out, it's totally awesome!

Basically, Robocode is a Java API for writing AIs to control a virtual robot in a battle. The scripts are executed by an included program (henceforth 'the game') that provides a visual representation of the battlefield (There is a console-only version that gives you wins/losses but isn't fun unless you need to quickly execute a tournament of hundreds of bots...).

Each robot has a cannon and a radar. The radar detects incoming bullets and bots within it's FoV and the cannon, well, fires them. Firing your gun causes heat, and if your heat exceeds 1 (it's generally a small value) you cannot fire. Your shots can be fired with varying power that controls the speed and damage of the bullet. Higher powered shots generate more heat.

Anyway, last man standing wins!

What good are words? Here's a video!
There are many different strategies to choose from. This one takes a dodge-the-bullet approach, and you can see from the video that there's plenty of room for improvement. Similarly, some strategies may excel in 1v1, however would fail in a 10-bot deathmatch. Here's a bot that predicts where the enemy bot is going to be, utilizing what we know about the game's limits on acceleration. It also utilizes waypoints to avoid enemy bullets.


Anyway, the point of this post is, wouldn't it be interesting and fun to hold a compsci tournament? Has anyone here dabbled in this before? It doesn't seem terribly difficult to create a functioning robot, but there is always a better bot to be made! It's like chess; easy to play, hard to play well.

[SNIPERDUDE]

Looks pretty cool, something I might give a try (studying and experimenting with agent AI in my spare time anyway).