[PLUG-Devel] Planning the September "Robots" topic

[Alan Dayley]

This month's meeting is tomorrow.  I hope you are all coming!  But the
planned September topic is better not left to the last minute.

For September we are to discuss and demonstrate and even battle some
virtual robots!  The more participation the more enjoyable it will be, I
think.  Those that want to demonstrate or even battle a robot need to
start now to get one programmed.

We had a member at the meeting when we made the topic schedule who was
excited about the robots.  His name was Micheal as I recall.

"Micheal, the robot guy, if you are out there, you are welcome to
organize this better than I am.  Email me."

Now, to get us started until Micheal speaks, I have been hunting around
for various robot tools/simulators.  (I don't know what to call them.)
This is what I found:

First off, I did not find an engine that would accept robots programmed
in different programming languages.  It would be cool to write one in C
and another in Python and battle them but I did not find a system to do
that.  (A project for someone?)

Next, many of the available environments are primitive and/or appear to
be abandoned.  This eliminates many from the long lists that can be found.

I found what I think are two contenders: CRobots (the original) and
Robocode (the slick)

CRobots[1]

It appears to be the first of this kind of game.  It has a robot
compiler that supports a C-like language for programming your robot.
When you run a battle, the engine actually compiles your robot code and
the code of the other robots and then throws them into the arena.  The
battle is animated in text characters, including projectiles and
explosions but no sound.  The one I found was a binary for the original
DOS environment.  Yes, that DOS.  It runs fine under DOSBox.  There are
Linux binaries available too but I have not tried one yet.  It was NOT
originally Free Software or, as I read it, Open Source.  If you paid a
license fee of $20(?) the author will provide the source.  However, the
footnoted site has source downloads available.  I have not looked at them.

Robocode[2]

This one was maybe developed by and was certainly supported at one time
by IBM.  It uses Java to program the robot.  You create a Java class
that defines the behavior of the robot.  The arena runs in Java (of
course) and is fully 2D and color graphics animated.  Projectiles,
explosions, movement of each robot and sound, if you want it.  It makes
for a more enjoyable spectator experience.  More information and a
tutorial are available[3]. Robocode is released under the Common Public
License[4]

There are other robot programming games for many languages.  I found one
for Python called pRobots[5] but was not impressed with the display and
it appeared to be broken.  I couldn't get my robot to attack anyone
within the 30 minutes of tinkering I did.

There are many other for other languages ranging from assembler to C++
and others[6].

Other games exist, none of which I have tried, such as CodeRally[7]
(Make a car and race it) and CodeRuler[8] (Be a king, I guess).

I have a place in my heart for the original CRobots from when I played
it back in the 1980's but Robocode is probably better for our group.

What do you all think?

Alan

[1]http://crobots.deepthought.it/home.php - This is what I thought was
the best of many CRobots pages.  (Download link in footer of the page.)

[2]http://robocode.sourceforge.net/ - No longer supported directly by
IBM, the project continues.

[3]http://robocoderepository.com/

[4]http://www.opensource.org/licenses/cpl1.0.php

[5]http://www.geocities.com/kensanata/robots/index.html

[6]http://dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Simulation/Programming_Games/Robotics/desc.html

[7]http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/coderally

[8]http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/coderuler


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