Chuculain

Chuculain

I hope this worked right, of course if it didn't you won't be reading this!!!

I have just uploaded the winner of the Irish Robocode 2004 inter university championship, Deep7. Its an Extends Robot bot. We were all first year computing students at the time so don't expect too much! Now the summer holidays are here I hope to delve more deeply into Robocode, and looking at the performance of some of the bots I've downloaded there's plenty to delve into! Where do you guys get the time, ideas, and programming knowledge to come up with this stuff? Chuculain

Hi Chuculain, welcome to the Wiki! I see you've entered two bots into the rumble. Great! I wish you happy battles and a good rating. Are you also running a RR client? If not, please try and install RR and run battles for the rumble. Especially since you entered two new bots at the same time this will slow down progress on all new entries (and there are many at this moment). I will start an extra client to lighten the load a little bit. --Vic

You don't need much programming knowledge for Robocode. What you need you'll add as you go. Idea just spring out of thin air I guess. Of course I also steal a lot of ideas that people hint at or publish on this wiki. =) Time? Well you'll have to sacrifice the rest of your life. Nah, but it takes a lot of time for many of us RC geeks, no doubt. -- PEZ

Thanks for the welcome. I also downloaded Queens_teamrobot.UltraRazor? which we managed to beat in the competition, but facing them off now I don't know how we won, must have been pure luck I guess!! Like two goals in extra time eh? I will have a go at the RR client, does it run like the Seti@home stuff? Chuculain

Yes, RR was inspired by Seti&home actually. You'll find all information on how to get started on the RoboRumble/StartingWithRoboRumble page. Good luck! --Vic

Downloaded codesize and RR client v9 (last one in list), unzipped from c:\ as robocode is c:\robocode, started the bat file, downloaded participants file but failed to download any of the bots properly, "Bot not downloaded..". Found all the bot file names in the roborumble temp file but all were 0 codesize? Have changed the USER=ALBERT to USER=Chuculain in the TXT files, don't think that affects the bot download. Had a look through some of the java files concerned with dowloading but couldn't tell what had gone wrong, or perhaps more properly what I had failed to do. Even tried the GUI but got the same reults. The link to DavidAlves zip file is broken, oh the joys of computers. I'll keep trying in the meantime, but has anyone got any ideas? Chuculain

Any luck yet? This particular problem is unknown to me, does anyone have experience with problem? --Vic

C:\robocode>cd robots

C:\robocode\robots>java -Xmx256M -cp .;../robocode.jar;../codesize.jar; roborumble.RoboRumbleAtHome? ./roborumble/roborumble.txt Iteration number 0 Downloading participants list ... Downloading missing bots ... Downloading ...abc.tron3.Shadow 3.07 java.util.zip.ZipException?: error in opening zip file Downloaded file is wrong or corrupted:abc.tron3.Shadow_3.07.jar

Above are the errors reported for each bots download, I'm still no nearer getting this to run properly. I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the java.util.zip stuff. Chuculain

Tried running it with the roborumble.bat file? (Resides in the robocode directory.) If you are on Windows of course, otherswise roborumble.sh might be a better choice. -- PEZ

Well I am sitting near a window.... No seriously I am using an XP machine, but still getting nowhere fast. The bat file runs ok, but the error messages re java.util.zip keep coming. Letting it run on there are various errors about results files etc. Must admit to being very confused. The roborumble temp file contains all the participants, all are 393 bytes in size. I'll keep going, I'll get there in the end, perhaps. Chuculain

Just try keep from throwing the computer out that window. =) What version of the Java JVM are you using? -- PEZ

java version "1.4.1_07" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.1_07-b02) Java HotSpot?(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.1_07-b02, mixed mode) Chuculain

My head hurts!!! Been up all night looking through the wiki and IBM robocode stuff, integrals and derivatives used to calculate firing routines, this is more serious than I thought! Anyway I thought I would let you all know something about me and my bots. Maybe your not interested, but here goes.

I am now a second year mature student at WIT studying Applied Computing. Never programmed anything before except for Basic back in the eighties on stuff like the Dragon data 32, BBC micro and the Amstrad CPC thingy (Anyone remember them?). Got into robocode when our lecturer asked if anyone would be interested in entering the Irish national competition at Tipperary Institute. I didn't read the instructions properly and wrote an advanced bot, WitBot5? now Chuliath 1.0. Only had a weekend to come up with Deep7 when TippInst? said that AdvancedRobot was verboten. I love a challenge, and this appears to be a real challenge. I've downloaded most of the top bots and I have to say that I am astounded at the way they perform. Rapture.ThePest was one I used to test Deep7 against, never really beat him but he was a good yardstick to test against. So thats me anyway. I hope to be able to write a competitive robot over the summer but I have to admit that it looks umlikely, everyone seems to be so far ahead of me. This however is a good thing in that it fires up my competitive instincts.

Is there anyone who would be prepared to share any kind of coding with me re targetting, movement, avoidance etc. I understand that this may not be possible but one can only ask.

I do have some questions though. Has anyone had a divorce case siting robocode as the reason? Is there an antidote to robocode? Will pot noodle ever taste like food? Chuculain

Heh :-) There's no cure. Only cold turkey. I also remember the days when rapture was top dog and I tested my first bot against it all the time. I was amazed at rapture's performance back then. How things have changed :-) About code help: A lot of good bots are open source these days. You can look at the code of RaikoMX, CassiusClay and many more. --Vic

Thanks for that Vic, most useful. Another question for you all, is there an IDE that will work with RC? I used bluej in the first year and found the interface really useful, perhaps that's a little like having stabilisers on your bicycle I know but.... Chuculain

• I recommend IBM´s Eclipse. Awesome IDE... -- Axe
• On a related note, if/when the Robocode Source gets released, I'm overhauling the Robocode Editor.