Scarpia

I got into Robocode this March (2004) and I am completely hooked. I am currently working on a new breed of Dancer- the working title is DancerOnYourFeet?, and its most important changes include: splitting the bot up in subsystems, a complete remake of the mutation/adaption code and a better targeting system.

The Name

My handle, Scarpia, is one of the leading characters (male) in the opera Tosca. I chose it because my real name is too scandinavian for the internet. (ie. if you are not from Denmark, Sweden or Norway, you could strain your eyes trying to pronounce it. Or something)

History

My first attempt at Robocode was the Gettysburg. Painfully naive, based on MyFirstRobot, it fires bullets with HeadOnTargeting, moves a bit when hit but otherwise it just sits there. Needless to say, it bites against anything that moves and/or fires bullets.

I went on to make GettysburgG2?, a melee version of the Gettysburg that didn't move when hit (what was I thinking? Let's take something that doesn't work and spend hours turning it into something that doesn't work on a lot of enemies at once..) but managed to keep track of the bots around it.

Still without any knowledge of RoboWiki or RobocodeRepository or anything, I continued to make my third robot, the GettysburgG3?, which was a learning version of the GettysburgG2?. It still has no movement, but it makes actual danger assessments based on previous rounds and then fires at the most dangerous unless hit by another (dangerous) bot, in which case it switches to the attacker.

After reading up on Robocode and finding the RoboWiki site (yay!!), I realized there were bots that were pure 1v1 bots, and retired my failed Gettysburg series. I then began developing my own 1v1 bot, "DancerInTheDark" (based on SnippetBot by Alisdair Owens). Could have been called ShootingInTheDark? because that's what it did :) but I managed to get it to beat my friend's bots by mutating a number of variables and using the best configuration. Subsequently I learned that what I had made was in many ways similar to GuessFactorTargeting, although my code was pretty messy.

My Robots

• Gettysburg - Painfully naive and also my very first attempt at Robocode. Based on MyFirstRobot, bites against anything that moves and/or fires bullets.
  • GettysburgG2? - A melee version of the Gettysburg. Never wins, but keeps track of the enemies it can't hit :-P
  • GettysburgG3? - A learning version of the GettysburgG2?. (Bear in mind that all I knew about Robocode came from the API and the MyFirstRobot tutorial, so I was pretty proud of myself when it worked.)
• DancerInTheDark - 1v1 bot (based on SnippetBot) that uses weak LinearTargeting, but adapts to its enemy using a number of mutating variables.

My e-mail address is: scarpia [the infamous at-character so familiar to spambots] junk.dk.

Questions & Comments

Nice introdution page. Welcome to the robo wiki community, good luck on the rumble! -- Axe