PluggableRobot

Bot Name

PluggableRobot

Author

RobertWalker

Extends

AdvancedRobot

What's special about it?

It's not a standalone robot, really, but a base robot which you can extend. It provides a pluggable architecture and sophisticated event management. I developed it in parallel with my robot that is based on it, RabidWombat.

Great, I want to try it. Where can I download it?

It's not available yet. When I'm satisfied with it, I'll release the source.

How competitive is it?

It's not a competition bot. You extend it to make your own.

How does it move?

It doesn't.

How does it fire?

It doesn't.

How does it dodge bullets?

It doesn't.

How does the melee strategy differ from one-on-one strategy?

There is no strategy. The robot by itself does nothing.

How does it select a target to attack/avoid in melee?

It doesn't.

What does it save between rounds and matches?

Nothing.

Where did you get the name?

It's a robot design for a pluggable architecture. PluggableRobot made sense.

Can I use your code?

Sure, when I release it. Hopefully that will be soon.

What's next for your robot?

I built its features as I needed them for RabidWombat. There are a few areas that I didn't need that I should round out for completeness's sake. In particular, there are some events that RabidWombat doesn't use that I should create listeners for.

Does it have any WhiteWhales?

Since it doesn't fight on its own, no.

What other robot(s) is it based on?

None directly, although I've culled a couple of ideas from the wiki. The EventManagement page shows some discussion I had with others here that resulted in code that went into it, but PluggableRobot is basically an original creation.

---

Comments, questions, feedback:

I think all the big bots use something like this? I mean Shadow does, my (bigger) bots do, who else? Mine in particular handles paint and robot color functions, and in Genesis tracks time, data and properties loading. It overlays it own methods for onScannedRobot, handles the radar and does many many other things I mostly forgot about, and it all does this with the data from a interface called 'Constants' (meaning colors, propertie file name, property names and numbers, etc. --Chase-san

It's not too surprising that the same people that enjoy programming for fun would also tend to build their bots with more modular designs, though some are certainly more "pluggable" than others. (Dookious is pretty clean code, IMO, but it would be easier to implement a new Wave-based gun than a new PatternMatching gun.) In addition to all the usual reasons for doing so (ie, in a profession), with Robocode it has the additional benefit of keeping me more motivated to work on my bots. PrairieWolf is a classic (one of the Ancients) that uses some kind of pluggable design for its MultiMode strategies. -- Voidious