Rod Hyde - Robo Wiki -= Collecting Robocode Knowledge =-

I mostly write nanobots:

wee Gem, a melee nanobot whose main advantage seems to be that it's a good all-rounder as opposed to being really good at anything
wee Willie Winkie, a perceptual 1v1 bot, probably a bit too large to be a nanobot.
wee Dram, a small glass of Knockando / Talisker / insert favourite single malt as appropriate (Macallan, Lagavoulin, Bowmore, Ardbeg, Dalwhinnie, Glenfarclas and Glenmorangie comes to mind.) -- PEZ

What got me interested in Robocode was my memory of an article I had read in Byte magazine when I was a mere lad of 13 or so about a game called RobotWar on the Apple II. I never played the game, but the concept intrigued me. There's a screenshot here (http://www.robotbattle.com/history.php) - obviously the guy who wrote Robot Battle was inspired to go a little bit further. I just found the manual for it online (http://files.the-underdogs.org/games/r/robotwar/files/robotwar.pdf).

Regarding Development Tools, I flip between Eclipse and vim as my mood takes me. I'm sure vim isn't for everyone, but I use vi in my day job (UNIX admin - HACMP clusters anyone?) so it makes switching easier. Actually, after another 12 months of using it, I find that Eclipse is so damned good for Java development that I rarely use anything else.