RoboRumble/Rules

Is there any effort to trim redundant robot entries or the underperformers? It seems to me there is a bit of padding at the high end and waste at the bottom. - Martin Alan Pedersen

I don't know of any redundant entries, but if there are any I see no reason why the repeat shouldn't be deleted. As far as removing underperformers, I don't think that doing so would create a very friendly environment for new players. Anyway, maybe someone who actually knows about the way this is handled can post something here. --wcsv

The idea of an 'underperformer' kind of sucks. In a 400 bot Rumble, someone's going to be first and someone's going to be last. If you toss out the bottom 100, 200 or 300, there is still a first and last. Why go down that road?

As far as redundancy at the top, Tron is the only bot included twice. From what I understand, this is because version 2.02 and 3.11 are implemented so differently that they are effectively different bots. Just look at the difference in their rankings. (Besides, ABC has earned the right to include two versions of Tron even if they're identical.)

If you are concerned about the number of entries submitted by the top authors, I encourage you to experiment with the bots they offer. Each bot solves the essential Robocode problems in different ways. Your profile mentions you aren’t interested in code snippets. That’s too bad because many authors generously include source code. There are a ton of elegant solutions out there that build on and improve another author’s idea. They're not 'making someone else's bot'. They're learning and improving concepts that wouldn't have existed without cooperation. I’d say that’s the point of this wiki – it’s cultural knowledge is greater than any one person’s.

Better yet, why not enter Ugluk in the Rumble? I’m convinced you’ll see how fair and well-balanced it is. If not, your experience will support your complaints. Good luck. –Corbos

I've a few more personal milestones to reach before Ugluk leaves the showroom and runs with the big dogs.
I'm not trying to insult anyone with the 'underperformer' remark. I'm just looking at all these bots in the 300th+ place that have thousands and sometimes over ten thousands battles fought. If things are fine, things are fine. - Martin Alan Pedersen

My input to the "underperformers" idea is to have a Seperate compitition (for example, you might have to recieve an invite to enter the tournament, based on the regular Rumble rankings) --Bayen

One of the important features in a good bot is the ability to beat poorer bots with extremely high scores - people have spent hours coding things into their bots to make sure they get 100% hit rates against the easy bots. If you remove the poorer bots, that becomes a waste of time. You'd be testing how good top bots are against top bots, which is interesting, certainly, but not what the RoboRumble is about. It's been a while since I looked at the roborumble code, but it may be possible to create a new page which just has the top 100 bots and ratings calculated from their scores against eachother. -- Tango

Update: I've looked over the code and it doesn't work the way I hoped it did (it works a more efficent way, just a way that makes this harder), but it should still be possible. I doubt I'll have time to give it a go today, but I might try tomorrow. We'd end up with new games, toproborumble, topminirumble, etc, which would work exactly the same as far as getting the league pages, but would use the battles from their counterpart. Are people interested? Shall I give it a go? -- Tango

Sure, should be interesting! -- ABC

I'll keep you posted then. -- Tango

It's a good idear, but who decides which bot is a top bot? I Think we sould start with the top 100 roborumble bots and if anyone has a bot which might be better then the 100 place he can enter it in the competition. After 1000 battles of the new bot the last bot will be removed. --Krabb

My intention was to have it automatically select the top 100 bots and then work out what their ratings would be had they only battled eachother. The server code isn't desperately well documented, which is making it a bit of a challenge, but I'm reasonably sure it can be done, I just have to work out how the various bits talk to eachother by reading the existing code. Wish me luck. -- Tango

I also think it is an interesting idea, although I fear that GrubbmGrb will be the first one kicked out of the top-100 . . . --GrubbmGait

My code won't kick anyone out - the Top 100 will be defined by the existing rumble, my code will just rearrange the order of the top 100 (on a different page). -- Tango

I think its better to rearrange the whole rankings not only the top 100. In my oppinion the goal of this competition should be a ranking based on the skill against good bots. But if the ranking only rearranges the order of the top 100, none top 100 bots wich are desinged to beat top bots and not to get a 100% hit rate against spinbot(I hope Krabby2 is one :D ) are not taken in account. --Krabb

If you're not a top bot it's important to be able to beat bots at your own level, not just the top bots. I can try a scoreboard that gives everyone rankings depending only on the bots within 50 places of them, or something, but I don't think it will be as interesting (the fact that you're using one list to decide how the rank the other list would make even less sense than with the top 100 idea). Consider it a reward for reaching the top 100 - you get your bot on a new listing. -- Tango

You are right, a top 100 ranking will be enought. --Krabb

Help! My compiler doesn't know what "javax.servlet" means - I've installed the web services thing, but I can't work out what to add to the classpath, i have folders called "jax?" (with the ? replaced by various letters) - is one of those the one I need? -- Tango

I suspect you need a) to have the J2EE runtime installed and b) to tell your compiler to include the JAR file for it. I'm not sure if Web Services and J2EE are the same thing, but that's my ignorance. -- Martin

My classpath at the moment (ignoring robocode specific things) is C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_02\lib\rt.jar, which contains all the standard java stuff, but it doesn't include the javax.servlet package (take a look at the API? - it's not there, you have to find the web services API). I've installed something which installed TomCat? at the same time (or at least gave me the option of doing it) called "Java Web Services Developers Pack 1.6" which looked like what I needed, but it doesn't have a single lib folder which I can add to the classpath, so I'm completely lost... -- Tango

Hmm... I think the file you need is 'servlet.jar'. I have it in this directory from an old install of Tomcat that I found:

C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Toolbox2.0\Apache Tomcat 4.0\common\lib

I also found some info at this page via Google. If you can find servlet.jar, I think you just need to add that to your class path. Then again, this is all just educated guessing. :-\ -- Voidious

Success! Thanks! It was indded in the tomcat folder, not the java folder... oh well. It was called servlet-api.jar, incidentally. My code doesn't actually compile, but at least most of the errors are gone now... Thanks! -- Tango

My setup at work has 'c:\jdk1_5\lib\javaws.jar' (among other things). I think if you need the servlet API you are more interested in the Java Development Kit rather than just the Java Runtime Environment. While Tomcat may offer an API that works, it won't be keeping pace with Sun's Java updates, so it may go out of sync at some point. -- Martin

Ah, it seems I have the JDK for 1.4.2 by only the JRE for 1.5 - that would explain it... Thanks. -- Tango

Funny... there don't seem to be any rules here. :) -- BenHorner

• That is funny :). -- Simonton