

A challenge for hackers - C++ Robots ... - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www.gamerz.net/c++robots/

======
ivanstojic
I am so thoroughly surprised nobody mentioned this:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War>

A couple of people in my high school along with me were hooked to CW. I
remember those days with fondness that cannot be replicated.

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RiderOfGiraffes
It's tough even to get on the hill, but someone has just gone top. I've
removed email addresses.

    
    
        Program Name     Score  W / L / T  Age
        ================ ===== =========== ===
      1 dani               687 229/ 21/  0   1
      2 medusa2            675 225/ 25/  0  37
      3 penfold            657 219/ 31/  0 110
      4 noddy              639 213/ 37/  0 109
      5 stingray10         624 208/ 42/  0 113
      6 stingray2          612 204/ 46/  0 175
      7 stingray3          609 203/ 47/  0 116
      8 stingray           600 200/ 50/  0 218
      9 finiculo           579 193/ 57/  0  75
     10 wilma              571 190/ 59/  1 394
     11 evader             546 182/ 68/  0 216
     12 edgar              526 175/ 74/  1 642
     13 wotcha             521 172/ 73/  5 161
     14 quaver             507 169/ 81/  0 256
     15 tommy              479 158/ 87/  5 823
     16 fox-014            477 159/ 91/  0 716
     17 ths7h5             444 148/102/  0 939
     18 radar              441 147/103/  0  24
     19 polarbear          438 146/104/  0 736
     20 wobble             417 139/111/  0 441
     21 girosculo          405 134/113/  3 185
     22 v3                 381 127/123/  0 771
     23 whiper++           369 123/127/  0 686
     24 jelly              339 113/137/  0 439
     25 mi5                333 111/139/  0 614
     26 snaylle-11         332 108/134/  8 307
     27 pipes              322 107/142/  1 474
     28 crbot              317 105/143/  2 970
     29 megatron           316 105/144/  1  14
     30 v                  308  98/138/ 14 382
     31 ratchet            303 101/149/  0  55
     32 razor              291  97/153/  0 376
     32 minim              291  97/153/  0 259
     34 whiper_v2          289  96/153/  1 887
     35 phoenix1           252  84/166/  0 340
     36 wolfhound2         249  83/167/  0 448
     37 duelo              246  80/164/  6 186
     38 5150               244  81/168/  1 776
     39 phoenix            240  80/170/  0 345
     40 kamikaze           237  79/171/  0 901
     41 pugna              229  74/169/  7 362
     42 wrobot             223  74/175/  1 332
     43 testy              221  73/175/  2 471
     44 goodness1          220  73/176/  1 330
     45 noob_out_2         218  72/176/  2 336
     46 zquare             215  69/173/  8 348
     47 robo_basic-03      213  71/179/  0 368
     48 vugluskr           212  62/162/ 26 238
     49 losango3           106  35/214/  1   2
     50 losango             97  32/217/  1   4

------
almost
I used to play a bit of ATRobots which is a similar thing except you program
them in a "Robot Assembly" language. Lots of fun and taught the basics of ASM
coding.

I've been thinking for a while about a more complex form of this sort of game.
The basic idea would be that your robot (and the robots of your opponents) is
sent off to a distant planet where they have to compete for resources to make
new versions of themselves. Each robot would be a Linux virtual machine (xen
or something) communicating with the virtual hardware via a device driver so
you'd get plenty of computing power to play with compared to any previous
versions of these sort of games. Could be quite a lot of fun to play.

~~~
egor83
> I've been thinking for a while about a more complex form of this sort of
> game.

The game like this already exists, it's called Colobot:
<http://www.ceebot.com/colobot/index-e.php>

Just like you said - distant planet, searching for resources, replicating and
building new robots... The differences are that they fight aliens instead of
competing with each other, and there's actually a player, who writes program,
but can also perform some actions.

And they are not full-size virtual PCs, they can be programmed in some sort of
C++-like language.

Nice game, I love it, too bad they seem to stop developing.

~~~
almost
That looks pretty cool, thanks for pointing it out.

It's certainly got a lot of what I had in mind although I think it would be
more fun to make it a little more advanced. I can imagine it being aimed at
more experienced programmers with the operunity to do all sorts of cool stuff
like computer vision.

------
arketyp
Something very similar to this called Robocode has been around for some time.
The language is Java though:

<http://robocode.sourceforge.net/>

------
RiderOfGiraffes
When recruiting I've thought of saying that anyone who can get on the hill
will get a job, but I've realised that fitting in with the team is critical in
our line of work, perhaps in all lines of work. Some of the programmers who
work for me simply don't care about this kind of competition.

I'm still on the hill, though, and that earns me some technical respect.

------
z_
We used the IBM Alphaworks Code Invaders project for our first year Java
class. Most of the students were delighted to see their code translated into
on screen "movement". It is a Java project,
<http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/codeinvaders>

------
sopu
Why doesn't they use javascript, or something that could be safely run in
browser? Then they could make a simulator and editor all in the browser.

~~~
mcav
From the title on the webpage, it looks like it was last updated in 1998. In
1998, using Javascript probably wasn't quite as appealing as it would be
today.

------
access_denied
Here is the original:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crobots>

