
CROBOTS is a programming game, for programmers or aspiring programmers (1985) - tpoindex
http://tpoindex.github.io/crobots/
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npongratz
Mr. Poindexter, I'd like to sincerely thank you for creating CROBOTS, and for
open sourcing it. I spent many hours as a child fondly learning from the
examples (I especially remember sniper.r as being educational in grade school)
and hacking away at my own bots. I was already interested in C at the time,
after studying BASIC, but CROBOTS helped me understand C and statistics in a
practical way (the tangible results of many test samples resulting in robotic
destruction or victory!), and served as motivation to continue down the
software development path.

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tpoindex
You're welcome! It is always gratifying for me when I hear stories similar to
yours. I've even heard a few similar stories in person from colleagues in my
professional career.

Open sourcing CROBOTS was something I should have done a long time ago. I
always thought I'd get back to it, but life, kids, job, & other projects
seemed to always come first. Thanks to Neil Fraser for finally prompting me to
put it up on Github under an open source license. Neil also converted the
manual to HTML.

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evanpw
If you like this kind of thing, you might take a look at Robot Odyssey[1],
from around the same time. You solve puzzles by wiring up digital circuits
inside of your 3 robots. Playing it in elementary school is what got me
interested in electronics; it's an amazing game.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Odyssey)

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kevinmchugh
Is there a name for this kind of game? I really enjoy programming games but
have no idea how to search for them ("programming games" is not very useful
for this purpose). I've implemented a couple, but have no idea if there's a
community I can show them to and get feedback or other competitors.

~~~
amenghra
You might find the following link interesting:
[http://programminggames.org/](http://programminggames.org/)

I have had a lot of fun playing with the original or modern clones of corewars
and robotwars.

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namero999
This is a modern take on the idea
[http://robocode.sourceforge.net/](http://robocode.sourceforge.net/) I've
spent a considerable amount of rainy evenings with it, and I don't regret it
at all!

~~~
mathgeek
It still pains me that clicking on sourceforge links legitimately triggers
uBlock warnings. :(

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mzd348
This reminded me of a game I had read about, and looking it up, the game was
RobotWar, which is mentioned as an inspiration for CROBOTS.

There's an interesting article in an old issue of Computer Gaming World [1]
which discusses RobotWar and includes a BASIC listing for a tournament-winning
robot, pretty cool.

[1]
[http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_2.2.pdf](http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_2.2.pdf)
(page 25)

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hallz
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colobot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colobot)

A java programming game in 3D - good fun :)

