JRobots: An Addictive Challenge for Java Programmers…
Addiction is the only name I can give to the love for this intellectual challenge targeted for Java developers .
You may remember from your school days about cRobots, a program which allows robots written in c language to compete with each other. Fast forward several years…for few years now there are Java versions of cRobots available.
The version I will talk today is jRobots. It was developed by Leonardo Boselli, who also created an exciting monthly tournament (with help from other developers in his forum). There are other java implementations of cRobots (including one from IBM) but none has such a great following and an exciting tournament. Recently it has moved over to hosting at SourceForge.
Monthly tournaments are held and very well contested by several players.
There are two leagues, cadets league for newcomers and who have been demoted from the veterans league. There are three divisions in each league - Single, Double and Match. In double two of your players fight against two of your opponents. You get the drift.
The interesting thing is that you can easily develop your first robots as the API is simple and also great examples are provided. And introductory tips to improve your robots are provided too. Recently Caos, author of the robot Tango, which is swepping the veterans cetagory in three divisions for several months now, has written an excellent and highly informative article which allows you to make super grade robots to allow you to compete in the veterans league.
And then it is fascinating to see how your robots fight against different enemies, how little tweaks can improve your robots and give you edge. All in all it is a very enjoyable experience and definitely much better than any shoot-em games.
I urge to at least give it a try. You can actually see robots fight against each other by selecting one or more robots in single, double or match (try single first).
Then you can download the Arena and test the sample robots against your home breed ones. I can assure you that you can create your first robot in about 10-15 minutes. And you can enter it in the tournament too.
And then it all fun 
Let me know how it goes.
PS. This is a totally free game and tournament and there are no commercial interests whatsoever for this post.
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December 2nd, 2004 at 9:22 pm
Have you seen Robocode ? Google it.
December 2nd, 2004 at 10:02 pm
Have you tried Robocode from IBM Alphaworks ? Google it !
December 3rd, 2004 at 12:31 am
I tried robocode about a year back, made some robots for it too.
Robocode is definitely more realistic in terms of visual effects and logically as it understands collision. So tanks can collide with each other, which doesn’t happen in jrobots. Also the API is more capable and there are lots of supporting material from IBM.
However I prefer JRobots because:
1. It has a better tournament format and actual tournaments are organized every month
2. The variables in the game are more manageable and hence the cost of entry is lower than robocode. It is easy to make a decent jrobot than to make robocode tank.
On the upside Robocode allows me to write fully object oriented programs, unlike jrobots with lots of restrictions.
At this point jrobots is definitely more entertaining than robocode. Lets see what happens in the future
April 20th, 2006 at 1:51 am
[...] I talked about JRobots, an extremely addictive Java game where you develop robots in java to fight against other JRobots in a monthly battle royale. Today I will present you with a simple sample JRobot to encourage you to participate in this contest. It kicks the butt of all sample JRobots provided in the download bundle and even some veterans. [...]