Robocode is an easy-to-use robotics battle simulator that runs across all platforms supporting Java 2. You create a robot, put it onto a battlefield, and let it battle to the bitter end against opponent robots created by other developers. Robocode comes with a set of pre-fab opponents to get you started, but once you outgrow them, you can enter your creation against the world's best in one of the leagues being formed worldwide. Each Robocode participant creates his or her own robot using elements of the Java language, enabling a range of developers -- from rank beginners to advanced hackers -- to participate in the fun. Beginning Java developers can learn the basics: calling API code, reading Javadocs, inheritance, inner classes, event handling, and the like. Advanced developers can tune their programming skill in a global challenge to build the best-of-breed software robot.

Robocode is a programming game where the goal is to code a robot to compete against other robots in a battle arena. By the way, Robocode is available free from our Resources page, and can be easily downloaded and installed on any. Do not download the latest version if you are prompted to do so.The one you have. 12 Robot commands. All documented in the Javadoc of the Robocode API; public methods of the robocode.Robot class or derivations such as robocode.AdvancedRobot.

In this article, we will introduce Robocode and start you on your way to conquering the world by building your very first Robocode robot. We will also take a peek at the fascinating 'behind the scenes' machinery that makes Robocode tick.

Downloading and installing Robocode Robocode is the brainchild of Mathew Nelson, a software engineer in the Advanced Technology, Internet division at IBM. First, head to the page. Here, you will find the latest executables of the Robocode system.

Once you have downloaded the distribution, which is in a self-contained installation file, you can use the following command to get the package installed on your system (assuming you have a Java VM (JDK 1.3.x) pre-installed on your machine, of course): java -jar robocode-setup.jar During installation, Robocode will ask you if you'd like to use this external Java VM for robot compilations. The other alternative is the Jikes compiler that is supplied as part of the Robocode distribution. After your installation, you can start the Robocode system from either the shell script (robocode.sh), batch file (robocode.bat), or icon on the desktop. At this point, the battlefield will appear. From here, you can invoke the Robot Editor and compiler using the menu. Components of the Robocode system When you activate Robocode, you will see two interrelated GUI windows, which form Robocode's IDE: • The battlefield • The Robot Editor Figure 1 shows the battlefield and the Robot Editor in action. The Robocode IDE.

Add our robot, dw.DWStraight to the battle, then add an opponent robot, such as sample.SittingDuck. Click Finish, and the battle will begin. Admittedly, doing battle with SittingDuck is not too exciting, but you get to see what the DWStraight robot does by default.

Experiment with other robots in the sample collection, and see how DWStraight fares against them. When you're ready to examine the coding of another robot, check out the dw.DWRotater robot code that is supplied with the code distribution in. This robot will, by default: • Move to the center of the battlefield • Keep spinning its gun until it detects a robot • Fire slightly ahead of the detected robot, trying different angles each time • Move rapidly back and forth whenever it is hit by another robot. The code is straightforward and we will not analyze it here, but I encourage you to try it out. The sample package included with Robocode provides code for many other robots, as well.

Additional robot support classes As you become more competent in robot design, the body of code that you can include with the robot can increase substantially. A modular way to handle the code is to decompose it into separate Java classes and then bundle them into a single package (JAR file), using the packager, to include as part of your robot distribution. Robocode will automatically find robot classes within packages placed in its robots directory. The motivation behind Robocode design I caught up with Mathew Nelson, Robocode's creator, and asked him about his original motivation for creating Robocode.

Here's what Mat had to share: 'Part of the motivation for writing Robocode was to prove to the world that the statements like 'Java is slow' and 'You can't write games in Java' are no longer true. I think I did it.' Other Robot subclasses Anyone can create subclasses of Robot and add new functionalities that can be used to build robots. Robocode supplies a subclass of Robot, called AdvancedRobot, which enables asynchronous API calls.

A description of the AdvancedRobot class is beyond the scope of this article, but I encourage you to experiment with this advanced class when you are comfortable with the operation of the basic Robot class. The architecture of a battle simulator A look behind the scenes at Robocode reveals a sophisticated simulation engine that is both high performance (in order to render the battle at realistic speed) and flexible (enabling the creation of complex robotics logic without getting in the way). A special thanks to Robocode creator Mathew Nelson for graciously providing the inside information on the architecture of the simulation engine. A design that leverages the Java platform This simulation engine, shown in Figure 4, leverages the non-preemptive threading that most modern Java VMs offer, and couples it with the rendering capabilities provided by the JDK GUI and 2D graphics libraries.

Robocode simulation engine architecture. Notice that each robot being simulated is on its own Java thread, leveraging the VM's native thread mapping wherever applicable. A battle manager thread is the controller of the system: it orchestrates the simulation and drives the graphical rendering subsystem. The graphical rendering subsystem itself is based on Java 2D and AWT. Loose thread coupling To alleviate potential problems with shared resources (and thus potentially deadlocking or choking the simulation engine), a very loose coupling is required between the battle manager thread and the robot threads. To implement this loose coupling, each robot thread is given its own event queue. The events for each robot are then fetched and processed in the robot's very own thread.

This per-thread queuing effectively eliminates any potential contention between battle manager thread and robot thread, or between robot threads themselves. Robocode internals You can view the Robocode simulator engine as a simulator program that takes a set of plug-ins (custom robots) during run time; this set of plug-ins can make use of the API supplied (the robocode.Robot class's methods). Physically, each robot is an independent Java thread, and the run() method contains the logic that will be executed on the thread. At any time, a robot thread can call an API supplied by its parent, the robocoode.Robot class. This will typically block the robot thread via an Object.wait() call.

The battle manager thread A battle manager thread manages the robots, bullets, and rendering on the battlefield. The simulation 'clock' is marked by the number of frames rendered on the battlefield.

Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile V6535 Drivers Download Windows Xp on this page. The actual frame rate is adjustable by the user. In a typical turn, the battle manager thread wakes up each robot thread, and then waits for the robot to complete its turn (that is, calling a blocking API again).

This wait interval is typically tens of milliseconds, and even the most complex robot tends to use only 1 or 2 milliseconds for strategy and computation with today's typical system speed. Here is the pseudo-code for the logic that the battle manager thread performs: Listing 3.