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Domain: robotbattle.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to robotbattle.com.
Comments · 14
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Re:It seems
We're trying to play a fantasy game here, not Robot Battle.
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Great book title...
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
That is the title of the book you tell your 7th grade teacher you are GOING to write when you grow up.
Sounds like the FAQ for Robot Battle.
http://www.robotbattle.com/ -
Re:Lego Mindstorm
I would go that same route except I would recommend robotbattle http://www.robotbattle.com/ It probably bypasses more than a few real programming concepts but it is fun and can introduce kids to creating logical instructions for a machine. Plus, it's free.
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RobotBattle
Maybe you want something that will hold their interest more,like RobotBattle. http://www.robotbattle.com/
Given a tank with certain attributes, program it so it will beat everyone else. You can get a tank moving and shooting in 10 lines.
Winning? That's something else entirely.
Of course it gets old after a while, but it might be a cool thing to start out with, or to refer back to later on.
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Re:well, this part makes me wonder if I can share
In fact, it might be interesting to have a game in which part of the challenge is writing/obtaining the perfect set of mods to be able to cheat the best you can.
Sounds like http://www.robotbattle.com/ to me.
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Robotbattle!
Might I suggest http://www.robotbattle.com/ or similar type game? You use the scripting language (very similar to C? I don't remember) in your text editor of choice to program robots to kill each other with energy missiles. It's a lot of fun and can be really addicting. It can help develop a solid interest in programming. Making your first robot and then starting up the game to watch it get slaughtered and not act as you planned is pretty interesting.
I bet a lot of slashdotters would enjoy it actually.
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Robot Battle
Very addictive programming game
I was hooked for all of high school and two years of college. It's open source under the Mozilla Public License. It is Windows-only though, until someone decides to port it. There's also a Linux game inspired by RobotBattle called RealTimeBattle. -
Re:Everything old is new again.
RoboCode is one of many of this genre of games, including C++ Robots, Robot Battle, C Robots, and a number of other games using more or less common programming languages to control robots in an arena, including some sold commercially. You could even include Robot Odyssey in this genre in some ways, although the robots didnt fight and you "programmed" them with electronic circuits.
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One more shameless plug...Gragegames is currently handling Robot Battle which should appeal to most
RB started as shareware and this is the reason I found it and started playing it. Shareware (or whatever modern name you wish to attach to this marketing model) is a great way to "get into the game". I would not be surprise if most first time authors do not make (much) money publishing shareware. But that is not always the only point, sometimes the exposure for the authors is what counts. Sometimes it is just wanting to get what the author believes is a great tool/game/widgit out into the real world while maybe making a bit of beer money at the same time.
Liberty Basic is another great piece of software that started as shareware. I have not followed it lately but back in its beginning it helped me alot with minor Windows based apps.
Merlin.
Of course English is my second language. Giberish is my first!
Don't bother flaming my English... I will just reply with more. -
Re:Anyone remember the old school robot games?
Robot Battle is still a very popular game. Its event driven language is hard to get used to, but contests (with 30+ entrants) are still held at least every month. The game is still in development and soon (ish) to release an educational version.
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Programming Games
This brings to mind some of those programming games that I was never able to bring myself to get into, even though the interest was there.
Corewars was too arcane (Although the program evolvers are neat, at least in theory), and my simple Robot Battle programs fared rather poorly.
IBM put together a Java-based rip-off of Robot Battle called "Robocode" which I'm looking into, especially since my Java could use some help
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Re:Of course...
If you want to do this play Robot Battle. It's a game where you write a robot in a C-like scripting lanuage andload your robot and other's to fight each other in a 2D arena. Note this a Windows only program (try WINE on linux, I guess).
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PASCAL, LEGO, LOGO, Game ScriptingWell, you fail to provide any clue are too their current comprehension level, but.
I can honestly say my fist digital programming experience was with a toy. It was called "Big Trac" And if I recall it was the first toy (videogames are something other than toys I guess) with a microprocesser. Luckly for me my first digital programming experience was not C, I would have givin up the idea right then and there.
I learned BASIC, but don't recommend it. To this day I reflexivly think "GOTO". There are better basics these days though, Visual Basic, QBasic and the like.
I learn LOGO second, I found it much simpler that basic and not really a learning experience. On the other hand my teacher didn't know much about Computers (One of the teachers had to teach the computer class and it fell to the typing teacher, poor guy) and I learned LOGO after learning BASIC.
I notice LEGOs are mentioned alot in this discussion. That's a good toy (even if they are making them more specialised and less useful these days). Nice thing about legos is kids can be familiarised with them from birth and as they out grow putting things in their mouth and distructive behavior you can get the smaller and more intricate varities of LEGOs. LEGOs will teach the skills necciassry for many, many different things including programming. LEGOs are also great for exercising artistic expression and imagination (two things that are often discourage when learning programming in structered education, so engrain these values while you can). Another important thing later is to not let your kids think they should outgrow LEGOs.
Pascal is a good stepping stone to C.
I would recommend spending a week or so with HTML before any programming languages, this will let them see a computer interpreting their imagination (in a limited way) much better than most games will, easyer than programming language will and these creations can be shared with peers. Let them create a bit on your web page or even help them create their own pages.
All these are good choices but may lead to dissipointment, all these things require alot of effort for a little bit of result, most certianly from a child's perspective. Something that allows more instant gratification is game scripting. There are many games out their that let players create their own levels, not just graphically, but with events and enemy AI. AND ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT TO A KID, a game level is something they can share with others kids their age and STILL BE COOL. Not neccissasly so with C or even LEGOs. Some of these games accually feature programing *as* a gameplay element. Many of these games are innapropriate for some yonger children so it may take a little work to find the ones that are suitable. But they are worth looking for. I'm sorry I can't recommend very many but here's the ones I can think of right now:- Robot Odyssey (another RO page)
An OLD but GOOD 'game' for 8086 computers. It takes some work to run it on modern computers but I HIGHLY recommend it. There's a small comunity of players. This game features logic gate programming as the main gameplay element.
- Stunt Island
An odd mix of flight sim, movie maker and event driven programming. Fairly old software, but it has a small 'web community' to share creations with.
- Descent w/Mission Builder
Shoot 'em up involing AI robots. This series by Interplay seems to still be arround. This is heavily GUI but construction of symeterical 3D Levels will bring up quite a few geometric math issues, common to 3D game programming
- Unlimited Adventures
An old software tool for creating AD&D advantures in the style of SSI's 'Gold Box' series of games. - Neverwinter Nights
Upcomming AD&D online game, homemade worlds will be a major part of this game.
- Creative Writer
(Front Page Jr). Your kids can create a page with this program, then view and edit the HTML manually.
- Thinkin' Things Collection 3
Not sure if this is accualy a game. But one of the elements of it is specifically to indroduce kids to computer programming.
- LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System
Mentioned in other replies. "Possibly the decade's most important breakthrough in children's computing and toys". Blah! I's just an improvment on Robot Odyssey (copyright 1984), except the program is loaded into a real world robot intead of a computer simulation. Well it's certianly easier to run than Robot Odyssey. Ya know, I am seriously considering getting one of these, dispite being a loyal Technic user for as long as I can remeber.
- Soda Constructor
I'm can't put my finger on it, but I'm sure is has some sort of relevence here. If not, well it's really cool anyway.
- Robot Battle
A compition oriented game. Different scripts are pitted against each other in an arena to test them.
There are others out there. - Robot Odyssey (another RO page)
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Programmable bots....
Wouldn't it be so awesome if the "bots" that will be available in q3 single-player could be programmed, just like you can program a robot in Robot Battle? It might be fun to have online tournaments where only people's bots that they created could participate. I'm sure this could be done, and it would be a LOT of fun!!! Heck, you could even send a bot you created against a real person and watch them crumble against your awesome programming talent! Yeah!
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."