Learning Java Through Violence

Joe writes: "Someone introduced me to a new game called Robocode and now I'm hooked as well as my 17 year old son. We are both learning Java while playing the game or I should say while building our Java robots. The game is setup to teach you how to handle events, how to create inner classes, and other Java techniques to build more sophisticated Java bots. I have a c++ background so I've been helping my son with his bots, but he's catching on very fast. It's turning out to be a cool and easy way to get the kid clued into programming and best of all its free." I'll bet if the little Logo turtles shot at each other, I would have had more fun programming as a kid.

Comments

Hmmmm.

[dr_dank]

Now if we could only have Quake III teach reading, we'd be good to go.

Re:Hmmmm.

[n3m6]

hmmm.. making mods is cool stuff .. really u get to learn a lot .. check out planetquake.com and the sites hosted there.. that reminds me.. we can make a mod to teach kids how to make mods and do battle.. kinda like robowars.. but simpler than the current methods used in quake.. with an ide .. gosh.. it's got me itchy :)

Re:Hmmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Q3 seems to teach you how to sp33k 1337. Not that that helps you anywhere outside of a Quake deathmatch or a flamewar...

Re:Hmmmm.

[dairypope]

Servo thought everything was a strapless evening gown, thank you very much...

"You think everything is a strapless evening gown!"

"Well, I like them!!"

This is how i learned C, too

[Smallest]

There was a thing just like this for Amigas in the late 80's that used a crippled version of C for the bots. You could use "radar", shoot things, move, etc.. a lot of fun - and a good way to learn C.

And, before that, i actually wrote my own version of a programmable bot game for C64, using a homemade 'machine' language. no slick graphics here - you watched the memory space (each bit in the arena's memory space lit up as a single pixel on the 340x280 screen).

All of this based on a Scientific American article about a phenomenon called "Core Wars".

-c

Re:This is how i learned C, too

[EmilEifrem]

Me too! It was tons of fun, until one of us figured out how to construct a bot that ALWAYS won. I seem to recall a version of CoreWars for tinyASM as well. Fun times...

Re:This is how i learned C, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Screen resolution on the C64 is 320x200. I know of no trick to _individualy_adress_ 340x280 pixels.
If you do know one, please elaborate :)

Re:This is how i learned C, too

[cnkeller]

Was I the only one who went to a college with this type of game? Net trek was fun and all, but even the most relentless ogger needs a break. A friend of mine created a robot wars game in the late 80's for a project in compiler design. You wrote C code; moving the robot, firing patterns, etc. The game had 2d graphics, etc. It was pretty cool actually. If I recall correctly the game engine could handle up to 8 different robots. I wonder what other schools used their Connection Machine for....

A good way for each person to tout his programming skills. The project was updated over the years by each new class of ACM members. Kind of like a university of maryland cult legacy thing in the com sci department. Anyway, I was under the impression that pretty much every school had their own version of robot wars. I know at one point, U Texas had a world wide robot wars gaming contest based on similar concepts. This was about 18 months or so before lego bots got popular. They truely cunning would like at the compiler code and figure out how many instructions were executed per time unit and craft state machines accordingly.

Re:This is how i learned C, too

[tjgrant]

I was pretty fresh out of college with my CS degree in those days, and was fortunate enough to work at a company that was attempting to do some Amiga development. That game sucked huge quantities of time from our small three person development staff. That said, we were probably all better coders due to those experiences.

Re:This is how i learned C, too

[maxxon]

Yes, this game was called Crobots. You can still find copies of it around with some well-placed Web searches.

There's also a more recent type of this simulation called RealTimeBattle which uses a simple text-based protocol so that you can write a bot in literally any language.

Re:This is how i learned C, too

[awbailey]

To add another entry to the list of similar games, here is RoboWar:

http://www.robowar.co.uk/

It is the sole reason I do programming to this day. And the weird RPN language it uses was the first language I wrote in.

Alan

Re:This is how i learned C, too

[rhetland]

I programed a Core Wars compiler in basic on my Apple ][ computer waaay back when.. However, I found the programing practices I learned back then have helped me very little later in life, as a scientific programmer.

I am glad to see there is a programming game that actually teaches useful programing skills.

Awesome!

[Captain_Frisk]

There was a game I played as a kid on my macintosh. It had the same general idea, and i've been looking for something to replace it. Theres a new game called RoboForge out, but it costs money, and doesn't look all that interesting. Thank You!

Re:Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there are quite a lot of options for messing with designs in Roboforge, and there's talk of a Linux port as that whole thing is written in Java as well.

I play that game every time I run Java apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill all the other tasks as quickly and accurately as possible before your computer crashes.

Re:I play that game every time I run Java apps

[~MegamanX~]

Change that for Java applets. Many browsers don't handle them properly.

Otherwise, java applications run well. Try them. I run JBuilder 5, wich is a full-featured IDE comparable to Visual Studio and such that many people use. It is all java, hence portable. Btw, it does runs on Linux.

Java gui support is slower than your typical native gui support, it doesn't make Java technology is a whole flawed.

Re:I play that game every time I run Java apps

[JamesOfTheDesert]

Java gui support is slower than your typical native gui support, it doesn't make Java technology is a whole flawed.

True; the almost-but-not-really-OO quality of Java(tm) is what REALLY snuffs it.

The S-L-O-W UI stuff is just added sucktitude.

Today's young 'uns should be learning real languages, such as C for procedural programming, Smalltalk for OO, and Lisp for functional programming. Then, if the job market is still looking for people who can write scripts for virtual machines, go learn Java(tm).

By the way, did you know that Perl, Tcl/tk, and Awk can be Written Once, and Run Anywhere(tm)? I wonder if Sun knows this? I hope they sue the pants of those bastards for stealing the idea from Java(tm).

Re:I play that game every time I run Java apps

[Malcontent]

Yes the job market for lisp programmers is HUGE.

Why waste your time learning a language you will never ever use? If you are going to have to learn Java to get a job why not learn Java in the first place.

Yes Perl, Python, TCL (and you forgot rebol!) all are pretty damned portable too. Life is great when you don't have to tie yourself to one platform with a crappy language like VB anymore heh? Only if they some slick IDE like jbuilder.

Re:I play that game every time I run Java apps

[Anonymous Coward]

True; the almost-but-not-really-OO quality of Java(tm) is what REALLY snuffs it.

You sir, are an idiot.
Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Polymorhism have been part of the language since its creation. What makes in "not-really" OO?
The use of .java-to-.class forces the coder to use classes. The only language even more OO than Java is smalltalk which doesn't have any primatives. IMHO the weak typing nature of smalltalk makes it harder to maintain.
And, if you seriously think coding J2EE applications amounts to "scripts for virtual machines" you obviously have no idea what the industry is using java for these days.

It is clear by your embarrassing display of ignorance that you are either uneducated or a troll.
I feel sorry for anyone that has ever thought of you as smart enough to take advice from.

Re:I play that game every time I run Java apps

[JamesOfTheDesert]

You sir, are an idiot.

And you are a coward.

Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Polymorhism have been part of the language since its creation. What makes in "not-really" OO?
Can you subclass *any* object, including int and String? No?
Is everything a object? No?
Can I ask an Integer object for its absolute value? No, I need to pass data to a procudure in a utility class. That's OO?

Java provides "Encapsulation, Inheritance, and Polymorhism "[sic] for almost-but-not-all of the language. So it's some sort of hybrid that allows OO techniques in some cases, but not others. There's more to an OO language than allowing some degree of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism in selected cases. Hence, almost, but not quite.

J2EE notwithstanding, Java byte code is a set of instructions for a JVM; the JVM in turn issues commands to the particular platform it's on. Sounds an awful lot like a scripting language to me.

only language even more OO than Java is smalltalk [...]

And you call me uneducated. Here's a clue, no charge.

Now that's smart

[n0-0p]

Most edutainment is really pretty boring, but this seems like a good conceptI think I've heard of something similar based on Z80 processors. Are there many other projects like this (especially for other languages)?

Re:Now that's smart

[sir_nas]

yes, sort of...

i found a nifty game called ColoBot thats quite fun where you write sub routines for functions in what appears to be very c/c++ like.

it teaches structured programming (according to them), and from what i've had a chance to play around with its pretty damned cool.

you can read up on it here

its not free, but you can download a free demo (win32 only sorry)

Moral implications...

[UltraBot2K1]

Joe: I think it's fantastic that you're teaching your son to program. I only wish my parents and teachers recognized the importance of learning computers when I was your son's age. But don't you think that there are better ways of teaching programming than encouraging unnecessary violence? There is enough sex and violence present in the media already without intermingling it with education. The road to knowledge should not be paved with death and destruction. This is certainly not the way to encourage our children to expand their horizons.

I say, reward our children for their good deeds with positive reinforcement. The violence is completely unnecessary, and can warp an impressionable young mind.

Children are notoriously suceptible to the power of suggestion, and if you present violence to your son as a prize for doing something good, he will receive the message that violence is okay and should be encouraged. This is unacceptable, and should be stopped immediately.

Re:Moral implications...

[scrytch]

How about an updated version of Rocky's Boots? Oh wait, that has a boot that kicks things, that could be violent. How about The Other Side? Oh wait, spies, bombs, environmental exploitation... I guess changing the graphics to throw flowers and compliments at each other to see who makes the other smile most might just be interpreted as a surrogate for missile weapons and damage.

I knew there'd be some self-righteous pollyanna that'd react to the title. Astonishing how everyone already knows how to raise everyone else's kids.

Re:Moral implications...

[tlianza1]

The violence is completely unnecessary, and can warp an impressionable young mind.

The kid is seventeen. He most likely has a driver's license by now. The violence is not completely unnecessary, as it is not uncommon for teenagers (even those younger than himself) to love action movies or other films and TV shows with violence. I'm sure a lot of us did when we were that age and turned out AOK. In this case the subject matter may be precisely what makes the game more fun and entertaining. Create a game about puppy dogs and ice cream and see how many teenagers are interested enough to pick it up and learn a new programming language...

Re:Moral implications...

[DickBreath]

There is enough sex and violence present in the media already without intermingling it with education.

I disagree on both counts. You say for both sex and violence that there is "enough". How much is enough?

There is too much violence in media.

There is not enough sex in media.

And your idea of intermingling with education is a great concept. Now that you've mentioned it already, is it too late to patent it?

Re:Moral implications...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be interested in this story: Children kill their parents because of computer games. You heard it here first.

Re:Moral implications...

[ReelOddeeo]

...there is "enough" sex and violence in media...... ...How much is enough?

Who defines enough?

Some people may be satisfied with the present level of sex and violence, and others may not yet be satisfied. Some people are harder to please.

Re:Moral implications...

[iCEBaLM]

But don't you think that there are better ways of teaching programming than encouraging unnecessary violence? There is enough sex and violence present in the media already without intermingling it with education.

It's a game, he either learns to code while killing "non-living" robots, or doesn't learn to code while killing humans playing counter-strike.

And everyone knows that video games *do not* contribute to violent acts. I have been playing violent video games for years, and over those years my violent tendancies have deminished.

-- iCEBaLM

Re:Moral implications...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have been playing violent video games for years, and over those years my violent tendancies have (sic) deminished."

That's good, because all those video games certainly didn't help your spelling.

Re:Moral implications...

[G-funk]

You wouldn't by any chance live under a bridge would you?

There is enough sex and violence present in the media

I think not. Sure there's enough violence, but never enough sex! I'll tell you what there is enough of though, self-righteous pricks who think they should be the thought police, and that they have the magical rules as to how everybody should raise their own children. That and trolls, so you've got to go either way.

Re:Moral implications...

[osgeek]

Well, I'm sure if little boys were interested in programming pink unicorns to run around kissing daisies in meadows, then a wonderful teaching tool could be constructed around that very concept. As it is, though, a "battle" provides a setting that motivates young boys to get into the educational activity enough to make it worthwhile.

Besides, having grown up in a house where my parents didn't really censor my cable access, I find it hard to believe that shielding kids from all possible influences really makes a difference. I never got into fights in highschool or college, despite watching Rocky I - V. I've always felt that an intellectual approach to conflict is far better than a violent one.

How could that be, when I watched The Exorcist and Jaws before I was even a teenager! Why, I even used to watch The Roadrunner back when old Wile E Coyote used to actually hit the ground!

The key to raising your kids to avoid exerting violent behavior isn't to shield them from all possible observations of it. It isn't even that helpful to have them avoid board and video games where violence is a goal.

The key is to teach your kids the difference between fantasy and reality. "Yeah, it's fine to go watch a Jackie Chan movie, but when you leave the theatre, don't kick your friends and pretend that you're in a karate fight." "Play Quake and Duke Nuke'em, but remember that they're just video games."

Additionally, build loving trusting relationships with your children and encourage them to build similar relationships with others. Teach them how to think their ways through problems, rather than giving up and reacting violently.

Re:Moral implications...

[eddy the lip]

was that supposed to be modded insightful or funny? it's getting hard to tell around here...

although, i'm sure i read that one of the first signs of a serial killer is the torture of small instruction sets.

no, really.

Re:Moral implications...

[Reality Master 101]

I'll tell you what there is enough of though, self-righteous pricks who think they should be the thought police, and that they have the magical rules as to how everybody should raise their own children.

While I disagree with the poster's hand-wringing about violence, I have to defend his right to judge others. The biggest problem with society today is not sex, violence, the DMCA or any of that: It's the "who am I to judge" crap. It's everyone's responsibility to judge EVERYTHING and EVERYONE in society, but be willing and prepared to be judged by others.

Notice that the poster was not calling for laws to be passed, but it is his absolute right and responsibility to judge on a personal basis what he feels is right and wrong. When enough people feel the same way, society can be transformed.

RM101: Self righteous, and proud of it.

Re:Moral implications...

[Reality Master 101]

But don't you think that there are better ways of teaching programming than encouraging unnecessary violence?

Violence is not intrinsically immoral. For example, using violence to defend my home against a criminal is absolutely morally justified on the small scale, and similiarly defending the country during WW/II on the large scale.

It's how violence is used that determines whether it is appropriate or not, and games can help reinforce these lessons. For example, "Doom" was a positive game because you were defending the world against invading demons. On the other hand, "Postal" was probably a bad game for kids, because it was encouraging running down innocent pedestrians.

Violence is intrinsic to our nature, and just ignoring natural impulses is not the way to teach morality. The morality of when violence is appropriate should be taught.

And yes, I believe Ghandi and similar pacifists are idiots. Just because Ghandi was lucky doesn't mean his philosophy was any good. Passive resistance would have done the jews a lot of good against the Nazis.

Re:Moral implications...

[j7953]

Do you seriously believe that the kids will really regard this kind of "violance" as the same kind of violance that you're talking about?

This is not violance against humans. This is violance against virtual robots. And the kids can even take an in-depth view at what is actually going on. If they see that it's just an integer counter being counted down when you're hit (or whatever, I've not looked at the code yet), I don't think they'll see this as violance, no matter what the graphical output looks like.

I don't believe in violance caused by computer games anyway (they might be the trigger, but not the cause), but claiming that encouraging kids to develop a virtual robot is like encouraging them to shoot their classmates is ridiculous.

Re:Moral implications...

[Osram]

The point is that normaly sex is something good and normaly violence is something bad.

Re:Moral implications...

[Bob McCown]

And seventeen is a perfect age for us to get a youngin into Uncle Sams Misguided Children. Learn 'em to shoulder an M1 and an M16 and blast those little commie bastards. Ah, the young are so impressionable.
</zealot>

Re:Moral implications...

[mr. marbles]

riiiiight, lets completely suffocate kids by placing them in this controlled sterilize environment and manipulate their actions at every step, cover their eyes to whatever you don't want them to see, god forbid we allow young impressionable kids to live in the real world.

What complete bullshit! morality is not something you learn through positive reinforcement, morality is something you develop on your own. if we can just point to the bible and throw the rule book at everyone who behaves from what you perspective immoral then it's not really a problem with personal morality as it is following orders and brainwashing people.

Re:Moral implications...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, what a successful troll. Good work!

Re:Moral implications...

[Chelloveck]

I second this! I played Rocky's Boots on my Apple //e when I was in college. Even as an EE major I couldn't finish some of the puzzles. (The fact that propogation delay was modelled poorly didn't help at all...)

Cool, Google found this site which has links to Apple emulators and the Rocky's Boots disk image. Time to go kick some... um, brightly colored shapes.

Re:Moral implications...

[SuperLiquidSex]

The coyote doesn't hit the ground anymore???? thats, thats wrong.

Re:Moral implications...

[Anonymous Coward]

And everyone knows that video games *do not* contribute to violent acts.


Not according to Pravda ...

Re:Moral implications...

[Registered Coward v2]

Which is the ultimate free market economic solution:

1)if too few people want something, then those who make it go out of business and it goes away;

2)if enough people want it, more is produced and some will get rich.

Of course, the problem is to many people, upon seeing what they don't like end up being being option 2, try to find other ways to eliminate that choice.

Now if we could GPL sex...; wait - that's what we tried in the 60's. Dang, I gnu we were on to something there...

Re:Moral implications...

[Reality Master 101]

I think I'm going to make this my new sig.

Re:Moral implications...

[G-funk]

He has every right to his opinions, but when everybody is open to judgement from everybody else, you end up with the worst form of mob rule, where a conservative status quo is achieved, and nobody will do anything that could concievably cause waves, as they don't want to rock the boat and be judged themselves.

Re:Moral implications...

[Reality Master 101]

you end up with the worst form of mob rule, where a conservative status quo is achieved, and nobody will do anything that could concievably cause waves, as they don't want to rock the boat and be judged themselves.

Certainly it is possible for that to happen, but on balance, I think we would have a stronger and better society when everyone is open game.

The prototype example from my life is that I used to have a very good friend who flat-out cheated on his wife. As far as I was concerned, he showed himself to be unworthy of my friendship. What was incredible to me was that all of his other friends rallied around him, and "supported him" through his "trying time". The man was total scum! I pretty much let him know what I thought, and told him that he should clean up his act and beg forgiveness. But he didn't, and destroyed his marriage.

I couldn't believe his so-called "friends" made it so easy for him to be a total asshole. I believe that being a true friend is steering them away from bad decisions, not enabling them. If all his friends and family totally ostracized him until he owned up to his responsibility, he would have been much better off, and learned a valuable lesson.

And yes, it is "his business" if he wants to cheat on his wife. But it is my business how I react to it, and whether I tolerate that behavior around me.

Make no mistake -- most of evil happens because it's tolerated. On a slightly different subject, I detest the word "tolerance" as its used today, as in we need to "tolerate" other minorities. The is the absolute worst word the PC crowd could pick. It should be "coexist with" or something similar. Preaching "tolerance" enforces the notion that I'm supposed "tolerate" bad behavior, because "who am I to judge". Argh!

Re:Moral implications...

[Anonymous Coward]

No such thing as too much sex and violence.

And trust me, if we could somehow link sex with learning to program in Java, then we'd have millions of qualified Java programmers around.

Lighten up, dude.

Re:Moral implications...

[MadAhab]

And in one year, he'll be legally able to smoke --- cigarettes --- and join the army and kill people. He still won't be able to drink in most parts of the US, though. Go figure.

The people who complain about the violence here are the same ones who turn a blind eye or say "what're ya gonna do?" when teens use real violence on real people.

I look forward to teaching my kid programming with competetive elements to add fun. They don't all have to be violent. Imagine a large field with nuggets and seams of gold hidden here and there, a sensory API for "detecting" gold, and robots in competition to gather all they can.

Re:Moral implications...

[jenesuispasgoth]

I agree that the "who am I to judge" attitude leads to bad situations, where people accept (hypocritically) behaviors which shouldn't be allowed, but only when people use this attitude to extremities.

However, the "I judge and accept to be judged" attitude can be as bad... again, in case of an extreme "use". That kind of way of life could lead to a situation everyone would be honest with others to the point where no one could stand one's neighbour. I know it's exagerated, but not that much.

I totally agree on the fact that anyone here should give his opinion freely, provided they're not popularity-seeking to the point where one makes promises that if something could be totally destroyed, things would be much better.(hint, hint :-) )

I also think that if my friend was cheating upon his girlfriend I would tell him what I think about it, but I don't think I would withdraw from him lest he was hurting people around him. I wouldn't defend him when the truth would be known, and surely would even be on the "opposite side" on that matter. But he would have known how I would act from the beginnning. You just can't burn bridges with long-term friends like that, I guess.

Bottom line is that both ways of thinking are bad when driven to extremes, since in one case people let others do unallowable actions, and in the other, people just don't let others live the way they want. If one wants to say that violence is bad in video games, fine with me. But I can disagree with him without judging him (in fact, since I believe that I have good arguments against that point of view, IMHO :-) ) If I don't want to judge other peoples's ways, it's because I want have the most objective point of view that is possible to have.

Re:Moral implications...

[NicePaisleyHorsy]

Namby-Pamby personalities like yours are not capable of providing good parentage. If you think a simple, crudely-rendered tank battle game constitutes "violence" in today's world of graphic violence on Network news, the daily newspaper, you need to call 1-800-Get A Clue!

I had friends with parents like you...It took many long hours to get them "re-adjusted" so they could function in the real world. Stay in your Ivory Tower, or wherever you beam messages from. You have no business preaching from on high!

Mindrover

[JanneM]

Mindrover from Loki has the same idea. The difference is really that it doesn't require you to learn a full programming language, but allows you to program your robots through a graphical building-block kind of interface, with counters, gates and stuff.

/Janne

Re:Mindrover

[gnudutch]

Back in the 80's we called that program "Rocky's Boots".

Re:MindRover

[SuiteSisterMary]

Looks kinda like Omega, by Origin, which I've been thinking of trying to do a modern version of.

Re:Mindrover

[Anonymous Coward]

MindRover was "by" CogniToy on the PC, originally.

Loki did the port to Linux. A great port, but the game wasn't their design.

Yes, there are others

[interiot]

Yes, robocode is not the first, see DMOZ's entry. Corewars was perhaps the most famous. Okay, now we can move on to talking about Robocode's merits instead of talking about its family tree.

Re:Yes, there are others

[mindstrm]

I'm not sure you can compare corewars to this or the others... With corewars, the actual code is what's doing battle for it's own survival... it's not 'running a tank' or anything, and the playing field is memory space.

Re:Yes, there are others

[Registered Coward v2]

The Apple ][ ahd a game called Robot War from MUSE Software (of Castle Wolfenstein / Return to CW fame) where you programmed a bot with simple instructions - move, look, shoot; and then put bots together in an arena to see who won. Crude graphics, simple programming, very addictive.

Re:Yes, there are others

[Wessler]

I wrote a similar challenge for the 1999 MIT AI Olympics: RoboSockey

It's a non-violent physically realistic (mostly) soccer game played in a 2D hockey rink, and
should run fine in your Java 1.1 browser. Beware Linux folks! Most Linux Java implementations translate Thread.sleep() into a no-op, which slows this program down tremendously -- there are 14 threads running here!

Most of the teams were written in less than a day, so the ones that work tend to chase the ball like a bunch of 6th graders.
</plug>

Anyway, all the games listed here really help students get into programming. It's important to learn algorithms, and all that... but nothing beats watching your code interact with a real or simulated world. Anything you can use to get folks interested and keep them long enough to get them involved helps!

Is there a question or something here?

[dmorin]

Lots of kids learned to code this way. Back in the days of Pascal in my high school I found Tom Poindexter's C-Robots and learned C that way (thinking it was pretty much just Pascal with some shortcut characters like braces instead of BEGIN/END). It's a funny coincidence that someone introduced you to the game within a day that somebody interviewed the guy behind the game at kuro5hin, however. :)

nice!

[gnudutch]

This sounds tons more fun than that lame ass Karel the Robot baloney we had to go through in high school programming class. Forget the steeplechase, code up a deathchase!!!

Re:nice!

[bugg]

I couldn't agree more! I recently took 15-100 (introduction to programming with java) at CMU, and we had to use Karel: The Java Edition for the first half of the semester..

Considering most of the people there, such as myself, were already well versed in at least one other programming language, we were needless to say bored out of our minds. By the end of the semester, we spoke our mind at The Fence (you people familiar with CMU will enjoy this..)

Re:nice!

[maan]

I can't believe they're using karel here in CMU now...what are people gonna say about us...I'm glad I got credits and never got to do any of the intro classes. Anybody in 212 or 213 around?

Maan

Re:nice!

[bugg]

They're going to say "I'm paying how much for THIS!?"

Having taken 15-100 in the summer session, I got to be among the first set of victims of Karel. The incoming class now will have to suffer with Karel for the first half of their semester.. it's not a bad concept, but it really could be condensed into a couple days. But DJ Slater is a cool guy, they'll have fun (as much as they won't want to admit it).

Re:nice!

[sopwath]

Karel sucks for teaching a useful programming language, but it's good for total newbies (like people in my CSCI 101 class who havent even used a computer before) it's also good at teaching proper technique. At least on the one I have to use on some broken VAX machine it forces you to indent and CAPITALIZE different parts of code properly. It's not useless, even if you can't do anything with it.

good luck,
sopwath

Re:nice!

[dmorin]

People are still using Karel the Robot? Holy Hell, that brings back memories. I used that circa 1985 on some sort of PDP-something that the highschool had in the basement. The funny thing is I was just talking to a guy about it on the train this morning :). "Hey, there's a turn right but where's turn left?" "Oh, that's the first lesson, write a procedure to turn left by turning right three times." Ick. Pickbeeper!

should not be surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot hasn't really changed since it was taco's side project in college. can you believe the millions they sold this shitbag for and it hasn't been spent on a decent codebase? probably not, i think they blew their load in linux boxes, and computer games.

this site is prove positive that open source will only go so far, before you need to call the big boys at MS, Oracle, Sun, IBM, etc.

You have got to be kidding . . .

[Wire Tap]

First of all, take a look at the alternatives to "learning through violence."

1) Barney. Or, as I like to call it "unlearning through sensory numbing." Obviously not a good choice for anyone, at all, period.

2)Not learning, although still through violence. Example: most pointless video games. I say most, because I am still a firm believer in the idea that viedo games are great for the imagination, among other things.

This leaves us with the healthy alternative of:

C)Learning through violence! Yes, blowing up giant robots is FUN, and most kids would be thrilled to pull the trigger and show off his or her prowess on the virtual battlefield. I know I would love to destroy a an opposing process or script with the knack of my own creation. What is the big problem, when the kid would more than likely spend his or her time on a (possibly) less productice game? I say that this is a great idea. People learn better when they are having fun with what they are doing.

Finally, it is not "rewarding" the child for following through with a violent act - it is simply a mode by which the student can learn a new skill. Haven't you ever built an erector set? Most of them involved the construction of battlefield tanks or other war machines. It just happens to be one of the best-suited applications for teaching programming.

Re:You have got to be kidding . . .

[PyroMosh]

I'm supprised nobody's thought of one of my favorite games of all time. No violence at all and a very similar permise: Robot Odyssey I. Someone above did mention Rockey's Boots (which I could have sworn was called Rockey's 'bots', but I never played it) and I'm /told/ was the predesesor to Rbot Odyssey I.

The idea, for those not familiar with the game was that you were stuck in a massive underground laberenth trying to escape through the 5 underground levels of Robotropolis. This was accomplished by wiring robots to solve various puzzles. Robots had "bumpers" for inputs, "thrusters" for propulsion, a "grabber" and an "antenna" for comunication with other robots. They could also be equiped with various types of sensors for interaction with opjects and things. First the puzzles were largley as simple as "go this way until you hit a wall then change direction to this way, then hit another wall and change direction to..." later, the game forced you to create highly intrecate and specialized robot circuit designes to do things such as actually communicate with other robots to work together to solve tasks.

There was no shooting, no killing. There was no way to die (unless you count your robots' battery's dying). The only way to "loose" was to loose one of your robots somewhere that you couldn't retrieve it. (just hope you saved shortly before that happened). There were "bad guys" of a sort, called sentries. But all they could do to you is intercept you and keep you from passing certain sections. While this game doesn't teach programng in the most traditional sence (i.e, no language) the premise is the same. Using logic in a fun way to get robots to do things. I don't see why the same thing couldn't be redone with C or PERL or Java or BASIC or VB or COBOL or Pascal, or anything rather than the circuits and logic gates that the origional used. I never did beat the origional and I still play it on a //e emulator from time to time.

Violent Computer Games

[Henry V .009]

Just wait until some kid decides to shoot up his school again.

We don't really know what set off this victim of child-abuse and school bullying who just happened to have easy access to firearms. But we think it might be the fact that he was a Java programmer.

And we'll have Oprah and Senator Liebermann calling for a ban on applets for a few months afterword.

Re:Violent Computer Games

[luge]

And we'll have Oprah and Senator Liebermann calling for a ban on applets for a few months afterword.
Would that be such a bad thing? ;)

Re:Violent Computer Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. Reasoning like that we should forbid e.g. Agatha Christie's novels, as they educate prospectous murderers and robbers :-/

Taking a sunbath does not make you an inquisitor torturing others with fire

Re:Violent Computer Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like exactly what we should expect from Oprah and Liebermann.

Re:Violent Computer Games

[KupekKupoppo]

Liebermann, I can see being evil. He looks so much like the Emperor from Star Wars.

But I expect so much from Oprah. (sigh)

Re:Violent Computer Games

[georgeb]

"Is adult entertainment killing our children - or is killing our children entertaining adults?" -- Marilyn Manson

Re:Violent Computer Games

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, come on! this game has cartoon design - kids will take it less serious than any stuff seen on tv ...

WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?

[javabandit]

Look...

/. is a great message board. It provides great content. You don't have to support it. You don't even have to be here.

Who care what they use? Who cares if they are down now and then? Who cares what database they use? Who cares what language they use?

GET A LIFE, MORON.

Re:WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?

[Kombat]

Who care what they use? Who cares if they are down now and then?

LOL! Now this is an ironic comment to find on a site that is so viciously anti-Windows/pro-Open Source. "Linux is way better than Windows, because Windows occassionally crashes. But hey, cut Slashdot some slack - who cares if they are down now and then?"

New idea?

[forsaken33]

Wow, someone finally gets it, make an educational game that is actually interesting! Seriously, id bet if developers/companies/whoever made educational games that were actually fun to play, they could do well, esp. dealing with computers......programming......stuff like that.

good job /. ers

[necrognome]

All of you browsing ibm's pages have decreased my transfer rate to 2.3K/sec. Thanks.

Re:good job /. ers

[ahde]

welcome to my world

OS X

[dukethug]

I ran Robocode under the OS X terminal using the Linux install/run options, worked like a charm, although it seems that the text in the preferences window got cut off for some reason. If you're using a G4, I highly recommend maxing out the FPS and watching the game fly.

combinations

[crowke]

Maybe they can combine this technology with the dog-bots from sony? Fun will be guaranteed :)

/.ed

[mrnobo1024]

the website's /.ed, google's cached version is at http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:L1cXj8y2PgI:r obocode.alphaworks.ibm.com/+&hl=en (just delete the space, slashcode always puts extra spaces in URLs...)

Re:/.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr Nobo, you appear to have accidentally posted a correct google link, instead of a goatse link. This is shocking, especially after previous jewels from you, such as this. What gives?

Re:/.ed

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, and his post was at 4:20! SWEET!

another recent game

[ziggles]

Colobot claims to teach you the basics of programming through a game, and I haven't gotten very far in it yet, but it seems cool. You have to program robots to go do tasks that you need done.

http://www.colobot.com

Re:another recent game

[Danse]

Colobot seems to teach procedural programming skills, but not much else. There's little room for any creativity there. It might be enough to get some people started, then they can graduate on to better things such as Robocode.

Computers in education wasRe:Moral implications...

[firewort]

When I was in 3rd and 4th grades, way back, we had Apple ][ and IBM PC Machines, and we were taught BASIC, and LOGO, both turtle and mathematic instructions. We had district-wide competitions. Computing was for more than teaching productivity software and reader rabbit-crap.

This is something that has been lost from the curriculum, and should be regained.

Joe's son is 17, and while still developing, I'd venture that any associations he's made with violence and good were made long before he reached this age. Give the kid and parent some credit, the kid is an adolescent and hasn't rejected hanging out with his Dad- they must be doing something right!

More programming, less game...

[hillct]

There was a whole range of products out there along these lines back in the mid 80s. I recall one from Origin Systems (back when they were independant) that enphesised the game aspects rather than the programming aspects but nonetheless tought basic programming concepts using a BASIC-like language. As a teaching aid it was somewhat lacking but as a game, it rocked. Battles ere fought in a dufimentry 3D universe set around Origin Systems headquarters in Austin Texas. They even offered the ability to upload your robots for competition against other players where the stats were available on a BBS where members could review their rankings. Granted the online competitions weren't realtime and Blizard's battle.net is a far cooler forum for online gaming, but all that proves is that technology marches on and that Origin Systems was way ahead of their time. I think the game was called OMEGA although I'm not sure.

--CTH

Re:More programming, less game...

[tmark]

Origin Systems was way ahead of their time. I think the game was called OMEGA

Before that I believe there was a game for the Apple II called (I believe) Robot Wars. It had its own programming language and you programmed your robots to fight and move in a little arena. This was in the early 80's at latest, so I believe this would well predate the game you're thinking of.

Re:More programming, less game...

[nicku]

OMEGA was a great game...way ahead of its time...

There appears to still be a bit of a player community and they have the language docs:

http://www.atlantic.net/~flburns/omega/

.n.

Re:More programming, less game...

[thelexx]

You are correct. It was by Muse Software, the same people who brought us one of the King Hell games of the time - the original Castle Wolfenstein!!

LEXX

Re:More programming, less game...

[hillct]

Actually, yes. You're correct. I remember Robot Wars. It was somewhat less elegant than Omega, but definately cool. As I recall though, the graphics fell someware between NetTrek and Pong.

Online version ala Battlebots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone given any thoughts to creating an online 'arena' where anyone who wants to can pit their bots against one another? This would be the poor man's version of battlebots, although I'd like to see if we can extend the code to do more 'interesting' things...

Another idea..

[dwlemon]

Has this been done?

What about a programming puzzle game? You'd get a task and some constraints and have to write a program that meets the requirements.

from "Output the alphabet without using any character literals." to.. something more complicated. permutations of a string?

It'd just have to parse the source file to see if they followed the rules, see if it compiles (warnings not allowed!), and then run the program with whatever input it needs, and parse the output.

Re:Another idea..

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Perl, I don't see the challenge...

down they go.

[SubtleNuance]

wow, weve /.ed IBM.

Bend to our will IBM l0z3rzz.

Re:down they go.

[jsse]

It's just getting slow but doesn't crash. I'm still downloading the game at 1.2K/sec, 1hr to go. Not too bad really. :)

Re:down they go.

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm at 1.36KB/s .. hehe .. l0ser..

Re:down they go.

[revscat]

Y'know, I think that /. should set that up as a motto somewhere. "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. And we took down IBM's webservers, so watch it, bucko."

Re:down they go.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, they're oviously still running windows.. I'm still waiting for some cheeky bastard to send the good old ping-o-death to that server...

Re:down they go.

[Anonymous Coward]

if we had some warning.. That might have helped :)
People need to learn 10MB files with HTTP kills webservers.. FTP works so much better.. Still need a bigger ftp server though.. Time to sleep..

Old hat

[DrXym]

This kind of game came out 16 years ago as C-Robots.

link weirdness

[Gantoris]

Have a look at the link here. At the bottom of the page, and i thought that thing was dead and gone by now.......

mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone have a mirror for the setup files?

heh.. reminds me of school

[Johnny5000]

This reminds of of one of the programming projects I had to do for my introductory C++ course in school was an artillery simulator. The final program had to input the angles you wanted to launch the shell, and you had to hit certain targets around campus. It was pretty fun.

-J5K

What about the other way around?

[Grelli]

There are those that will tell you it works exactly opposite this.

You Learn Violence through trying to program in Java!

Re:What about the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

learn gayness from reading the above post

Re:What about the other way around?

[Anonymous Coward]

MUST INSERT PENIS INTO MANGINA!
(without a lameness filter, this text would not be present.)

interview with the developer

[n3m6]

kuro5hin has a much more in depth look at robowars .

Variety Of "Java Robots" out there...

[Tronster]

Java robot-programming systems have been around for a few years. My room mate created one three years ago called
J Robots. His inspiration was the C-Robots which many people have already mentioned in their comments.

There are a few other Java robot systems listed on Dmoz.org.

I want to play Perlbot

[Anonymous Coward]

Program a robot to get a date with Heidi Wall. Meee-ow!

Just like Apple's RobotWars

[shodson]

In 7th grade Comp Sci class (only in San Jose, CA!) we used Robot Wars on Apple ]['s that did similar things. Robots would be in a 2-dimensional plane, had a motor, radar and a cannon. You could control these things with code. Your bots would fight each other on the screen. By the way, I had the best bot in the class! I even beat the bots built by the teacher's sons, who were CS students at San Jose State and he always bragged about them.

Anyways, I've been craving a modern version of this for some time now and haven't been able to find anything. I've thought of building one but I'll have to check this one out.

intergalactics.net

[Chagrin]

intergalactics.net also allows users to create Java robots to test and play them on the server.

...which is where I wrote my first (and last) java class. Ech.

Lame!

[vishakh]

Real men play Core Wars and learn assembly. This does beat learning Java in Prof. Thronton's ICS 22 class tho. :-)

Oh it's just a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't take it serious.

Oops I did it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another site slashdotted http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:L1cXj8y2PgI:r obocode.alphaworks.ibm.com/+&hl=en

Re:Oops I did it again

[Anonymous Coward]

A google cache won't do much good cuz google dosen't cache the stuff you need to download.

I regret to inform you that you, sir, are a raging homosexual.

chipwits

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody else remember a game called Chipwits? It was a mac game, I think it came out sometime in the mid 80's. The player put together a program from little instruction-tiles (kind of like a flowchart in a way), for the purpose of guiding a robot through a maze filled with hazards and goodies.
I don't suppose it's as good a primer on programming as some of these other games people have mentioned, but then again it's playable by younger kids -- I have fond memories of playing it when I was 9 or 10.

I wanna learn

[cyberbob2010]

I was gonna pay to go to a Non-credit Java course at the local college (I'm only in high school). I'll probably still go but this will definatley help. and being a amer it should be pretty fun to.
c-bob out

Re:Slashcode revisited! Bumper Double Issue!

[Pengo]

Hmm.. it's a message board, a BBS.. not a air-traffic-control system. I am sure that more time and effort can be put into better text search tool (ie. off the shelf alternatives exist), but who cares?

I just want to see the news, read crap from trolls (such as yourself), and hopefully learn a thing or two.

You put a lot of effort into this post, but you haven't offered a single suggestion on improvments, only shot down the efforts of many. I guess some people are born to build, some are born to tear down.

Good luck on your conquest.

waaaaa

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm getting 8k (and d/loading both the winversion and the ns .jar version also...so go cry in yer cheerios anyway..sorry to browse YOUR ibm.com turd

IBM server?

[deadgoon42]

Did we just /. and IBM server?

Re:IBM server?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, as a matter of fact we did. Let's celebrate by sucking the semen out of each other's assholes!

hehe Kuro5hin...can it stay up for a week yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

that site is great..when it's up

realtimebattle

[niklaus]

For those who don't care about Java but want to program robots, there is a similar program called realtimebattle which lets you write robots in any language you want (ok, any language which can read and write standard input and output).

What!?

[battjt]

Humans have solved conflicts using violence for hundreds of thousands of years. Why should we drop that great tradition now? Why should we forget its effect through suppression in the media? Is it better for me to take your stuff by way of bribery, legal trickery or by knocking you down and taking it? I suggest that the more honest approach is through the violence of knocking you down and taking it (it may result to that anyway).

Violence is an honest viable form of conflict resolution. I suggest that people learn when it is appropriate. Given that, it is not appropriate in school, in the houses of congress, or in the board room.

Violence may be appropriate when dealing with a group that has extremely different background and values from you own. Violence is a very basic conflict resolution style that everyone from Asian, to African, to European, to American Indian, to canine, to sheep, to lion understand. I would guess that any form of life capable of memory and self preservation, even alien, would understand violence.

Violence is in itself not wrong.

Are battling robots really violent? What's the difference if we settle our conflict through dumping money into lobbiest, or dumping our money into battlee bots; in the end, the organisation with the most money wins.

Just some Sunday morning banter.
Joe

Stored Procedures all over again

[Tablizer]

Why not make it be multi-lingual? Why just Java? Supply an API that any language can use. This issue comes up whenever stored procedures are mentioned and somebody wants to use another language besides PL/SQL or Java or whatever.

Re:Stored Procedures all over again

[Curt Cox]

Granted, Robocode is obviously geared towards writing the bots in Java, but you can run just about any language on a JVM, and Robocode lets you use .class files from anywhere. Out of all these languages most people will find one suitable for building bots.

Learning vs. Imitating

[egdull]

In middle school, I built robots for a pascal-based fighting environment such as this one.

I notice now that I was merely imitating the coding practices found in the example code and the code that my friends and I shared.
I was learning interfaces and code structure in a very oblique manner.
I wasn't learning program structure or timing.

It was a lot of fun, but I didn't walk away from the experience with anything more than a cursory memory of what code is.

Violence doesn't cause all evil in the world.

[sheetsda]

OK, I think this "violence is bad" argument is being taken way beyond a sane or healthy level here. You call this game violent? Did you ever play Tank for Atari as a kid? This is game a remake of that game with modifiable AI and better graphics. You aren't looking at horrific scenes of brutal warfare; you see these small robots shooting little pellets at one another with a decreasing counter above them. Hardly what I would consider violent. Suppose kids were not exposed what you consider violence. How would they deal with the real world? They couldn't, they'd probably go crazy and we'd be worse off than we are now. I don't know about you, but I was technically a kid when I played Wolfenstein 3d, Spear of Destiny, Doom, Doom2, and Quake. You fail to reallise the premise of these games, they clearly state that you have two options: kill, or be killed, they do not present you with the peaceful resolution option because it is assumed to have failed. A situation we would hope never to put into but one we as a species are innately curious about. I also don't feel these games had any negative affect on me whatsoever, in fact, they gave my life direction: they inspired me to study Computer Science, and I'm sure there are millions, if not billions, of kids playing violent games every day. How many are cold-hearted killers? Very few. Due to the fact that Joe appears to be a good parent (helping his son pick up some skills that will be very handy later in life), his son is almost a zero risk for causing another Columbine. This debate against violence has been taken beyond reason. It has become more of a witch-hunt.

Re:Violence doesn't cause all evil in the world.

[James Nolan]

I agree. The 'solution' I'm leaning towards is not to reduce the amount of fighting, guns, wargames etc. in a childs life. Just the opposite. Go deeper and deeper into it. If your kid is interested in things associated with violence, like guns, get him a gun. No, don't let him 'get by' with only a surface understanding of what he is doing, get him deeper and deeper into it. You won't raise a psycho, you'll raise an expert. Psychos are the people who were denied the opportunity to follow their bliss, and have been secretly stalking it ever since.

I read a story about a guy who had a 'troublesome' fascination with fire. So his parents got him a job burning things. Now he's a master blacksmith, not an arsonist.

Chances are that little boys are attracted to violence because they know intuitively that violence is an important thing to learn about.

How do you protect a child from car accidents? Do you keep him isolated away from roads? Or do you expose him to roads as much as possible with a parent there as a guide? Which gives the child more experience to draw from later in life? Is it better to fear highways, or understand them?

Can violence be understood?

learning company-robot game

[faithhopeandcharity]

The learning company had a cool game out that you had to put different gates together to make robots to complete quests. It was non violent. Very fun! I'm not sure why they don't sell it anymore. I wish I could get a copy for my neices and nephews.
anyone know what happened to this game??

Faith

Re:learning company-robot game

[techy]

And I thought I was the only one who had played this! It was called Robot Odyssey, I believe, for teaching logic and the basics of electronic components. I actually called them (The Learning Company) to see if I could get a copy. The people that I talked to hadn't even heard of it, and said that there were "no plans" to re-release a game by that name. Currently, the only way that I have found to play it is via Commodore emulator... If anyone has found a way to get a PC version of this, I would also love to hear about it.

Re:learning company-robot game

[Kwil]

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~lex/ro.html

Enjoy!

Real men

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men buttfuck each other 75% of the day and then suck each other's cocks the rest of the time!

I regret to inform me that I, sir, am a raging homosexual.

Re:Real men

[Anonymous Coward]

you must be confusing corewars with cockworks

Yeaahhh, boooyyy! Logo is in da house!

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, I remember using Logo in 1980. Using that to draw circles and squares on the Commodore Pet, if I remember correctly. That was cool, except everyone wanted that thing to play Rocky's Boots.

C++Robots

[mgarraha]

Ever since I read about the play-by-email C++Robots I wondered where I could find the original concept. Thanks!

ZZT OOP language

[Thrakkerzog]

Does anyone remember programming in the game ZZT?

That was a blast, and a fun way to learn OOP.

Re:ZZT OOP language

[bugg]

Of course I do. ZZT was the ONLY single player game that I've ever played that kept me that capitvated for years. I'm sure if I loaded it up now, I'd lose countless more hours of productivity..

Tim Sweeney's finest, if you ask me, although I'm sure he'd disagree :)

Re:ZZT OOP language

[jonathan_ingram]

In order to help you destroy your productivity:

http://www.zzt.org/

Re:ZZT OOP language

[Anonymous Coward]

but you must not forget Megazeux either...

I've done this before

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm usually pretty violent when forced to program something in java.

Disussion groups, theory and more sample bots

[cvanaver]

Can be found at: http://www.robocode.net/

What a coincidence

[wrinkledshirt]

I get violent when they make me use Java, too.

MindRover

[OverCode@work]

http://www.cognitoy.com

And, of course, Loki ported it to Linux.

It's an incredibly addictive robot battle game. You generally build robots with a GUI interface, but for serious hackers there is an object oriented definition language called Ice that compiles into the same VM code as the GUI builder.

-John

Doesn't like JDK 1.4beta2

[Brian Stretch]

FYI: Robocode doesn't like Sun's JDK 1.4 Beta 2. I'll presume it'll play nice with 1.3.1.

Also, downloading the .jar with Netscape 4.77 (Windows) didn't work (mangled file), but wget (from my Linux server) did.

Maybe this will get little brother interested in programming, he likes to destroy stuff...

Damn, Slashdotted IBM. Obviously they need to devote one of those S/390's running Linux to Alphaworks :-).

Re:Doesn't like JDK 1.4beta2

[barzok]

It's running fine with 1.4b2 for me.

Real violence vs. game "violence"

[gad_zuki!]

I say, reward our children for their good deeds with positive reinforcement. The violence is completely unnecessary, and can warp an impressionable young mind.


If this game involved the murder of others than yes it is violent. Unfortunately, its a game with badly rendered tanks. I really think its important to realize the difference between reality and fantasy. The more PC thugs try to blur that line the more confused kids we have.

Children are notoriously suceptible to the power of suggestion,

Ever consider that your assumptions might be doing to the impressionable?

All I can say is

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't work don't study... PLAY THE CORE WAR!

Its was better the first time

[Anonymous Coward]

When it was called COREWARS.

Weighing the good Vs. Bad

[TheStruuus]

Violence in a game is always seen as a terrible thing. Especially in this day and age with violence everywhere, I really don't see 2 tanks shooting each other as incredibly violent. Have you played Soldier of fortune or any recent 1st person shooter? You can de-limb a victim and see the blood splatter against the wall.

Even if this game is violent think of what it is doing, it's trying to get people involved in programming and computers in general. I attend an engineering school and have been amazed at the number of people that have no computer knowledge of any sort, especially in a technological field. Things like this could get people involved at a high school level in computers, so violence is bad, but sometimes the benefits are worth the cost.

Robot Odyssey (Apple II)

[e7]

I waited years to find a copy of this game. Unfortunately it didn't age well -- the robots are programmed with logic gates and IC's, and they don't shoot each other -- but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Re:Robot Odyssey (Apple II)

[skt]

I remember that game! I think I still have it on 5.25" floppy discs, but I don't have the apple hardware anymore :(

Re:Robot Odyssey (Apple II)

[orcus]

What do you mean it didn't age very well?
The name of the game wasn't "Robot Battle 1", it was "Robot Odyssey 1".

Palmbots

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be cool if you could fight code bots over the IR port of a PDA?

real time battle

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, there are tons of these programming game.

A project like Real Time Battle (http://www.lysator.liu.se/realtimebattle/)allows you to use any language.

look at this page

http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~stever/games/

there are about 20 programmin games there

Online version for P2P

[shodson]

I have, in a P2P fashion, where people could host arenas on their PCs and bots get submitted in the network, battle in others areans, and then move to other areans on the network once they are beaten or dethroned. The owner gets incremental reports on how their roaming robot is doing, either getting the crap beat out of it left and right or is king of the arena and unbeatable at 167.89.45.19.

http://www.ubero.com/

Flowerpower

[manon]

Well, I guess kinds were taught to program with flowergames in the 60's, the "stoned peace" age.
So it's kind of logical that they learn it with violence now, we are of cource in the "I'm on speed and very aggressive" age ;)

AT-Robots

[Gogl]

I've seen a lot of ones like this, but the one I liked the most was AT-Robots. It was based on Assembler, and it was entertaining enough that even though assembler is hard to learn I actually learned *some* of it by playing this. The address: http://www.necrobones.com/atrobots/

Entertaining stuff.

anyone know of?

[fjordboy]

Does anyone know of games that could teach someone perl or php and stuff? Does anyone have a list of games that teach different programming languages?

Tournament Mode or network API

[Curt Cox]

I'm really waiting for a tournament mode or network API for Robocode. I want to see if I can write better bots through coding them directly, or by using genetic algorithms to breed them.

Re:Tournament Mode or network API

[yzquxnet]

hehe, I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking along the lines of Darwinism. Only the strong survive.

I hope the guy working on RoboCode decides to program in network play. I would love to have wars with others. Maybe even team play. That would be interesting.

PLEASE SUPPORT OPEN SOURCE GNUHAIKU!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a fuckwad
Violence and sex are good
Have sex and agree

THIS IS RELEASED UNDER GNU PUBLIC LICENSE

CRobots back in the 80's is the granddaddy

[EQ]

And corewars before that was the great-granddaddy.

Crobots original page

Re:Learning violence through Java

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that there are four completely different things that go by the name ``Java'':

A language;
An enormous class library;
A virtual machine;
A security model.

Sun would like you to believe that these are all the same thing, and that the name ``Java'' implies all of them, but this is marketing fiction. Worse
than that, the fact that Sun has tried so hard to push this idea has done grievous damage to the acceptance of Java.

Java-the-virtual-machine is an interesting research project, a nice proof of concept
speed isn't all that important: basically, those tasks where you could get away with using Perl instead of C.)

Java-the-security-model is another interesting research project, but it only barely works right now. In a few years, maybe they'll have it

-This is by jwz

figured out or replaced.

RoboCode Repository WebSite - Exchange Bots!

[DanLynn]

http://robocode.turbochicken.com - This is a site that me and some of my Java buddies are putting together for fun. We've just started it - but already have most of the back end done. Please stop by and check it out. We're looking for suggestions and ideas before we officially launch it. So, please read the stories on the homepage to see what we have in mind for the site then send feedback to the email address posted on the homepage. Also, I've compiled a list of links to other RoboCode websites, tutorials, and discussion forums. By the way, the upload/download and save features are disabled for a few days. Check back towards the end of the week to start actually exchanging source and class files.

Re:Learning violence through Java

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is the "postercomment compression filter"?

idiots

[cheese_wallet]

Why the hell do you people think anyone would want to become a programmer? You people are like religious nut cult trying to convert all the children to your ways.

Re:idiots

[Luggage]

Well, if you're good there's the pay, the intelectual stimulation, variety, satisfaction of a good solution to a hard problem... There's the practice for problem soving which can be applied elsewhere. Why not become a programmer, or at least learn to do it? It's at least something you can put on your resume.
And one more thing: you sound like you're preaching against programming in any way, shape or form. Please don't argue for ignorance.

Re:idiots

[yzquxnet]

What ever happened to the thrill of a cool code hack?

That has always been what keeps me coding. I love getting myself stuck into a coding corner (???). If I knew how to program perfectly I don't think it would be any fun. Half the fun is trying to solve a problem that has left others stuck.

I think the real question is why anyone would not want to become a programmer!

Damn you Slashdotters!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the site has been major slashdotted.
I'm downloading Robocode at a wild 2.2k/s.

Re:Damn you Slashdotters!!

[plasmator]

Can Anyone mirror this?

Seems the ftp is down.

Such a thing exists.

[khaladan]

It's called TopCoder, located at www.topcoder.com (use my name khaladan as referrer if you sign up). You can participate in a contest usually once or twice a week with 7 other programmers trying to solve various problems of increasing difficulty.

It's based on time. Whoever submits code the fastest, gets the most points. Of course, then there's a challenge round where you inspect other people's code for bugs, and if you find one, supply input that will produce bad output (or crasht the program).

It's a greate contest. Currently you can choose either Java or C++ to program solutions in.

Plus, if you get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place in your room (of max 8 people), you get $150, $75, or $25 dollars, respecitively. I myself have not been playing very long but I got 2nd place once, and sure enough, a check came about two weeks later for $75.

So, sign up and try it... use my name, khaladan, as the person who referred you.

There are (N+1) of these games

[plastik55]

There are a number of these kinds of games. Other people have mentioned Crobots, Jrobots, and a dozen others I've never heard of. One of my favorites was RoboWar for the Mac, because it used a very small stack-based language, designed in such a way that the processor speed of the robot was limited. Each robot could execute only a limited number of operations per time step, which meant that efficient implementation of your algorithm was the biggest factor in how well your robot did. The author of the game also held annual tournaments that aspiring RoboWarriors could submit their entries to, and see how they fared against the state of the art. That meant that the robots, even with very limited computational capacity, had a very rapid evolution toward very sophisticated algorithms. Early robots just roved around and fired whenever they saw something in their sights. As time went on, the entries seen in the tournaments were able to camp in corners, dodge incoming fire, "lead" their targets, and employ inter-robot communication for team battles.

Learning throgh RoboWar to produce advanced behaviour out of a slow and limited language was a great help when I later went on to dabble in embedded systems--the skill set required is very similar.

A.I. Wars - The Insect Mind

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot like the game A.I. Wars which has yet to gain the attention it deserves. Check out www.tacticalneuronics.com and go to A.I. Wars-The Insect Mind.

Your sig

[reverius]

Leftist - force the world to work together, thus violating human nature.

Liberal - ask the world to work together, thus getting no response.

Libertarian - allow corporations to enslave humanity without government intervention.

:)

MindRover RTS Games

[BigSlowTarget]

Have always wanted to see a version of this built inside an RTS game. Its the only reasonable way I see to solve the stupid AI pathing issues that seem to plague the games.

Robot Gladiators: http://www.roboforge.com/

[mikemetalhead]

Thought this might be of interest...there is a game called RoboForge that uses programmable robots. See: http://www.roboforge.com/ Basically, you have a Bot wizard you can create your robots with, then you run the simulation against an opponent, then after the simulation, you watch the 'real' fight. Kinda cool. Seems to use fairly intense collision detection and stuff. It is one of the first commercial games (that I know of anyway) that uses Java3D. There is a free trial download (about 30 mb). Mike

RoboCode + Lego Mindstorms = Living Room Battlebot

[rbeattie]

Now if we just combined this thread with the Lego Mindstorms thread we'd get some true BattleBot action in your living room... I wonder how Lego'd feel about THAT?

Robot Odyssey 1

[orcus]

Actually, I think "Robot Odyssey 1" also by the "The Learning Company" is closer to Mindrover.
You can find it here: http://www.theunderdogs.org/game.php?id=916
Unfortunately I've never been able to get my copy to run on anything except my original XT.

Rocky's Boots was a good pre-requisite for Robot Odyssey 1.

A game that could be considered an inspiration for Mindrover would be Origin's "Omega".
Unfortunately, like most games empasizing thinking over twitching - it never sold that well.
http://www.theunderdogs.org/game.php?name=Omega

C++ through Sex

[Jebediah21]

I would greatly be interested in learning C++ through sex. Since sex is better than violence, and C++ is tougher to use than Java, I think it will all balance out.

Sensationalism?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is slashdot learning from tabloid journalism in making up the headlines? Oh well, at least the writeups usually clarify the issue...

Learning Java Through Violence - for every bug and every unnecessary perusal through the manuals, you get beat up...

educational violence?

[projecto2501]

See Typing of the Dead for the Dreamcast.

Gun down zombies with your mad typing skillz.

Ultimate holy war! :)

[^Z]

There are several games where you write code in some language to control a robot that fights another robot, programmed is the same language.

Now, imagine a beow... ooops, a game where you first choose the language for the control program. Fight java-controlled bot with perl-controlled bot, lisp-controlled bot, python-controlled bot, etc. By this, the ultimate winners of language holy wars can be determined in most apparent way :)

The bots should be equipped with a flamethrower, of course :)

Try this one!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.epsitec.ch/colobot/index.htm

Not only good graphics but good game logic too.

Re:RoboCode + Lego Mindstorms = Living Room Battle

[frozenray]

Cognitoy actually did this for their Mindrover robot sim, see this link.

Assembly 'Bots

[stokes]

There's also PICbots... basically the same thing as Robocode and the like, except you're programming in real PIC assembly. I thought it was pretty cool, except for the fact that I loathe assembly. Can't say for sure what impact this has had on my manliness, though.

Mirror of the Setup-File

[XRayX]

I uploaded the setup.jar file to my old geocities-trash, so if you want to dwonload it from a not slashdotted server (yet):
www.geocities.com/kruemelcam/robocode
X

This is how i learned BASIC, too

[SimCash]

Well, not really, but I did play with RS232 serial protocols trying to set up a two-computer system.

By coincidence, I had just sent the following to robotcombat.com

In the early 80's I wrote a program I called ROBOTWARS ((C) 1985) for the Osborne I - it was a BASIC language interpreter of a second programming language I called BATTLECODE ((C) 1985). Players wrote little AI programs that controlled the behavior of their robots, then the robots (up to 10) would compete with each other in an arena, searching and destroying each other under full, independent control of the AI programs (no human intervention). Of course, I did not market this game, and it was based (loosely) on COREWARS as described in a Scientific American article (1984).

It looks like that little SciAm article spawned quite a legacy.

I had also heard of a (and found) a non-discriminatory EXE that let you code your robot in any language, the master control program then played the EXEs against each other. Pascal, C, VB - any EXE-producing compiler worked.

Missing the point

[Jedbro]

I think everyone is missing the point of this!
Hell yeah, cool that you know other similar games exist, and for the last 20 years there have been similar games. So what!! Most of the are outdated, or simly not used very much these days.
But thats not the point.

This is not a game to compete with the others,
This is simily a Robot game, made for use with JAVA, and for programing in JAVA!

I find it very fun, and usefull. Why? Because its a real language, one Im currently learning in school, and its new. Mat has big plans for the game. It already has a huge userbase behind it, and its only 3 months old.
Im happy many of you have other such games, Im just glad there is now one made for Java, and crossplatformed.

Actually, this week Im starting to organize a Semester long Tournament starting from now until the end of November for those interested in my Campus who are taking the Java Class..

This is great I hope others are enjoying it as much as myself!

cheers

--JED

Please tell me

[jsse]

Anyone has develop a bot that won the 'Wall' bot? I worked hard on it in vain. Please!

New FTP server

[Anonymous Coward]

They have a new ftp server up... downloading at my full dsl speed now...