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Robocode Rumble: Tips From the Champs
Jason writes "The Robocode Rumble is over and the winners have been declared. Who are they and what are the secrets of their success? Dana Barrow talks shop with some of the mad scientists behind the winning Javabots and with Mat Nelson, who reveals what he has planned for Robocode 2.0. You can get the free download here."
Robocode is great. Its a neat exercise to get people intersted in OOP and Java.
Being a Java programmer, I've also looked at C# and seen what MS did to improve the language (lets face it, C# took the good things of Java, and fixed the bad things in Java).
The C# version of robocode?
Terrarium, and damn is it fun (I just wish you could change the stats of your offspring to 'adapt' instead of/in addition to just passing off AI)!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
There's a similar AI robotic combat program Tech tv did a story on called MelBotWars.
It's basically a plugin for maya which uses the MEL(Maya Embedded Language) programming language for coding your bot's AI, and uses the rigidBody dynamics in Maya for the physics.
Also, take note that you only need the Maya personal learning edition to use it, which is free.
You wouldn't get results in this millenium if you did that. First of you want to make sure that you only generate valid code, and from what I've heard bytecode is a bit of a bitch to do by hand so generating java files which you compile is probably a better idea. (Or just use parameters which you tweak, that is the usual way of doing genetic programming.)
You need to feed the generator with a lot of domain info too, otherwise it will just produce garbage. (Even if it is compilable garbage.)
If you are interested in this stuff check genetic-programming.org.
I know that some guy used genetic programming to generate bots for Quake1. They were really stupid though. (He had a sort of blog where he told what had happened lately.) He got bots which would kill you right away if you circle strafed to the left. If you circle strafed to the right they would be completely lost. It's fun but not very usable.