There was a shareware program called Combat Zone for windows, came out 1994 IIRC, that had you programming some robots (in ROBOL) to do things like turn, use radar, move and shoot the hell out of other robots. Nice and simple, in some ways too simple. This was written by guy who yearned for something similar to what he learn't to program on way back. I've looked for similar things for ages and finally noticed on freshmeat something called RealTimeBattle which is a Linux rewrite/extension of a similar thing for windows but isn't Combat Zone. You can program for this Linux one in any language (examples in Perl, C++ etc) and the program tries to use real physics for accelerating, turning etc.
So there's at least 4 of these 'Robots controlled by a program you write in an arena shooting other robots' type programs.
The real way these things grab you is when you put your program up against your friend's and watch the fight. Then good honest childhood rivalry makes you a better programmer for the next fight.
I just tried freshmeat to get the homepage for RTB but couldn't get in. You try.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jargon_52.html#S EC59
The Jargon File got you spot on.
There was a shareware program called Combat Zone for windows, came out 1994 IIRC, that had you programming some robots (in ROBOL) to do things like turn, use radar, move and shoot the hell out of other robots. Nice and simple, in some ways too simple. This was written by guy who yearned for something similar to what he learn't to program on way back. I've looked for similar things for ages and finally noticed on freshmeat something called RealTimeBattle which is a Linux rewrite/extension of a similar thing for windows but isn't Combat Zone. You can program for this Linux one in any language (examples in Perl, C++ etc) and the program tries to use real physics for accelerating, turning etc.
So there's at least 4 of these 'Robots controlled by a program you write in an arena shooting other robots' type programs.
The real way these things grab you is when you put your program up against your friend's and watch the fight. Then good honest childhood rivalry makes you a better programmer for the next fight.
I just tried freshmeat to get the homepage for RTB but couldn't get in. You try.