Robocode

[SumitG]

How many people here have played this at one time or the other? I'm looking for help since I only have a basic knowledge of Java. Thanks in advance.

[peterliang]

our cs3 class did robocode

[SumitG]

I'm asking because my Comp Sci 1 class is having a tournament and I can't seem to get a few glitches out of my robot. I can't seem to find a way to track the enemy robot's movements to a point where I can hit over 70% of the time when constantly firing.
My current strategy is to move to the left wall and then move the radar and the gun so that they follow a single enemy. I think I only hit about 30% of the time because of the lag between the enemy's movement and my gun firing.

Oh, and we can't develop extra classes to aid our robot.

[peterliang]

lol the best performing bot is one that moves to the edge and then proceeds to just go around the edge like a box

[peterliang]

that was my friend's, mine's tactic was to just move in circles avoid walls, and keep moving in ovals of varying sizes unless i am coming behind someone, in which case i proceed to anniahlate them. didn't work as well as i had thoughtit wud

[SumitG]

I was thinking about doing something like that before, but how would you detect if the robot you are facing is facing away the same direction as you are?

I was thinking about making a separate class for Enemy Bots so I could track better but since we can't use any extra classes that idea went down the drain. Right now when I shoot the shot ends up exactly where the enemy was about 1 second ago. Most bots tend to move back and forth every few seconds though so when they move back 1 or 2 shots will hit.

Also, how did you're friend's strategy work out.

[peterliang]

considering that it was only about 4 lines of code, it was pretty good in that it beat most of the other robots that had way more code.
you can find the angle your facing and the angle the other robot is facing

[SumitG]

I see. Thanks. I think I'm going to make multiple bots and just check up on others' to see which one will fit best against the other. I tried downloading a robo from robocode repository to see how it was made and even the beginner ones were insane. At least 100 lines of code for each one. Good ones had like 1000s upon 1000s. Scary.

[SumitG]

I've achieved my goal. I made a robot that constantly changes colors =). I called it EpilepsyBot.

[peterliang]

hahahahah my friend made a bot that when u made a bunch of them looked like they were having a massive orgy

[SumitG]

[shrig94]

Rainbow ftw!

[SumitG]

No, no, it wasn't quite rainbow...It just happened to change colors constantly. Lol I totally forgot about this game. I eventually created a bot which was a good deal better than Epilepsy called YourDaddy that made fun of the bots it was going against. Every time it won it would print "WHO'S YOUR DADDY?'. Good times.

[shrig94]

what language is the game in?
how does it work?

[SumitG]