JRobots: An Addictive Challenge for Java Programmers…

Addiction is the only name I can give to the love for this intellectual challenge targeted for Java developers .

You may remember from your school days about cRobots, a program which allows robots written in c language to compete with each other. Fast forward several years…for few years now there are Java versions of cRobots available.

The version I will talk today is jRobots. It was developed by Leonardo Boselli, who also created an exciting monthly tournament (with help from other developers in his forum). There are other java implementations of cRobots (including one from IBM) but none has such a great following and an exciting tournament. Recently it has moved over to hosting at SourceForge.
Monthly tournaments are held and very well contested by several players.
There are two leagues, cadets league for newcomers and who have been demoted from the veterans league. There are three divisions in each league - Single, Double and Match. In double two of your players fight against two of your opponents. You get the drift.

The interesting thing is that you can easily develop your first robots as the API is simple and also great examples are provided. And introductory tips to improve your robots are provided too. Recently Caos, author of the robot Tango, which is swepping the veterans cetagory in three divisions for several months now, has written an excellent and highly informative article which allows you to make super grade robots to allow you to compete in the veterans league.
And then it is fascinating to see how your robots fight against different enemies, how little tweaks can improve your robots and give you edge. All in all it is a very enjoyable experience and definitely much better than any shoot-em games.

I urge to at least give it a try. You can actually see robots fight against each other by selecting one or more robots in single, double or match (try single first).
Then you can download the Arena and test the sample robots against your home breed ones. I can assure you that you can create your first robot in about 10-15 minutes. And you can enter it in the tournament too.

And then it all fun

Let me know how it goes.

PS. This is a totally free game and tournament and there are no commercial interests whatsoever for this post.