Robocode Tutorial

The Robot

A Robot consists of:

Body

• Energy:
  • Start with 100.
  • Drops when firing, getting hit, running into robots or walls and being inactive
  • At 0, it is game over!
• Ahead(double distance) & Back: Distance in pixels.
  • Collision with another robot: 0.6 energy damage
  • Collision with a wall abs(velocity) * 0.5 - 1 (never < 0) (AdvancedRobot only)
• Velocity: Measured in pixels/turn. Max: 8px/turn. Accelerate: 1px/turn. Decelerate: 2px/turn.
• TurnLeft(double degrees) & TurnRight
  • Maximum rate of rotation is (10 - 0.75 * abs(velocity)) deg/turn.
  • The faster you’re moving, the slower you turn.
  • Heading: Direction the tank is facing. Returns 0 to 360 (exclusive). 0 is North. 90 is East etc.
• Width & Height: Dimensions of the Robot. (36×36)

Gun

Pew! Pew! Pew!!

• Mounted on the Body.
• GunHeat:
  • Can only Fire when this is zero.
  • Each turn the Gun cools with GunCoolingRate. Default: 0.1 / turn.
  • At game start GunHeat is 3.
• Fire & FireBullet(double power): Bullet:
  • With power between 0.1 and 3.
  • Costs power amount of energy. If power > energy, you become disabled.
  • Damage: (4 * power). If power > 1, an additional 2 * (power - 1) damage.
  • If hit, you regain (3 * power) worth of energy.
  • GunHeat increases with 1 + (power / 5).
  • Generates onBullHit, onBulletHitBullet and onBulletMissed events.
  • Bullets move with a velocity of 20 - (3 * power)
• turnGunLeft and turnGunRight.
  • The maximum rate of rotation is: 20 deg/turn.
  • GunHeading: Direction the gun is facing. Returns 0 to 360 (exclusive). 0 is North. 90 is East etc.
  • IsAdjustGunForRobotTurn: True = Guns turns separately of Body.

Radar

Scans for other robots.

• Mounted on the Gun.
• turnRadarLeft(double degrees) and turnRadarRight.
  • The maximum rate of rotation is: 45 deg/turn
• Generates onScannedRobot events when another robot is detected.
• RadarHeading: Direction the radar is facing.
• IsAdjustRadarForGunTurn: True = Radar turns separately of Gun.
• IsAdjustRadarForRobotTurn: True = Radar turns separately of Body.

Battling other robots

The best way to debug your robot is, of course battling others!

• Sample Bots: Packaged with Robocode. Practice against these first :)
• Super Sample Bots: The next step.
• How to download other Robots
• Some Super Robots
• Open Source Robots

Learning Resources

Learning to

• Move
• Use the radar
• Targeting
• More tutorials

Other resources

• Robocode articles
• Graphical Debugging

Youtube

• Programming Games: Robocode // Patrick Cupka
• Introduction to Robocode // Philip Johnson
• Walk-through of testing code for robocode // Philip Johnson