Assignment 5: Robocode

Due: Friday. Nov. 4 by 9am (20 points)

The goal for this assignment is to set up the Robocode agent toolkit on a system of your choosing and make a competent agent.

Results posted

Setup

Download Robocode and install
Install Eclipse using the online instructions
Go to Snarfer Site Browser in Eclipse. Add the class snarf site (http://www.cs.duke.edu/education/courses/fall05/cps097s/snarf/).
Snarf the labs/01_SampleRobots project. See the help pages on snarfing a project for more information.
Set up the project to access the Robocode library
- Select the Properties item in the Project menu
- Select the Libraries tab, then click on Add External JARs
- Select robocode.jar in your workspace under the 01_SampleRobots project
- Expand the listing for robocode.jar and click Attach Source and select robocode.jar
- Edit Javadoc location and set it to http://www.cs.duke.edu/education/courses/fall05/cps097s/assign/robocode/doc/
- Click Finish
- Add the location of your project to the Development Options under Options/Preferences
- Create a new package within the current project. Use your initials for the name. Copy MyFirstRobot.java into your new package.

Getting help

The first thing you should do is check out the following sites.

Rock 'em, sock 'em Robocode!
A very good unofficial Robocode tutorial
Robocode Wiki's Guide for Beginners
To see all of the methods are available, check out the Robocode API

Building your own robot

Your goal is to write an effective one-on-one Robocode robot. Your robot will be judged by:

Performance against default agents
Performance compared to, other robots developed by students in the class
Quality of your code
Description of your code in your writeup

Basic Robot performance

Your first goal with your robot is to show you can do better than the supplied default agents. Battling against one of the default agents in the Robocode environment, your agent receives one point each time it wins in a competition lasting sevenn rounds. You should be able to defeat the Walls and Tracker agents.

Roboleague

You will compete with the other robots in the class in a Roboleague. The top robot will earn extra points. Otherwise, your robot will be judged on its code and your writeup.

Writeup

Write your anwers to the following questions in a file called README.

Agent design: Describe the overall architecture of your agent.
Implementation comments: Describe any specific strategies or tactics your agent employed.
Reflections: Write about any particular problems you had with this assignment. Did you have trouble setting up the agent environment? Did you enjoy the assignment? How much time did you spend?

Submitting

Submit your project in Eclipse using the robocode assignment name. See help documents for more information.

Jeffrey R.N. Forbes

Last modified: Wed Nov 9 09:59:45 EST 2005