Robocode 1.7.2.0 Beta - The ".NET robots are now supported" release

We are proud to announce the 1.7.2.0 Beta release of Robocode, which is the first version to support .NET robots via using a plugin for Robocode. A lot of hard work has been put into the .NET support by Pavel Savara.

With the .NET plugin for Robocode, Java and .NET robots can participate in the same battles in the same time.

You can read our first article on the RoboWiki about
how to create a .NET robot with Visual Studio and run it in Robocode.

If you want to know the differences between the Robot API for Java and the new one for .NET, you should read this article.

We have also added lots of pending features and of course made some changes to Robocode as well.

We encourage everybody to test this Beta version as much as possible and report any bugs found at our Bugs Tracker at SourceForge. Then we will do everything we can to fix issues before the final release of version 1.7.2.0.

Bugfixes

• Bug [2930266] - Robot static data isn't being GCed after battle.


• Bug [2931445] - Removing directories from "development options" doesn't work.


• Bug in RobotClassLoader causing ClassNotFoundException for some robots during robot class load.


• Fixed a NullPointerException occuring when Robocode is (re)loading the robot repository after a developer path has been removed.


• Bug [2935451] - Version ordering is somewhat strange with letters.


• Bug [2930256] - Robot console text sometimes disappears.


• Bug [2928688] - morbid.MorbidPriest_1.0 fails to load.

New features

• .NET Robocode plugin. It is now possible to code robots in .NET and let them engage in Robocode battles.


• Req [2816882] - onRoundEnded(). It is now possible for robots to get notified when a round has ended. The onRoundEnded() event handler received a new RoundEndedEvent that contains information about the number of turns in the round and total turns in the whole battle when the event occurred.


• The robocode.control.RoundEndedEvent in the Control API has been extended with a new method named getTotalTurns() similar to the new robocode.RoundEndedEvent for the Robot API.


• Req [2931696] - RateControlRobot vs. TeamRobot. The RateControlRobot is now a TeamRobot meaning that it can participate in team battles.


• Req [2931684] - Skipped turn events. Added getSkippedTurn() method on the SkippedTurnEvent class, which returns the turn that was skipped. The getTime() returns the time when the SkippedTurnEvent was processed by the robot, which is always later when the robot is skipping turns. The message "SYSTEM: you skipped turn" has been improved, so it will tell which turn that was skipped like "SYSTEM: john.Doh skipped turn 43".


• Req [2342293] - Screenshot of battleview. Press Ctrl+T on Windows and Linux, and Command+T for Mac OS in order to take a screenshot of the battleview. The screenshot will be saved in the Robocode folder named "screenshots", and the filename will be a timestamp for when the screenshot was taken.


• Req [2496661] - Launch Robocode from .battle (battle specification) and .br (battle record) files.


• Req [2659612] - Add option to prevent speedup when minimized. This new View Option can now be set in the Preferences by putting a check mark into "Prevent speedup when minimized".


• Req [2643438] - Renamed /robots/.robotcache to /robots/.data

Changes

• Browser support has been improved for Mac OS, Unix and Linux, which in most cases did not work properly.
  
  
  • In previous versions of Robocode, the browser.sh was used to start up the user's prefered browser. The browser.sh file is not being used anymore. Hence, this file can safely be removed from your robocode installation dir.
  
  
  • Now, Robocode will start up a browser under Mac OS, Unix and Linux with no use of scripts.
  
  
• The Development Options dialog in the Preferences has been improved:
  
  
  • Changed from using single interval selection to multi selection interval.
  
  
  • Adding an existing path is ignored.
  
  
  • The list of path is automatically sorted.
  
  

Download Robocode 1.7.2.0 Beta from here
Download Robocode .NET plugin 1.7.2.0 Beta from here

Robocode 1.7.1.6

Happy New Year to everybody!

This is the final release of 1.7.1.6 which contains one new feature, some bug fixes, and a few changes compared to the beta.

Bugfixes

• Bug [2912942] - Mac OS X 10.6: Cannot run Robocode from robocode.sh. It must be run from the new robocode.command file instead.


• Bug [2912944] - Mac OS X 10.6: The editor cannot see the JDK. It must be run from the new robocode.command file instead.


• The onDeathEvent(DeathEvent) method was called too late, when a new round was about to start. Not when the robot has died.


• Bug [2867326] - Lockup on start if too many bots in robots dir (cont'd). Additional fix was made to locate multiple robots under the same package.


• Changed the robot painting so that everything that goes into the painting buffer is always painted, and remaining painting operations exceeding the buffer capacity are always dropped. Previously, only the last painting operations exceeding the painting buffer were executed.

New Features

• The amount of used memory and total memory is now shown in the title bar of Robocode. This is useful to see how much memory your robots are consuming.

Changes

• If the robot paints too much between actions, an improved error message is written out in the robot console. But from this version of Robocode this message is only written out a single time.


• A SecurityException is now thrown if a robot exceeds its max. data file quota, meaning that it uses more than 200.000 bytes its data files in total.

Download Robocode 1.7.1.6 from here

Robocode 1.7.1.6 Beta

This is a maintenance release of Robocode with the bug fixes and changes described below.

Bugfixes

• Bug [2897215] - Robot Editor doesn't accept packagename with dot (.) in it.


• Bug [2876395] - Source is not included.


• Bug [2867326] - Lockup on start if too many bots in robots dir (cont'd).

Requests

• Req [2641759] - Scrollable properties. All console windows including the Robot Console and Properties are now scrollable, and all have the same look.

Changes

• It is now possible to add paths to robot project inside an Eclipse workspace under the Development Options in the Preferences. Robocode will read the .classpath file in the project in order to locate both class files, properties files, and java files. This means that the Robot Packager is now able to include your source files when you use Eclipse, and it supports multiple source paths. Notice that Robocode does not support linked sources or include and exclude filters.


• Changed the messages given when creating a new robot with the Robot Editor regarding robot name and package name.

Download Robocode 1.7.1.6 Beta from here

Robocode 1.7.1.5

This is the final release of 1.7.1.5 that fixes two bugs compared to the beta version.

Bugfixes

• RobocodeFileOutputStream.getName() always returned null instead of the filename.


• Robots listed in e.g. the New Battle window was sorted like: 1.1.1, 1.1.10y, 1.1.2, 1.1.10 (alpha-numerical). But version numbers with an ending letter like in "1.1.10y" like in the versions just listed, were not placed in the correct order. Notice that 1.1.10y is between 1.1.1 and 1.1.2. This bug has been fixed so the versions in the example now will be sorted correctly like: 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 1.1.10, 1.1.10y

Download Robocode 1.7.1.5 from here

Robocode 1.7.1.5 Beta

This is a maintenance release of Robocode, which fixes the bugs below.

Bugfixes

• Bug [2871138] - Graphics2D.getTransform() throws NPE


• Bug [2872781] - "Teleport" - occurs when robot's distance remaining is very large


• Bug [2876395] - Source is not included, robot.java.source.included was not set

Download Robocode 1.7.1.5 Beta from here

How do you test your robot ?

Philip Johnson from University of Hawaii uses Robocode in his computer science course.

He came with idea of unit testing Robocode robots and prepared excellent video guide to show you how to do that.

He reused our implementation of RobotTestBed, which we use to test Robocode engine. We will be working with him to include his idea. Probably as downloadable Robocode extension package.

Code and more could be found in pmj-dacruzer project

Enjoy this great stuff!

Robocode 1.7.1.4

This final version 1.7.1.4 is dedicated for the RoboRumble@Home community where many issues seen with the RoboRumble client have been solved.

In the following the bug fixes and changes compared to the 1.7.1.4 Beta are listed.

Bugfixes

• Bug [2845608] - java.io.FileNotFoundException in RobotFileSystemManager.init


• Bug [2845612] - Can't load Katana 1.0 or DrussGT 1.3.1wilo


• Bug [2854692] - Lockup on start if too many bots in robots dir


• Bug [2852860] - IllegalArgumentException on painting in some robots


• Fixed NullPointerException that could occur with the -battle command-line option

Changes

Banning

• The previous 1.7.x.x versions have been very strict so that robots that could not be loaded, started, skipped too many turns etc. would be disallowed to participate in battles. With the bugfix for bug [2845612] above this policy has been changed so robots are only "banned" if the cause a security violation or they could not be loaded or started (meaning that they are not able to run). In addition, ALL security violations are always written out in both the main console and robot's console. A message will be written out in the main console like "xxx has caused a security violation. This robot has been banned and will not be allowed to participate in battles".

Painting

• With the bugfix for bug [2852860] a change was made so a robot will now receive this message in its console window, if it is painting too much between actions:
  "SYSTEM: This robot is painting too much between actions. Max. capacity has been reached."

• Notice that a robot is not allowed to perform an unlimited amount of paint operations for two reasons:


1. It takes up a lot of memory as the painting operations are recorded in a buffer before being processed, and potentially this buffer must be recorded to a file (for replays). A robot is allowed to use up to a maximum of 64 KB per action. An average painting operation like e.g. fillRect(x, y, width, height) takes up 15 bytes, meaning that more 4000 painting operations should be possible, which is a lot.


2. It takes a lot of CPU cycles to process the painting buffer to the display making the painting slow if the buffer is too large.




• It is possible to remove the limit of the robots painting buffer by using the command-line option: -Ddebug=true

Download Robocode 1.7.1.4 from here