Alcatraz

Me:

I'm 18, in college, and living in Pennsylvania in the United States. I've been following Robocode for about 4 years.

Bots:

Competitive Megabot(s):

• Cyanide - My first WaveSurfing bot and best overall bot; as of October '05 it was #7 in the RR@H.
• Immortal - My first good bot, it currently features a semi broken WaveSurfing mechanism; best ranking: #13 in the RR@H.
• Virgin? - This bot doesn't really have a point, it's neither very original nor very good. As of June '05 it was ranked in the 60s in the RR@H.
• Calliope - The most downloaded bot on the Repository, though that's due to a bug. This was my first even relatively competitive bot.

Competitive Minibot(s):

• Cyprus? - A minibot in the 80's of RR@H as of June '05. It has had various lukewarm reincarnations.

Competitive Nanobot(s):

• Freddie - The top nanobot by a good margin as of October '05. It switches between two movement types, one that avoids HeadOnTargetting? and one that avoids LinearTargetting?.
• Guppy? - A very mediocre nanobot that can beat some of the top nanos, but not many of the others.

Competitive Robot(s):

• Krazy - This is my ExtendsRobot bot. It is the consistent runner up in the ExtendsRobotCompetition that I occasionally run.

Competitive NGBot(s):

• CeramicFish - My first bot made with the [RobocodeNG] mods. It currently uses the UVLaser and beats all of the SampleBots.

Retired Nanobot(s):

• Fury? - My first nanobot, I gave up on it eventually.
• Furious? - When I started on Fury again, I renamed it Furious.
• Mercury? - A never very good nanobot that changed from a WallRider? to a SpinBot to a PicoBot? to a HaikuBot and back.
• Eddie? - Was a very good nanobot for awhile, but never won any competitions.

Other Bot(s):

• Axraelic? - Attempts to steal the movement of a top bot, save it, and use it against other bots. Fails.
• Azrael? - Acts differently on every computer, but is consistantly bad.
• Vendetta? - Claim to fame? Was the original name of ms.Ares, the bot which won the beginner level of the official Robocode Rumble.
• Vengeance? - My only bot that attempts to succeed in melee. It doesn't.
• Sierra? - A team of spinbots.

Comments:

I'm happy to see you making yourself visible on the wiki! I almost get tears in my sentimental eyes when I think back on when I started Robocoding and a few months from that and your bot Calliope was always amongst my test bots. It took quite a while before I could beat it. I think it was when I added VirtualGuns that I finally did it. I still like the agressiveness of that bot and the way it went from oscillating movement to a kind of stop-and-go. It was Calliope that made me realize that it must be possible to save data between rounds. Do a bit of ego-surfing on the wiki. Use the search function and search for "Calliope" =) -- PEZ

Always nice to know that a bot of mine was good for something, and that movement especially. Thanks PEZ. But my fondest memory of good ol' Calliope would have to be the days that the Repository's download count for her randomly jumped a thousand or so downloads. Staying on the 'Most Popular' list for months was good for the ego too... -- Alcatraz

=) It was the download count that made me download it in the first place. -- PEZ

I think it probably has the highest official download count to date. FloodNano once got a magical 2900 downloads, and I think Cigaret did, too, but FloodNano has since reverted. Just because it appeared to be a popular bot, though, it's been downloaded at least twice as much as any of my other bots, through no accomplishment of its own (It's among the hardest to hit nanos, but I now have the #2 ranked nano, the #1 ranked mini, and the #2 ranked megabot on the ER). -- Kawigi

I also used Calliope as one of my test bots; great fun to test against, win or lose. When I first downloaded it, it wasn't because it had a high download count, but rather because people were talking about it in the forums, although they may have just been talking about it because it had such a high download count :D. Congrats on Immortal being in the 20s; I'm still out in the 60s with Fractal... -- Vuen

What about Guppy, your last (till now) original Robocode bot? --GrubbmGait

Oh, right. That one was no good. All I was trying to make was a bot that beat Nanis? and Freddie, and it did, but it lost to far too many other nanos. -- Alcatraz

Hey! A fellow Pennsylvanian! I hadn't realized before that there were other people on the wiki from within a few hours of me. --wcsv

Yeah, I am originally from near Philadelphia but currently out in Pittsburgh. Being here for the Super Bowl was depressing. -- Alcatraz

Yeah, i saw that your post earlier was from CMU. I tried to get in there, but they didn't want me. --wcsv

They're missing out. This school needs more robocoders. Though I did actually meet someone who had found robocode before, which was a first for me. --Alcatraz

Question about waves: do you guys fire and/or update waves when the enemy is disabled? -- Alcatraz

Umm, I just checked, and Dookious' gun does... *blush* But no, you probably shouldn't. -- Voidious