WorthyOpponents

Of course, the best way to check the performance of your bot is to toss it into RoboRumble and see how it does. But while you develop, it is helpful to run it against other bots in the client to observe its (and the opponent's) behavior. What bots have you found to be particularly helpful for this purpose? What bots have taught you helpful or interesting techniques by watching them in combat or reading their source code? -- RobertWalker

Entry Level

The SampleBots obviously spring to mind. Any others?

• Walls was a tough one. I managed to beat him by using a perpendicular oscillator ( a simple setAhead(100*Math.sin(getTime()/10)); ) and not firing. After that, Ramfire was tough. And I had to add CircularTargeting to hit SpinBot. After which I could hit Walls, so I switched back to firing. =). -- Skilgannon

My list: these, along others, were part of my early testbed. -- GrubbmGait

• SnippetBot ofcourse. I could not hit it (except with HOT) for a very long time.
• pla.Memnoch 0.5 is a bot hard to beat to beginners.
• ahf.NanoAndrew was a bot that drove me crazy, also in melee. This bot pushed me towards StopAndGo.

Walls, SpinBot, and DustBunny were all important bumps in the road for me early on. =) DuelistNano and Barracuda were staples for many weeks for fine tuning my WaveSurfing / movement code. -- Voidious

Intermediate

• Look in the codesize-limited leagues. However, note that the top bots there will not be easy to beat =). When you can sucessfully pound every nano, move up to micro. -- Skilgannon

Again my list: note that I used the same bots to test for Melee and OneOnOne. -- GrubbmGait

• PrairieWolf, especially in melee, was (and is) a hard nut to crack
• Girl, amazing melee performance for a robot
• nic.Nicator, hard to grasp repeating corner movement

PrairieWolf and Swiffer are a couple of MultiMode bots that are really tougher than they look! Make sure your gun is up to snuff or you are toast. TheArtOfWar isn't much of a 1v1 competitor any more, but it's still a really sold all-around bot and great in Melee. I was so excited to beat TAOW, I saved writing my VictoryDance until I could finally take him down. =) -- Voidious

Advanced

Raiko has to be one of my favourites. As a tip, don't test guns against WaveSurfers. Especially not GuessFactor guns. -- Skilgannon

Shadow and CassiusClay have gotta be the top 2 here for me. Shadow is just unstoppable head to head - I still long for the day I can dominate it in 1v1. CassiusClay is just a stellar all around duelist and it's OpenSource; I studied it well and have learned a ton from it. Ascendant and Phoenix also deserve an honorable mention, for obvious reasons. -- Voidious