There seems to be some activity going on inside IBM to push for releasing Robocode as open source.
The other day Mat started this thread in the official Robocode forum: https://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/forum/robocode.nsf/current/91022251A742C56E71C7678B16754504?OpenDocument
And a colleague of Mat started this thread in the Yahoo Robocode mailinglist/forum: https://groups.yahoo.com/group/Robocode/message/728
Though I'm a big proponent of anything that'll breath life back into the robocode software itself, I'm a bit wary of open sourcing it. I just don't want it to get to the point where there are 15 different clients available, all running slightly different physics and engines. It'd be great if Mat could convince IBM to reopen the project for packaging with Eclipse (or to package a stripped-down Eclipse with it) as a tool to hook all users who learn using Robocode into IBM's environment. Sounds like something a comittee would go for :P -- Kuuran
What files can't you get the source code for? --Goofy
Anything not in the robocode package. For example, robocode.battleview.* --David Alves
Java is normally compiled into bytecode, so even if the original source file is not available, you can still find out what is going on. You can try to obsfucate it, but anyone with enough patience can work out what is going on. So technically, none of your robots are safe from our prying eyes... -- Alphax
You'll have to have a good deal of patience to figure out what's going on in SandboxDT and Shadow. =) Robocode itself though isn't compiled with the help of an obfuscator. It gets very readable code when decompiling it. -- PEZ
How would you know that, PEZ? ;-) --David Alves
Hehe. I just did it. Wanted to see how hard it would be to make a setting where one could choose a fixed set of starting positions for the bots. Not hard at all it turns out. Though I think it's not allowed to distibute a modified Robocode. Which makes it pretty pointless. We'll have to wait until its released under some OS license. -- PEZ
I think you could get into trouble if you did, since IBM own the license for it -- Alphax
The license says that you're allowed to decompile or modify it, but not allowed to distribute your changes. --David Alves
In the non-academic terms: "You may not copy or modify the Programs except for your personal use, nor may you provide any copy or modification of the Programs to anyone else." -- Jonathan
Newsflash:
I am very pleased to announce that Robocode will (finally!) - be posted to sourceforge.net as an opensource project, on or before Februrary 21st of this year.
Thanks for all your support!
-Mat
Whoooo!! I almost missed this announcement. It's finally happening! -- PEZ
What will be the impact on the (this) Robocode community? Because I don't have any knowledge of the starting days, I frankly have no idea. --GrubbmGait
Wow happy news indeed. First of all we would like to fix a couple of bugs (HT/multi-CPU problems for example). -- Pulsar
IBM has given Robocode back to Mat and he's about to set it up on sourceforge. The impact on the community is very much up to us I guess. Depending on how much time Mat will have and what his immediate plans are. Bug fixes are priority in my book too. And I would like for the RoboRumble@Home to get integrated into Robocode itself. -- PEZ
Cool~~These days i am thinking about a opensource programming game with a new way to play, now robocode are opening, Mat and robocoders must can make it perfectly, and i may can jion it too.Aha, cool news of this year. -- iiley
That's great news! Finally!!! --Vic
Finally!! -- Jonathan (didn't forget RC)
Indeed great news! I am very interested in helping where i can in this new project, u can certainly count on me for this. I have no idea about how this will work, however... I think that RoboWiki can help a lot in coordinating these efforts, it is a naturall gathering point for all robocoders. What does Mat think about this? -- Axe
What are we going to do when this does go open source? There are so many possible directions we could take this, and we can only do so much. I would also suggest that this may be a starting point to promote Robocode a little bit more. Competition has been a little slow lately (perhaps another rumble (with prizes?) like the one run over at alphaworks) -- Alcatraz
it's here!
I just grabbed it from the CVS! https://sourceforge.net/projects/robocode/ -- Jonathan
Super! the long wait is over! --Vic
There is now a Robocode v1.0.7 for download at sourceforge with bugfixes and new explosion graphics. :) -- ABC
Just FYI, regarding the bug about robocode hanging when using a Hyperthreading CPU (most Intel P4 these days) or multiple CPUs is worse in 1.0.7 (see bug notes). --Pulsar
What version is everybody using and are there any comments. For RoboRumble@Home I use 1.0.7 and after an hour or so it hangs trying to send the results to the server, just like 1.0.6 did. (I let it run offline)
For development I also use 1.0.7, but the 10-second redraw of the console-window is really annoying, so probably I'll go back to 1.0.6 for now. Also the size and position of the battlefield- and results-window is default every battle, but that may have to do something with me copying some files from the 1.0.6 to the 1.0.7 directory. -- GrubbmGait
Using 1.0.6 here for now. Waiting until that deadlock/thread issues is solved. -- Pulsar
Ditto. -- PEZ
I've been using 1.0.7, but I now habitually go to my task manager and set the affinity to use one logical CPU when I start it up. I can't say for sure that it's worse, though, as this is my first HyperThreading computer. -- Kawigi
One thing I've noticed with 1.0.7 that I don't recall from 1.0.6 all those years ago is, when I pause it to assist with reading debugging output, something still seems to be running and generating plausible-looking output from my bot. I was wondering if this was another threading issue. Haven't had time to really look into this yet, but I can see it becoming a big issue when I try to debug anything big! -- Shrubbery
Last I looked, it seemed like the threading problem was also related to the bug where the whole contents of the output window are reappended to the output window periodically (I assume that's what you're seeing). -- Kawigi
Could be - it looked at first glance like new output, as if it was still running in the background but not updating the main window. But I didn't examine it carefully - I'll have another look! -- Shrubbery
So once upon a time I had the robocode source code on my computer. I don't know where it went. Does anybody have a non-CVS i.e. a zip or jar containing it? -- Alcatraz
![[Home]](/images/RoboWiki.png)