From: Daniel Sheppard <daniels@...>
Date: 2005-11-10T15:25:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Equvialent of RoboCode and/or Terrarium for Ruby?

Somebody should write some code first =).

If you just want a port of robocode, I'd say a good approach would be to
take the existing robocode source code and replace existing classes with
Jruby. Once you've got the majority in Jruby, refactor that around to
make it more rubyish.

I'd imagine straight porting of the majority of the code would be a
fairly simple matter - it would only be once you started porting the GUI
that you'd be into hard stuff.

I'd also imagine that instead of running the code in a sandbox, you'd
instead expose something over dRB/some other sort of connection for
clients to connect to and fight it out. This would allow you to write an
adapter than would allow an existing robocode robot to enter the fray
(which would be a great kick-start, and also a great way to test).
Alternatively, you could just eval client code with appropriate $SAFE
levels (which would probably restrict cheating more). Or you could do
both.

Otherwise, you'd need to hash out a plan for a new environment for AI's
to play in - Maybe some sort of random maze to fight in? - Maybe a
capture the flag game? 

Another fun AI thing to do is to write AI's for simple board/card games
(ie Ruby Quiz #51), although watching computer players play isn't
usually that much fun, it's much easier to insert a human into the game
that is turn-based, and it's usually not that hard to play in a
text-based environ. Poke around boardgamegeek and find something you
like and build a two player version with a nice interface and then send
it out for people to write AI's for. If you go this path, write your
game rules in a server program and have all the capturing of input and
displaying of things in client programs - this will normally you a
decent interface to build an AI on. Something like Carcassone has
extremely simple rules, but can provide a real challenge to win.

Even figuring out the winning rules to solo games such as Solitaire or
Sliding Puzzles can be a challenge, but more fun is had when there
unknown is in the form of another player (rather than just figuring out
statistics, which solves most solo games).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lyndon Samson [mailto:lyndon.samson@gmail.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, 10 November 2005 4:47 PM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: Equvialent of RoboCode and/or Terrarium for Ruby?
> 
> Somebody should register something on rubyforge...
> 
> 
> 
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