RobotWar and the Army of Clones

[app103]

Back in 1981 Silas Warner created a game for MUSE Software which would go on to spawn an entire army of clones. Silas is probably better know as the author of the legendary Castle Wolfenstein. However it was RobotWar which went on to inspire a whole new genre.

Silas developed RobotWar for the PLATO computer system and later ported it to the Apple II for release by MUSE. The game is set at a time in the distant future when war has been declared hazardous to human health. Wars still rage, but the combatants are robots programmed to battle to the death.

This is a game for coders, as you will be programming your robots in your choice of language, such as C, Pascal, assembly or Java. The article has a few links to various versions.

http://retrocode.blogspot.com/2009/07/robotwar-and-army-of-clones.html

[mouser]

RobotWar was one of the very first (of many) games that i wrote a clone of while i was first learning to program.. Great stuff.

[cranioscopical]

RobotWar was one of the very first (of many) games that i wrote a clone of while i was first learning to program.. Great stuff.

Was that your famous HARR (Hide And Run Robot)?

[Innuendo]

Was that your famous HARR (Hide And Run Robot)?

Yes, and it was shortly after the name change to Frag And Run Robot that Mouser took the application in an entirely different direction.

[fenixproductions]

2app103
Nice find. It is going to be fun for me as Ceebot and Colobot were

[app103]

It turns out the blogger is an avid corewar player and has a whole 2nd blog dedicated to that.

http://impomatic.blogspot.com/

[mouser]

I am really feeling an itch to get into coding little robots for a pretend war game.. does someone on DC feel like coding us an online game?
i don't mean a direct clone of RobotWar.. but something unique that involves writing robot programs and having them fight it out.

[Deozaan]

I am really feeling an itch to get into coding little robots for a pretend war game.. does someone on DC feel like coding us an online game?
i don't mean a direct clone of RobotWar.. but something unique that involves writing robot programs and having them fight it out.

AHEM! I believe I proposed an idea similar to that (and more) to you about 1.5 years ago (April 2008?) and you didn't like the programmable robots part of it. So I took out the programmable robots part of it and began working on my Universe project.

[mouser]

well i wasn't objecting to the concept in general, just thought it was outside the scope of that project. 

[Mark0]

That brings back memories. I always liked this kind of coders' games. 
I too wrote a DOS software for Corewar on... well, too much time ago: 1992! 

[sunlitlaz]

I think a nice little web game could be made from this idea/concept.  Maybe I'll tinker with it some if people are interested, I have already been working on some web based games, maybe I can modify what I have already written.  Hmmm   

[mouser]